During 3 virtual co-creation workshops with participants from Luxembourg and the EU, we want to analyze the impact of the social economy on the lives of refugees and migrants and the degree of participation they experience in such initiatives. We want to learn from the results, share our knowledge, experiences and research results  and implement new projects in Luxembourg and the EU.
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We start this process with 3 workshops on ZOOM (virtual conference tool) in June and July and will continue in Fall with a conference (on premise) that builds on the results of these three workshops.
with support of the Ministry of Family, Integration and the Greater Region, Department of Integration
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Paula is co-founder and the creative mind behind weserholz, a design studio in Bremen, Germany. Currently employing 15 people from 10 different countries, weserholz designs process-based furniture & interiors while offering perspectives to designers. A core part of the team are young adults from Bremen without residence permit using their experience at weserholz as a bridge to access vocational training.Â
Patrick, engineer by profession, co-founded & co-manages Digital Inclusion on a voluntary basis. Since its creation in 2016, the non-profit aims to help everybody in Luxembourg get access to information technology & computing. The activities include support of refugees & job seekers in acquiring tech skills & tech autonomy and supplying people in Luxembourg who cannot afford it with a free computer from a social re-use workshop. The organization is the largest non-profit employer of refugee workforce in Luxembourg.
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Gabriela Sonnleitner is magdas managing director and runs the magdas HOTEL in Austria, a hotel focused on providing job opportunities for refugees. After working in both the social sector and the economy, Gabriela found her vocation at magdas. With creative ideas and enthusiasm she knows how to convince people worldwide of the relevance of social businesses.
Usman created HAVEN Coffee,
a coffee brand with a social mission, running pop-up coffee shops for workspaces and events across London. HAVEN Coffee helps support and raise awareness for refugee communities across the UK, from promoting refugee artists to organising events, as well as providing barista training to those refugees who are looking to build a new professional life for themselves.
Inès Mesmar founded La Fabrique Nomade in 2016 in Paris. The social business promotes the professional integration of migrant and refugee craftsmen and -women in France through its various workshops (sewing, weaving, wood etc.). Their goal is to help people overcome socio-linguistic barriers, lack of networks as well as the non-recognition of qualifications and experience.
Marianne Donven is co-founder and co-manager of Chiche!, an inclusive restaurant offering Syrian-Lebanese specialities in Luxembourg. Chiche! fosters social inclusion by empowering women and men from here and elsewhere through work. Their special aim goes at hiring people of all origins that have a hard time finding a job but who generally have fabulous cooking skills.Â
At Touchpoints, Jordan is in charge of the SLEEVES UP training program supporting refugees wishing to set up their own business in Luxembourg. The project taps into Luxembourg’s myriad institutions, associations, and training programs to furnish refugees and migrants in general with the means to launch their own projects and find independance through self-employment.
Charlie is the co-founder and Director of Partnerships at The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network (TERN). TERN is a UK based social enterprise that launched in 2016 with the mission to enable refugees to thrive through the power of their own ideas. Supporting refugee entrepreneurs at three identified stages of the entrepreneurial process, TERN has the goal to launch 1,000 refugee-led businesses in the UK by 2025.
 Karin is project manager, specialized in international cooperation and education management for weserholz. weserholz is a design studio in Bremen, Germany. People as designers are at the centre of the brand from the north of Germany. One part of the team - young adults who live in Bremen without residence permit - uses weserholz as a bridge into vocational training.Â
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Manuel is Business Lab Mangager at SINGA Germany and has a Masters degree in Anthropology from Sussex University (UK) and is a qualified coach.He is co-leading the Migrant Entrepreneurship Academy (MEA) in the MAGNET project. MAGNET (Migrant Acceleration for GrowthNetwork for Entrepreneurship Training) brings together European organisations active in the field of migrant entrepreneurship support, as well as interested public and private actors.Â
Dan is the head of Köömen and coordinates the volunteers at International House Tartu, Estonia. Köömen is a social enterprise that focuses on skills needed in catering on Estonian labor market, led by resettled refugees and migrants, the ethos of which can be found in the Estonian folk saying «Armastus käib kõhu kaudu» (Love spreads through food).
Design Thinking workshops are hands-on, activity-based sessions built around the Design Thinking process and based on the five phases of Design Thinking:
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Empathy:Â Getting to grips with a real user problem and building empathy for the target users.
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Ideation, innovation & problem-solving:Â Generating as many ideas and potential solutions as possible.
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Prototyping and testing:Â Building low-fidelity prototypes of the ideas generated, ready for testing on real or representative users.
Design Thinking workshops are all about collaboration, co-creation and problem-solving.Â
[9.00 am]
Welcome and defining aims and goals
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Design Thinking? Â brief introductionÂ
Inspiration timeÂ
15 minutes of inspiration - Presentation of 3 projects
Research phaseÂ
Identifying successful organisations - What are the processes /structures behind? What challenges did they face? How did they overcome? Collecting insights.
After Break: Defining and framing the challenges - how might we..? Â
Generating ideas/ prioritizing the ideas
Building prototypes of potential solutions
[finish at about 12.30]
Work in progress (workinprogress.lu) is a Luxembourg-based organisation supporting and  bringing together social and ecological entrepreneurs with a particular focus on rural areas like the North of Luxembourg. The aim is to create places, either physical or digital, where people can work together, participate in trainings, exchange ideas, learn from peers and make a difference.
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The workshops will be moderated by the team from ArtSquareLab (www.artsquarelab.net) , a service design agency, guiding us through the co-creation process in an interactive and engaging way.
> ULESS Luxembourg: Created in July 2013, ULESS aims to defend and promote the collective interests of the social and solidarity economy sector in Luxembourg. The mission of ULESS is to federate, represent, promote and defend social and solidarity economy enterprises.
> Integration Department of the Ministry of Family, Integration and the Greater Region in Luxembourg: Through its national action plan for integration (PAN), the department supports initiatives that foster inclusion of newcomers to Luxembourg.
