During May, Road of Hope has been in partnership with Salesforce in order to organize three workshops for the project Samen aan de slag (“Working Together Project”), which helps refugees enter the Dutch labor market. The first session was “Building Professional Identity”, focusing on the professional background of each refugee and building bridges between previous experiences and perceptions, and the demands of the Dutch labor market. The session helps participants to build a new professional identity that better reflects the Dutch reality, without losing their own sense of self. The following session took place on 17 May and was called “Dutch Labor Marketing orientation”, and the last session, that will take place on 24 May will be centred around “Job Applications”.
In order to give an insight into how the initiative is reaching the community, we asked some participants to give us feedback from the first session:
“The most important thing about the workshop is that I can get to know people who have experience in the labor market, that they can help me to find an internship and at the same time, I can practice my Dutch.”
“I liked them (group leaders) very much and they gave me positive energy. I enjoyed learning how to improve my plans to achieve my goal. With their help, we can recognise our strengths and weaknesses.”
After the workshops, Road of Hope will guide participants individually. An important part of this cooperation is focused on ‘aftercare’; each participant will have a mentor, which means that in case a refugee faces a struggle or experiences self-doubt, they will have a person to count on to help with their needs.