Parents’ Compass – supporting newly arrived migrants, especially parents and families to start their normal life.

The core of the project is a multilingual website that collects basic information offering help to parents, and will also offer templates to be downloaded and printed with basic information in the languages of newly arrived migrants.

In most EU countries there is an obligation for parents to enrol their children in schools shortly after arriving in the country. Schools as education institutions are the best interface to also provide services to parents to support them in several areas, for example:

• understanding the school system and obligations for their children
• understanding social services and child support available for them
• how to use everyday services – housing, infrastructure (gas, electricity, internet, mobile), financial services (opening a bank account), health services, shopping, cultural offerings, free time activities, etc.
• how to find employment, how to validate their skills
• available social and family support
• coping with special needs – physical, mental, dietary
• learning the basic language of the hosting country
• providing for the basic right of the child to learn their mother tongue and home culture

When entering the project´s website, there will first be a choice of country and then choice of language (national, Arabic, Pashto, Urdu…). All versions will contain downloadable information and also suggestions for tried and tested, as well as newly developed, activities to involve the newly arrived parents, to encourage them to become involved in school life and also to help them get used to the new country. Activities will also be offered to help parents to provide for their children in mother tongue education and also home culture. When developing the activities section, ALCUIN winner projects were used as a starting point.

During the project some short-term trainings were also organised for activists of parents’ associations to exchange experiences and work on new activities together.

The project was carried out from 2016 to 2018 with financing from the Open Society Foundation as part of a group of projects supporting migrant children.