Mezze-Escola is a rights based sustainable inclusion intervention that supports social and economic integration of migrants in European Countries. Through a 6 months certified program in the HORECA sector our beneficiaries gain both professional skills (with off and on-job training), and access to the labour market. In addition to the technical modules, our participants delve into critical topics such as personal and social development, language learning, sustainability, legislation and finance.
National
Portugal
Lisbon and Oporto, Portugal, although we are set to replicate the project across borders.
Mainly urban
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
EEA Grants - Active Citizens Fund, Capacity building program, 2020
No
Yes
As a representative of an organisation
Name of the organisation(s): Associação Pão a Pão Type of organisation: Non-profit organisation First name of representative: Nuno Last name of representative: Mesquita Gender: Male Nationality: Portugal Function: Board member / Financial & Project Manager Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Rua Armindo Rodrigues, 19 4esq Town: Lisboa Postal code: 1600-414 Country: Portugal Direct Tel:+351 927 993 023 E-mail:paoapao@mezze.pt Website:https://www.paoapao.pt
Started in 2022, this project aims to improve employability and to support the process of integration of the immigrant and refugee community in the EU. To produce this change we use a rights-based approach, through the empowerment of the migrant community to exercise their rights (right to education -including behaviour change regarding sustainability - and right to fairly remunerated work) and duties (social and fiscal). Two paths of change complement each other to achieve this goal:
(i) Strengthening the professional skills of the migrant community, in the catering sector, through a 500h certified training programme. The context analysis reveals a high qualification deficit in the sector, being the qualification of human resources one of the main goals of the Tourism Strategy 2027. This pathway of change intervenes on the side of skills enhancement.
(ii) The second pathway of change empowers for the exercise of a full citizenship, aware of their rights and obligations. This pathway of change facilitates access to the labour market, in conditions of justice and responsibility.
The project benefits from the perception Portuguese society has of the migrant community, a phenomenon that has increased with the wave of refugees from Ukraine. It also benefits from the motivation of the migrant community to access qualifications that allow them to integrate in our country. Proof of this is the experience of Pão a Pão, whose work of training and job creation has motivated dozens of refugees to integrate into Portuguese society and remain active professionally, even after leaving the Association's staff.
A 3rd edition of the program is underway, fully directed to Ukrainian refugees. We’re expanding this program from Lisbon to Oporto in 2023, showcasing the sustainability of the initiative.
Migration
Employment
Rights
Sustainability
Education
Mezze-Escola is rights based intervention framed by a comprehensive understanding of sustainability.
On the upstream, the intervention is sustainable because it promotes an integration that is both:
● Based on certified skills (HORECA and Hospitality sectors) with high demand and limited offer in the Portugal and broadly speaking in Europe;
● Based on knowledge and understanding of rights and duties of target groups and how to exercise them, thus contributing to combat exclusion.
On the downstream, the intervention is sustainable from:
● Economic point of view, because it supports initial integration of beneficiaries in the labour market through a restaurant owned by the promoter that has been consistently profitable thus generating resources for the development of the intervention to other target groups;
● Environmental point of view through certified recycling policies and practices implemented both during the training programs organised (by our partner Hospitality and Tourism School of Lisbon) within the scope of the initiative and in the restaurant that supports the in integration of the target group in the labour market.
The intervention seeks complementary approaches to improve the quality of experience:
● of Refugees and Migrants by providing a responsible integration in social and economic life, the intervention that helps reduce the effects of trauma to which most refugees and migrants were exposed, strengthening the sense of belonging and active contribution to social and economic life. The intervention also shapes community within the target group.
● of the hosting Community, that through food transporting the culture, habits and beliefs of migrants but also their life stories, their challenges and dreams
The key principle of the intervention is that inclusion is a win-win challenge:
● From the perspective of Refugees and Migrants, this is an intervention that provides (professional) skills and (legal) knowledge that can be applied in any European Country (skills that are EU certified) or in the Home Country;
● From the perspective of the Hosting State, this is an intervention that generates a high return on investment: for each 1€ invested in rights based inclusion we generate 2,7€ of savings in social assistance. This means that, in fact, the intervention generates resources that can be reinvested in other inclusion initiatives by the State.
This sustainable rights based inclusion generates individual assets that are returned to the community with a high return on investment.
Four different layers of directly affected stakeholders were involved in the design and management of the intervention and/or benefit from them:
● Migrants and Refugees:
- The ones that were involved in the curriculum design especially in what concerns the modules on labour, tax and legal rights and duties and how they could answer to the daily challenges faced by the community;
- The ones that benefit from the integration process provided by the initiative - access to rights (to a job, to an education);
● Industry leaders in the HORECA (Hospitality and Tourism Shcools, and Pão a Pão through the Mezze restaurant):
- the HORECA and Hospitality technical content of the training program
- the soft skills required to establish a positive relationship between employers and employees that have deep cultural differences and backgrounds;
● The restaurants and HORECA sector as whole, by having access to a new pool of trained workers, in an industry of high demand that is lacking human resources.
● Communities in general, where meaningful integration of migrants has, by contrast (to a no integration scenario), a deep positive impact across the board;
This initiative is guided by a partnership between Pão a Pão Association (PAP), a Non-Profit with projects across Portugal, and Tourism of Portugal (TP), through their Hospitality and Tourism Schools.
On a local level, there are partnerships between TP schools and local restaurants for off and on-job training. PAP is responsible for managing not only the project, but also the on-job training in Lisbon, through its Mezze restaurant, which was created for the employment and integration of refugees.
Participants are accessed through local NGO’s and public institutions who deal with migrants, while funding is gathered through different sources, namely the implementing partners own revenues, grants, and donations from civil society.
The transition of participants into the labour market is based both on the support of government programs focused on employment (financial support) and partnerships with local or national chains of restaurants and hotels.
Contents of the program are also a result of multiple stakeholders brought together: Hospitality schools, through their proven background on a technical level; PAP and its workers (which are also the beneficiaries), by bringing +5 years of knowledge of working together into the design of the modules (needs, doubts, challenges, cultural differences); and Nova SBE university, through not only an R&D work on the main factors of integration through the labour market, as well as their tailor-made work to embed sustainability practices in the program (see next section for more details).
In addition, the initiative was developed with focus on replication, both nationally and internationally, with the initial expansion being set to start in Oporto in May 2023.
The concept of local partnerships, based upon a network of stakeholders, with continuous evaluation and adaptation, gives Mezze-Escola full flexibility to move across regions without losing focus on the main goals of integration, sustainable inclusion and education.
The design, development and improvement of the initiative was and is based on the knowledge of several stakeholders and expertise, which sustains the rights-based approach that drives the initiative through different angles.
Pão a Pão association (PAP) and its workers contributed with the consolidated knowledge of several years of working together within and for the migrant community. Dozens of refugees and immigrants throughout several years of employment gave PAP a clear view of the soft and hard skills required for a proper integration through the HORECA sector context. We also included our awareness of the needs and lack of information that may limit the claim of rights of the beneficiaries, namely lack of language skills, financial literacy, legislation knowledge and sense of individual and collective sustainability.
Hospitality and Tourism School of Lisbon, whose track record on certified education for the sector spreads across several decades, was the main driver to set up technical approaches to the program, and to provide a safe learning context adapted to the target group. Language barriers and cultural differences in relation to gastronomy and customer service are addressed by their approach.
Despite this collective knowledge, Pão a Pão, as leader of the initiative, also reached out to Nova SBE university with two main goals in mind:
● To clearly identify the main factors of integration through the labour market within our target group, which resulted in the implementation of a 75hr module focused on personal and social development.
● To conceive and adapt an approach on sustainability within the initiative, that could spread across all fields of knowledge that are taught to participants.
This interaction between the mentioned stakeholders resulted in a new and broad approach within the education-employment-sustainability sphere, able to support our goals for an integration through rights.
The intervention looks at complex problems from a multi-stakeholders perspective:
● We strength skills, but we also promote responsible inclusion based on rights and duties;
● We strengthen the sense of belonging of target groups in the host community but we also contribute to improve the knowledge of the host community on culture and habits of the refugees and migrants communities;
● We have a social inclusion intervention that is complemented by an economically and financially feasible business.
● The intervention is sponsored by donors but generates positive financial externalities that can be valued up to 270K EUROS (for which 100K invested) in social assistance savings for the host country that then can be reinvested by the State in other inclusion activities.
Replicability was at the basis of our initiative from the start. Various aspects are worth mentioning to sustain this statement:
● The establishment of a collaborative approach with the Hospitality Schools in Portugal, which are spread across 13 regions in Portugal, all functioning in similar ways and with similar processes and resources;
● The ability to establish partnerships and adapt to different stakeholders, namely restaurants and hotels, to provide on-job training;
● The use of teaching and learning approaches based on flexible modules that aren’t dependent on one particular context, institution or location; the elasticity of the content allows it to be translated, adapted and transferred according to the needs of specific audiences;
● The guidance and supervision of one organisation (Pão a Pão Association), working as a guarantor of the methodology, but also as a driver of innovation (through new contents and partnerships) to set up the project for the future, independently of the location;
After 3 editions of the integration program in Lisbon, we’re expanding to Oporto, where the implementation partners will be different from the ones in Lisbon: different school, different on-job training partners, different employers, different NGO’s connecting to our target group, but all under the exact same methodology and approach.
Our flexibility and ability to expand is also reflected on the spectrum of population we can work with. We’ve started by addressing the integration of 15 refugees and immigrants from 9 different nationalities (from Syria to Afghanistan, from Morocco to Romania), and we are currently working for the integration of 22 refugees from Ukraine.
None of what constitutes the initiative is limited by borders. The “Portuguese experience” can move across Europe, as long as the intangible assets, namely the framework and methodology are maintained.
Mezze-Escola is an initiative whose planning and implementation is guided by the theory of change, based on rights. This approach is supported by a logical framework and an integrated monitoring and evaluation system that ensures learning and adaptation throughout the integration cycles.
The project is based on a model that incorporates the teaching methodology of the Hospitality and Tourism School of Lisbon, the on-job experience of the PAP, and also the academic knowledge, supporting the training model in a "human centered design" perspective, where the solution is built around the beneficiaries.
All the activities are divided according to specific objectives to which they correspond, comprising outputs, outcomes and their indicators, which together respond to the transformation process that is intended to be achieved.
This approach ensures that all the locations where the initiative is being implemented, follows the same pathway, independently of the local stakeholders.
The outputs are framed within main activities, namely:
● +500hr of on-job and “class room” training, divided by a set o modules focused on technical and soft skills;
● Connection to the labour market, by establishing local partnerships with employers, willing to suppress the high-demand for skilled workers within the industry.
To support both activities, the curriculum, the contents and the schedules are adapted according to the needs of our beneficiaries, and follow the learning curve that results from the implementation, the monitoring and the evaluation.
Despite the positive responses to the reception of refugees and immigrants in Europe, recently demonstrated with the solidarity towards the Ukrainian population, there are still problems in the integration and insertion in the labour market of these more vulnerable groups.
Obstacles such as the language, professional inexperience, mistrust of a new context, the loss or inexistence of documents proving their qualifications and cultural shock, contribute to the fact that the unemployment rate among the immigrant population is higher than among the European population and that their integration in society is slower and more complex. Therefore, there is an undeniable need to improve and reinforce solutions that are able to respond to this fragility in the process of integration of the migrant population.
Thus, this initiative is justified by the need to boost employability and to empower this population, not only in a given technical area, but also by encouraging the exercise of full citizenship - knowing their rights and duties.
Having started in January 2022, this initiative has managed to directly reach within a year, just with one location, over 50 migrants - and their families - from 15 different nationalities (the majority of whom being refugees). Although the number isn’t great in the European context, we’re talking about a 6 months program, with externalities that go far beyond the outputs provided by the planned activities, namely the rate of employment (which has increased among participants - report to be launched on Q3 2023) and building of social networks for themselves and their families.
From the concluded activities and based on surveys with the participants, the number one metric regarding integration has shown very good results, with the large majority of beneficiaries stating a clear improvement on their feeling towards their new life condition and their hopes for a better future.
The replication of Mezze Escola will exponentially increase the number of participants throughout the upcoming years, even more with the ability of the program to adapt to new circumstances, populations and regions.
An indicator of the demand from our target group is given not only by the quick expansion to a new city (driven by the interest of new stakeholders), but also by the interest of new groups of refugees, whose requests for participation keep arriving on a regular basis, not only through the beneficiaries themselves, but also through the organisations that work with them.
For the future and on top of an already replicable approach, we’re planning to launch a chain of on-job training restaurants specifically designed to work symbiotically with the hospitality and tourism schools. This will not only consolidate the integration process but also the sustainability and scope of the intervention, which will include direct employment.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Mezze-Escola was awarded the Hospitality Education Award 2022 for the best Innovation project in Portugal.
The success of the project relies precisely on the assurance that the direct beneficiaries of the training programs are given the right competences and that these acquired skills perpetuate and are applicable in their daily context from that moment on.
The project sustainability begins in the fact that not only the refugee and immigrant population is given the right to fulfil an education program in their hosting country as they are provided with the legal, bureaucratic and legal tools to meet their right to be employed in a full and responsible manner.
The combination of the acquired specific skills ( in the hospitality sector) with the transversal ones (legal, labour and bureaucratic) allow an intervention reflecting the 4 areas and respective competences of the green comb:
● The projects is focused on the inclusion and integration values that must be guaranteed to a minority population;
● The training program was thought of considering not only the needs of integration, but analysing and considering the implementation context. The training sector was chosen based on the needs identified in a growing economic industry that lacks human resources to face the high demands.
● It aims at guaranteeing safe and responsible employability and presents a multi curricular program to reassure the adaptability of the trainees to all contexts.
● Represents a multi-level solution that faces a social challenge, combining it with an economic need, evolving different local stakeholders and reassuring the replicability of the initiative.
By implementing this project, there is a clear investment on inclusion, guaranteeing employability of a minor population, that in the end reduces the costs of exclusion mitigation, since the beneficiaries no longer need government support and are active contributors to their local communities.
