Migrant Day celebrations in Szczecin

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On 30th September we held an integration event in Szczecin – a celebration of the International Migrant Day. All children from the Daily Support Facilities took part in it as well as the invited guests: families of our program, organizations, which help migrants on a daily basis, representatives of city and voivodeship institutions and others persons who wanted to celebrate together. It was a great opportunity to have conversations – also in different languages – to be together or to learn about great differences between each other while tasting a multicultural feast.

The event started with a Mass enriched with a special prayer of the believers and a prayer for refugees. The next part of the meeting included a child-narrated presentation about a refugee camp. Moreover, representatives of migrants also gave their speeches – for instance, Mr. Sziwan from Syria who is Kurdish, but also Tatiana from Belarus and Żandar from Chechnya, who made the meeting more attractive with their singing.

An essential part of the event were the preparations alone, during which children from seven Daily Support Facilities of Caritas Szczecin-Kamienska Archdiocese learnt about migration and refugees by preparing posters about centuries, which had suffered the most due to such problems. The posters were used as decorations during the Mass.  Such activities allow to learn about mutual problems, but also to conquer the fear or potential prejudice towards foreignness and differentness. Providing conditions for active participation of migrants in social and cultural events is especially important form the point of view of integration. It is an efficient adaptive tool, which facilitates the recognition of cultural codes of the receiving society, also giving the latter some space for establishing relations with the newcomers.

 

We’d like to encourage you to check out our photographic account from the event and to watch a short video material, which was broadcast on a local TV station (Migrant Day video material starts from around the 10th minute of the Arka TV program).