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An institutional void
In Brussels, stakeholders in the field have unanimously made a recurring observation for several years: the lack of real integration proposal coherent and adapted for adolescents in exile and Roma adolescents is increasing, with the corollary of disinterest or inability for these young people to join any schooling or training project.
Young people with specific needs
These are young people whose vulnerability and isolation make it very little available for learning. They cannot read or write, do not master school codes, operate within survival mechanisms and are often in great pain in terms of their Mental Health. They do not have the tools and information to claim their rights and face impasses and recurring institutional violence.
A suitable response
It seemed essential to us in 2018 to develop a structure in Brussels adapted to these adolescents in a situation of disaffiliation or lacking a solution adapted to their profile. The project proposed by Tchaï is multidisciplinary and is at a crossroads. It is neither an SAS, nor an AMO, nor a school, but an educational and educational alternative built on the needs, life experiences and hopes of adolescents in exile.
Our activities take place during the day. THE Mondays and Thursdays are reserved for collective workshops and outings, Tuesdays and Fridays to business discoveries and project planning as well as psycho-social monitoring.
The support offered is based on three stages:
Allow for young people to settle down in a warm place, to put aside your emotions, to take the time to meet your needs, to meet peers, to feel listened to and to regain strength.
During this period, we offer the following services:
- A support individual psycho-social front line
- Of the group workshops FLE, literacy, practical life, mathematical logic
– Multidisciplinary collective artistic, manual and sports workshops
– Discovery days of the Belgian company
– A space-time ofwelcome and of friendliness
Through direct experiences, we invite each young person individually to explore the possibilities of work, training, development, care or civic investment.
We want to enable young people to move towards the realization of a project, however small it may be, by being informed and aware of what exists while remaining attentive to their current possibilities.
Our methodology is adapted toadolescence et al'wandering and built on the basis of our action research. It is based on guidelines that we apply to all areas of our action:
Vladimir lives on the street with his family. His need to have a place to spend the day, where to eat and access the Wi-Fi connection comes before that of learning to read and write, although the latter is of real importance to him. We are therefore seeking to give him access to a SIM card, food parcels and to develop ways to get off the street.
Mohamed would like to be understood by his lawyer in view of an approaching hearing and occupy all the space in his thoughts. We ask for a meeting and we explain in detail everything that Mohamed wants to say but is unable to say because telling his story is far too difficult for him.
Yasmin is very attentive during the literacy workshops. She reads and writes better and better. During group oral French workshops or manual or artistic activities, however, she is dissipated and often refuses to participate because she does not fully understand the instructions given. We work more on oral comprehension with her and take the time to re-explain the instructions to her as many times as necessary.
Allow for young people to settle down in a warm place, to put aside your emotions, to take the time to meet your needs, to meet peers, to feel listened to and to regain strength.
To allow the young to say and to say oneself, to flourish, to fully deploy one's skills and to lay the foundations for a peaceful exchange.
Allow the young person to understand the services, codes, expectations and operations of the host company. Being able to find reference points, understand the possibilities and the challenges.
By inviting to be curious, to try, to meet, to exchange, to make mistakes, to start again, to leave known paths and explore new possibilities.
Invite through different means to get started on a project (school, training, employment, extracurricular or other) while respecting the young person's rhythm, their life realities, their frame of reference and what makes sense for them at this moment in their life. By direct roads or crossroads, allow it to take the place that suits him in society.
Gain confidence in yourself and your skills in a secure environment and in connection with others.
Our actions with these young people on the margins allow us to carry out well-founded advocacy and awareness-raising rooted in reality. Through our close support, we confront directly with young people the institutional impasses who go about their daily lives.
We do review our field findings since the dawn of the project. As our action research progresses, we also share our analysis and try to formulate avenues for change.
Tchaï is a structure unique in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. The way in which we support young people educationally, pedagogically, psycho-social and professional integration is the fruit ofa long process of trial and error with young people.
Tchaï's project evolves with young people and the experience we accumulate with them. There capitalization of these experiences allows us to gradually build through action a system that fully integrates their particularities and allows them to move forward.
This action research also evolves with the components of the team and the exchanges with our various partners.
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