The Ignatianum Foundation of Jesuit University in Krakow, in a joint effort with West Bohemian University, has organized the online Training Webinar on 20-21 February 2023. The webinar was done to help achieve a better understanding of the specifics of teaching\working with migrants and refugees and to provide counseling and recommendations on the specifics of communication and teaching for future work with the development of online courses for young refugees and educators. After conducting surveys with a number of webinar participants and doing a final review after analyzing the collected data, many conclusions can be obtained that will serve for future improvement and use for future projects. The idea of doing a joint program and designing the webinar between the Ignatianum Foundation from Jesuit University in Krakow and West Bohemia University was a success in terms that will allow the creation of teaching materials and online tools using the broad and previous experience of the Polish partners working with refugees and the general knowledge of the professionals from the Czech Republic in it and technical expertise. We could listen to professionals such as managers, educators, journalists, social media managers, and psychologists from Polish and Czech institutions in the webinar. Critical guests who attended the webinar were young Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Positively was the overall experience of the participants as they truly enjoyed the fact that the webinar was designed to include young refugees in the process, who had the feeling that having a voice in creating the content would allow them to cover many of their needs and concerns specifically. The participants also enjoyed listening to the expertise and technical areas offered by West Bohemian University, as it will enhance the overall digital education and e-learning experience while being supported by the Ignatianum Foundation’s experience with working with refugees and groups with special needs. After hearing what the young refugees had to say after having completed the training, it can be concluded that even though there was a great deal of interest and participation from their side, some areas could, in the future, be reinforced. From the webinar and the speeches of young refugees, the participants of the webinar understood that it was indeed challenging for many refugees to adapt to a more innovative and modern method in their new countries where not only the use of new technologies put into practice, but the use of what is not their native language, English, was a concern initially for many of them. However, the idea to create an online course and provide an online webinar developed with the direct recipients shows that the partner’s institutions want to base their work on the principle of innovation and creative uses of existing technologies which had a very positive impact on the interest and motivations among the young refugees as they already take part in most of the most influential and known social media, giving them a new perspective about the possible uses of such tools, was well received and created interest. On top of it, making many new friends and doing cooperative work with their colleagues resulted in a positive experience for the young refugees. One area that should be explored further in the future is the inclusion of psychological support in the design of the courses, as approximately half of the participants stated that their personal and family situations were complicated. However, the young mentioned that they would like to use digital instruments to solve psychological and social problems. Despite this, one of the webinar results was the idea that we need to work with the teachers and try to build deeper relationships between teachers and youngsters during the process of creating online courses for young refugees and migrants and educators based on their needs and expectations and our experience gained after the webinar. Significantly, the organizers will need to pay more attention to the following topics in future educational material and online courses:
- Conduct surveys among the target audience.
- Find possible speakers and establish partnerships.
- Use the gamification and engagement of participants.
Provide concrete examples of approaching young people in difficult situations and others. Also, analyses of social trends can enrich educational materials. They should also briefly reference scientific-based material and non-formal educational methods of using modern digital technologies to solve real-life cases. So that when an educator takes them into their hands, he gets an idea of how and what to teach. Later, it should be a matter of personal interest based on intimate knowledge and the need to search for more detailed information. Overall, the experience was positive, and there was a successful approach. The knowledge achieved in this webinar will be invaluable for the future design of educational materials and for better success in helping refugees find jobs and study in all possible ways. This webinar and sociological survey conducted after the webinar was the first step to understanding young refugees’ needs and the level of their digital skills, and the understanding of the necessity to use modern digital technologies for personal, study, and professional growth. Thanks to the participation of young refugees, we understood that young people want to see how to solve complex problems using digital knowledge and skills applied in an online course. They want to work based on simple but visual content that they perceive better. They like to see more practical measures that can be used in digital learning. The online course can be more interesting if there will be more resources could have been used to analyze the young refugee participants, bringing them into small groups with similar skills, language levels, and adaptation capacities to establish better support and facilitate the educator’s personalized training and interaction.