Budapest
Alag Str. 3.
Hungary
- Human rights
- Others
- Religion
- Youth and education
The main purpose of the Refugee Mission, which is part of the Reformed Mission Centre, is to provide assistance, comfort and fellowship to any asylum seeker in need regardless of nationality, race, religion or social position. Our overall vision and strategy is to assist Hungarian society in "welcoming the stranger" and accepting "newcomers" as future citizens and neighbors. We have main target themes: housing, education and employment, in these fields we seek to provide long term assistance by professional staff members.
Our housing project assists families by providing them with a full rent subsidy for one year and an incrementally decreasing subsidy for 6 months, helping them to leave the refugee camps, accompanied with the direct assistance of our social workers.
Those most at risk as refugees or foreigners in a new country and culture are children and women. Women are at risk for being taken advantage of and remaining isolated, unemployed. Our employment program provided refugee women with intensive Hungarian language instruction and skills training, like pre-school assistance or nurseries securing long time employment contracts for the participants. This was a one time program that we seek to repeat as the need and success rate was quite high.
The education program secures the access to education for refugee youngsters, we provide intense Hungarian language instruction, school supplies, books and tutoring to youth between the ages of 6 and 22, helping them with the successful integration into the Hungarian school system. We organize one-on-one lectures, in and after school classes, home work assistance, pre-exam preparation, lobby for accelerated learning programs as many young refugees loose so many years due to the journey and the lack of school papers. Community development is also crucial, for this purpose the mission set up cultural and sports activities, common celebrations. On staff or among our volunteers we work with people with a migration background who are an enormous support in partnering with the families of refugee youth or who can much better relate and provide practical and emotional support to unaccompanied minors as well.
In the education program we seek to empower our students with basic life skills just as advising on career development paths and basic citizenship lectures in class and during field trips. Cross-community programs are a structural part of our activities: on school holidays we organize field trips and exchanges in and outside of Hungary. In an Action 1.3 Youth Exchange program we participated with a mix of Hungarian and refugee student’s group with a very positive experience and the recognition of the need for more opportunities like these.http://misszio.rmk.hu/menekultmisszio/index.php?p=1