In the “Kalan Nafa” project, we offered extracurricular learning support for young people with a refugee or migrant background who have little or no formal educational experience.
Our work has enabled participants aged between 18 and 27 to join the complex and performance-oriented education system in Germany and prevented them from dropping out of school and training. We focused on language-sensitive and individual support – the participants were able to communicate with each other and with us in their native languages.
The focus was on teaching the basic skills of reading, writing, arithmetic and problem solving as well as on the targeted development of individual learning strategies. The participants’ digital skills were also trained. Because we are convinced that learning should also be fun, we often made lessons fun and regularly offered excursions.
The project was funded and supported by the RheinEnergie Stiftung Jugend, Beruf und Wissenschaft, the Dohle Stifung and the Mercator-Institut für Sprachförderung und Deutsch als Zweitsprache. The latter used our work to develop teaching principles and recommendations for action for this target group, which has so far received little attention in research.