Influencing the public and advocacy

While fulfilling its mission, the Association for Integration and Migration also develops a number of activities directed at the Czech public. The goal of this is to cultivate tolerance towards migrants and to fight existing xenophobia and racism in our society. As a result, the AIM workers appear in media, take place in different discussions, seminars and conferences, and serve as delegates of the AIM during various educational and cultural happenings.

Beside this, the AIM annually takes part in various Prague as well as regional festivals and happenings, such as Refufest, Barevná devítka or Etnofest, Respect festival, Zažít město jinak, FreezeFest či Týden NNO v Praze 5. The AIM also represents itself on the national fair of nonprofit organizations- the NGO Market. There are flyers and other informational materials informing about the work of our organization available on our stands as well as cartoons with stories of young migrants and DVDs with a cartoon movie on the topic of migration. According to their nature, the visitors can also watch other documents from the AIM archives, get involved in various interactive tasks or support our activities by purchasing our promotional items

Important parts of AIM“s educational activities are lectures at elementary schools, high-schools, and colleges across the Czech Republic. We are striving to approximate the topic of refugee and migration to students and to explain some basic terms, as well as to use situational games to convey the problems that foreigners have to face in our country. Joint discussions with foreign representatives are also aimed at inciting interest about the issue of migration in students and to help them understand the lives of minorities in our society. Cooperation with young people is especially important since formation of positive approach to strangers in juveniles contributes to general elimination of stereotypes and biases in the rows of the majority of our society.

One of our primary goals is also presentation of migration and refugee topics in media. The AIM has been vigorously cooperating with other public and commerce media subjects for the past several years. Thanks to our long-lasting experience in working with migrants the AIM workers have gradually profiled themselves as connoisseurs in the topics of refugee and migration who are regularly approached by journalists with different questions about comments or about current events in certain areas. We also publish scholarly articles and publications which inform both specialized and laic public about various aspects of migration and social standing of migrants in the Czech Republic and in European Union. The most frequent site of our articles is a specialized portal www.migraceonline.cz.

Addressing the largest possible part of Czech society is very important because our clients meet with people from all social welfares in their daily lives and those people make their lives in our country less or more enjoyable. Thus It is necessary for the public to find out as much about the fates of these newcomers as possible. Only this can help them to find a way to approach them and understand the problems they have to overcome in their lives.

Legislative work

If the client's issues extend beyond our capacity, we can mediate help of other professionals in the field of psychology, psychiatric care etc...Throughout its existence, SIMI has secured a well-established position and has become a recognised authority among organisations dealing migration related matters. Conceptual changes and advocacy make up a great deal of our work. Therefore, our objective is to monitor the status of foreigns in our country, to improve the inconvenient, restrictive and discriminatory regulations and also to bring awareness regarding this population group. We elaborate proposals for legislative amendments and legislative intents impacting foreigners living in the Czech Republic. We are mainly concerned with the legislation on asylum and foreigners’ residency. Additionally, we address a number of Members of Parliament, senators as well as other establishments and lobby in favor of our proposals with the aim of improving the current and future legal status of migrants. Such changes will be beneficial not only for migrants but also for the Czech society overall.

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