BUPNET EU

Menu

VIM – Vitality Interventions for Migrants

Staying in good health, adopting healthy life styles and being informed about the health system of the host country as well as having confidence to make use of it are pre-requisites of successful integration of refugees and newly arrived migrants into their European host societies. But clearly, there is a lack of consideration in the existing integration programmes of the specific challenges migrants face with regard to health issues. Well-being, poverty, employment and legal status are factors that have crucial impact on the health of refugee immigrants as well as on the exertion of their right to access quality healthcare. Although migrant women share many integration challenges with migrant men, their exclusion risks are even more pronounced, because of  simultaneous gender, racial and class discrimination.

Adult education has an important role to play in this context. While it is very difficult to get those migrants who would need it most involved in health information classes, adult education should try to work with these target groups where they can be found, i.e. in integration, education and training programmes on other subjects.

VIM addresses adult educators and training providers working with migrants and refugees in various contexts: general adult learning classes, language courses, labour market programmes, integration courses and other. The project substantially seeks to extend the professional competence of these educators to address health issues in their teaching, without being health education experts themselves. A toolbox with small, ready-to-use health education units will be developed, which helps educators to support migrants to stay in good health, adopt healthy life styles and be informed about the health system of the host country as well as build confidence to make full use of it.

Main outputs to be produced include:

  • Research report with collection of good practice in health education and results from detailed needs analysis;
  • Tool box with small training units on health issue for adult educators;
  • Educational guidelines for educators how to integrate the small training units in to various kinds of education classes;
  • Online hub for migrant health education with resources, links etc.;
  • Publication “VIM in Practice” with insights from implementing the approach;
  • VIM quality badge to be awarded to trainers and training providers that adopt the VIM methodology. The badge aims to add to the sustainability of the project at European level and shall attract adult educators and training providers to adopt the VIM approach in their contexts.

The main target groups of the project are adult educators working with migrants.

The project partnership consists of education, health, migration and gender experts from five major migration entry and host countries (DE, AT, DK, IT, GR) and is coordinated by BUPNET.