Refugee Awareness Raising through Comic Books

Racism, Xenophobia, Intolerance, Cultural shock takes nowadays different forms and the fight against it must also be diverse.  Everyone knows that comics have had for several years and is still having a high power of attraction on children and teenagers.  Loads of adults have also recognized that comics still raise their interest as it used to when they were children.  It, therefore, constitutes an excellent and fun way of raising awareness on different subject – in our case “refugees and refugee issues” - amongst people and mainly children and teenagers in Europe.

We are preparing a series of comic books dealing with different aspects of a refugee/asylum seeker’s life (such as living in a refugee camp, resettlement, fleeing their own country, etc….). The comics will be printed out in 6 different languages and distributed through our partners to vocational high schools, student associations, universities, NGOs working with children, civil societies etc….. of 8 different countries (Belgium, England, Ireland, France, Germany, Slovenia, Portugal, and Spain).  The purpose is to spread awareness in a fun way about refugees and refugee issues amongst European children, teenagers, young adults and adults.

In 2007, there were about 14 millions refugees and asylum seekers in the World, according to the World Refugee Survey 2007.  Middle East and Africa (5,931,000 coming mainly from former Palestine, Iraq and Sudan) generated more refugees and asylum seekers followed by Africa (2,932,000 coming mainly from Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Burundi and Angola) and South and central Asia (2,914,200 mainly from Afghanistan).  Europe was the continent with less refugees and asylum seekers (569,200 mainly from Afghanistan, Georgia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina).

People of different cultures that have to coexist constitute today’s societies.  This situation has generated and is still generating fear, rejection and problems of coexistence which is expressed through racism and xenophobic acts and intolerance against refugees and asylum seekers.  The latter need to adapt themselves to their new environment/community or country during their stay whether this is for short or long term but this is only possible if they don’t experience rejection from the people of the asylum countries and get their support.  To achieve it, people – children, teenagers, adults - living in the asylum countries have to make an effort to build social relationships that base itself on the cultural diversity of nowadays’ society and on equality in rights and democracy and we think that educating these people and inform them about refugees/asylum seekers’ situation through awareness campaign can help eradicate ignorance that mostly causes rejection of the “others” and promote solidarity and activism.  Our campaign is mainly aimed at youth as they can influence the present and future situation and constitutes citizens of the future.

Main goal

• Spread awareness on refugee and refugee issues among youth aged between 12 and 25 years old.
• Make available a material that will help spread awareness on refugees in the long term among youth and adult. Spread awareness on refugee and refugee issues among youth aged between 12 and 25 years old and adult.
• Promote a multicultural society, tolerance and activism among youth.
• Make available a material that will help spread awareness on refugees in the long term among youth and adult.

Specific goals

• Erase prejudice and show that diversity can enrich ones culture.
• Promote activism among teenagers and young adults.
• Increase people knowledge regarding refugees/asylum seekers and make them want to know more about them.
• Convince students to join the pen pal letter exchange so they can write directly to a refugee student (we will do so by telling the story of a refugee receiving letter and school materials from his pen pal). We hope in the same way to convince schools as a whole to partner with a refugee school so they can provide some direct help and therefore increase our now existing network of schools participating in our letter exchange program.
• If a success, edit more copies and extend the awareness campaign to more countries.