More precisely, the conference included almost fifty speakers, was attended by one hundred and fifty participants and explored the gendered dimensions of the migration phenomenon in the context of today’s Europe. Recognizing gender as an integral part of the experience, management, and understanding of migration and integration processes, the conference achieved to highlight not only the multiple challenges but also the significant opportunities European societies face. A variety of topics were addressed during the presentations, such as challenges and good practices for the integration of Migrant and Refugee Women (MRW), adult migrants’ education from a gender sensitive perspective, politics-migration-gender roles and representations, opportunities about working life and social life of MRW, gender-based violence and migration, art and gendered experiences of migration and integration, etc.

The international conference was the final closing event of the two-year WEMIN project implementation and so, it was well designed for promoting the project results and outputs. This was managed through the presentations, the roundtable discussions and workshops that provided all participants with the opportunity to exchange opinions and experiences. Emphasis was placed to the MRW themselves, as representatives of them from all partner countries joined the conference, spoke up themselves about their experiences and shared their feelings and ideas during the conference discussions. Moreover, the experts’ insights brought to the fore the challenges of the integration process on various levels, from the local to the international, from the structured policy-making to innovative best practices, from recorded problems to identified solutions.

Die Fotos wurden von einer professionellen Fotografin gemacht. Den Frauen stand es frei, mit Unterstützung der professionellen Fotokünstlerin ihre eigenen Einstellungen und den eigenen Stil der Fotos zu erstellen. Nach dem Ausdruck der Fotos im Posterformat wurde am 23. November 2019 eine Ausstellung zusammen mit einer „Frauen-Tanznacht“ organisiert. Die Ausstellung und die Tanznacht wurden von rund 60 Migrantinnen, Flüchtlingsfrauen und Gastfrauen besucht.

Die Arbeit von WEMIN und das Engagement der Frauen soll mit dem Ende von WEMIN nicht aufhören. Deshalb haben sich die Frauen zu einer „Alumni-Runde“ zusammen getan, die sich weiterhin zweimal im Monat treffen und austauschen wird. Das WEMIN Curriculum wird weiter in Sprach- und Integrationskursen genutzt, ebenso die Konzepte zur kreativ-künstlerischen Arbeit zur Förderung der Integration von Migrantinnen und geflüchteten Frauen.

Without a doubt, what has been most difficult for us is to reach the target group of this action. We have made a lot of dissemination, taking into account that Colectic is not a local reference entity when it comes to working with women (yes, in terms of working with migrated people, but our experience supports us mainly in a male environment)

Women who have participated in the actions carried out by Colectic are not used to staying in the training classroom for many hours, which has led us to have to plan very well the training actions and give them a lot of dynamism. In addition, the reconciliation of the actions with the personal needs of the participants has proved extremely difficult: the need to give due care and attention to the children, the reconciliation with school schedules and other family obligations have had a full impact on the project.

She was a teacher in a kinder-garden and in a primary school, and she has participated in “Coser y Contar” workshop, realised in Coletic.

“ I never do stitching. With my hands I’ve done a little wallet and a keychain, and meantime we, the participants, were telling each other stories -about our family life-, and I felt them as a friends”, explains Calderón. While she keep on stitching, she explains that “ At Venezuela I teached in my home, at ‘la escuelita’, as my students name it”.