Symposium 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

How Refugees Employ Creative Projects To Empower Themselves (#394)

Ruba Nawaz 1
  1. Volunteer at various organisations, Aalsmeer, NEDERLAND (NLD), Netherlands

July 2015 marked the beginning of the largest influx of refugees in Europe from Middle Eastern and African countries. While there was a peak in 1992 in asylum applications that numbered to 672 thousand in the EU-15, last year this amount doubled to a staggering 1.3 million applications. In the Netherlands alone there have been over 43 thousand asylum applications. Not only do these statistics expose the number of people seeking refuge, but also bring about a much more profound issue, which is of integration. This presentation describes gross root efforts to empower refugees in the Netherlands by tapping into various creative projects. These include artists, cooks, musicians and various other entrepreneurial endeavors that showcase their strengths. With language being a common barrier, art projects proved to be a unique tool of communication, bearing a universal quality to them. As opposed to the traditional method of integration like taking the national examination, creative projects reveal much more deep-seated strengths that ultimately help refugees integrate in the new society with much more ease. In this presentation, I hope to show through a comprehensive short film, how newcomers make the Netherlands their new home, in their own creative ways.