“We want people to become aware that migrants have rights, that they need protection and help. For this reason, we urge Romanian fellows to offer them understanding, compassion, and to be kind to migrants.” Romanian volunteers and migrant teenagers involved in the PROMISE project have put together their minds and creative skills in order to showcase the emotional baggage, difficulties and hopes of any refugee who seeks protection in a foreign country.
Migrants and refugees can be exposed to various stress factors which affect their mental health and well-being before and during their migration. This graphic short story created by the volunteers gets inside the migrant’s mind and feelings and depicts the main emotional traumas that migrants may experience: depression, anxiety, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). The young volunteers concluded that the best solution would be therapy. A therapy session that should be cost-effective and accessible to refugees.
Struggles of Ukrainian refugees in Romania were depicted in a poster. It says that there were around 94 000 Ukrainian migrants on Romanian territory in July 2023, mainly women and children (as shown in the centre of the poster), who represent a vulnerable category.
Little by little, the project teenagers got to know migrants’ life, their fears and hopes, and they were able to create the portrait of a migrant - any migrant in this world, depicted in this three collages:
While working on their creative projects, Romanian volunteers made friends with Siman, a young Somali girl living in Romania. They got to know her story and revealed it in an article that they illustrated themselves: https://shorturl.at/DJ246
The story of Sally, a Syrian student who attends Medicine University in Bucharest, was conceived, written and illustrated by the project volunteers when they had a walk in Bucharest Botanical Garden. https://shorturl.at/nyz47
The creative materials were made within the PROMISE project - Protecting the Unaccompanied Migrant Minors implemented by Terre des hommes Foundation and JRS Association (Jesuit Refugee Service in Romania), with the financial support of Active Citizens Fund Romania, programme funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants 2014-2021. The content of this article does not necessarily reflect the official position of the EEA and Norway Grants 2014-2021. For more information, visit www.eeagrants.org
Additional info about the project can be found on:
https://www.tdh.ro/en/promise-protecting-unaccompanied-migrant-minors
”Working together for a green, competitive and inclusive Europe”
Project implemented by:
