RAISE: Young Refugee AI Student Empowerment Program

2022-07-11

Hamburg, GERMANY – Following the successful implementation of the Youth Volunteer Educators e-Learning Program (e-VELP), TeachSurfing gemeinnützige UG was awarded a new grant of 326.165€ from Erasmus+ to develop the Young Refugee AI Student Empowerment Program (RAISE). The project start date is May 2022 and will run for over 30 months. 

The succeeding program has two objectives. Firstly, it aims to support the target group of young migrants and refugees new to the European Union to integrate better into the labour market by developing an AI assessment and coaching tool. This will be accomplished by way of a three-pronged approach: (1) AI skills assessment, (2) customised course plan and (3) practical guidance and support for offering workshops. Through the e-VELP program, it became evident that a need for a personalised skills assessment and learning plan was necessary to help ease the challenges young migrants and refugees face in finding employment. Further, it aligns with the EU’s goal of building more integrated and inclusive societies (EU Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion (2021-2027). 

Secondly the program aims to, at a systems level, leverage the state-of-the-art AI skills assessment tool to be a scalable, extensible and reusable framework for other educational programs. The modular architecture of the framework, together with the underlying expert data decision models will assist in providing smart assessment and personalised coaching, saving valuable time and resources. Using AI technology incorporated with expert research in neuroscience is a particularly unique way to address the educational challenges within the young migrant and refugee community. However, the program aims to extend the use of this framework as an overarching solution to be adopted by other youth educational institutions to improve their program results.

The program has been designed by Miganoush Magarian, founder and CEO of TeachSurfing and Dr. Nicole Flindt, Managing Director Graduate School / Research Department, Heidelberg University of Education and researcher in neurodidactics, online education and AI for education and schools.
During the different phases of the project they will collaborate with their international partner organisations CESIE (Italy), CSI (Cyprus) and GEYC (Romania) who are experienced in offering educational programs for young migrants/refugees and youth workers.

Miganoush Magarian from TeachSurfing regarding the previous program e-VELP: “We had great feedback from our VEs which motivated us to dive even deeper in perfecting our e-learning platform for the young migrants and refugees. We analysed our e-learning platform and saw the need for personalised skill assessments and learning plans for young refugee/migrants and also saw the difficulties faced by youth workers who had to spend time and resources for individual consultations due to the generic learning plan.”

Dr. Nicole Flindt from Heidelberg University of Education: “It is very important for us that the solution we will develop is scaled and can be adopted to other youth educational programs out there to improve their educational program results. This is why we introduce the AI Assessment & Coaching Framework to make our work accessible for other educational organisations.”