Refugees in Elche

In this project, we are going to take into account all the aspects for 11
families of refugees to emigrate into Elche, such as were they could live,
study and life. This could help to solve the current problem we are
suffering in Elche and be an inspiration to other cities in the country that
with time could start doing the same as us. This plan takes into account to
complete integrate these people in our society and grant them a future,
and hopefully they will turn into wealthy members of it.

Housing for the refugees

One of the most important aspects to take in account when we talk about
accepting refugees in Elche, is the question of where are they going to life
and who is going to pay for this?

Currently, there are more than 500 empty houses in Elche, where nobody
is living due to the fact that they are controlled by banks, which are not
planning to rent them or sell them any time soon. Due to this fact, we
could solve two problems at the same time. If we are thinking of accepting
a reasonable in our city, as we already have the houses where they could
live, we have to think from where we are going to take the money to pay
these people for renting the houses. There is where the town hall could
save some money from some areas of the municipal budgets and use it to
help these people, especially to give them a house where to life. My
objective is to find a way to save around 30 000. Some examples of
these savings are:
In the computing budget, they are spending more than 15 000 euros in
computer licenses, such as paying for the copies of windows. This is a part
of the budget that could be easily save if we take into account the fact that
there are plenty of other Operative System that are free to use by the
people. One example is Linux, which can be freely used by any person and
the Town Hall will not have to pay anything for this software. The best
thing of all, is the fact that the Valencian Community has its own version
of the OS called Lliurex, which includes the rest of the software that is
needed in the city. Due to this fact, we have already saved more than 15
000 that can be used to pay for the houses of these refugees.

Another service from which we could save some money, is the Taxi Bus for
the different districts in the outskirts of the city such as Valverde or
Jubalcoy. This service is hardly used by the people due to the schedule and
the budget of 30 000 has never been completely spent. Also, this service
provides a type of bus, but only to some locations, that in the majority of
cases is not practical for the citizens. Due to this facts people prefer to
drive instead of taking this service. But we do not have to take the whole
budget away, just with two thirds of it, would be fine for our cause.
This makes a budget of around 35 000 to spend in the housing for the
refugees, which would be more than enough to rent around 11 houses. We
could spend around 250 per house and month and this would be enough
to allocate 11 families that are seeking asylum. This would mean that if at
least there are 4 members per family, we could help more than 44 people
in our city. There are plenty of landowners who would be interested in this
offer in the city of Elche, and for this amount of money these people would
find decent houses to live in. This would give us around 3000 extra also
to pay for the light and water bill for these houses. In addition, this would
not just favor to solve the current situation we are suffering now, but
promote the local economy as we are making the money flow.
Moreover, this economic aid would be given to the refugees until they find
themselves completely adapted to the society and just after their
members find a stable job that helps them maintain their economy.
 Food and Resources

When refugees arrive to a new country, they face a series of problems

that somehow, they need solve. Looking for a place where to sleep,
finding a job or even look for education for their children. But one thing
is the most important above all, the which determines whether they will
stay alive, this is food. Refugees enter a country with basically no
resources and they need to start a new life as fast as possible, but what
happens if some haven't got the money to pay for food? This is a
serious problem that many refugees have got to deal with. I will try to
come up with a series of solutions to face this problem, focusing on the
area where we live, and if possible, even think as if I were the refugee
to be in their exact same situation.

It is not easy to maintain a family, but it is certainly even harder when

you haven't got the resources on your side. According to the newspaper
theguardian, more than 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon,
Turkey, Iraq and Egypt are facing a disastrous and hungry winter due to
food crisis. Here the link to the article: https://www.theguardian.com/
world/2014/dec/01/syrian-refugees-food-crisis-un-world-programme
ONGs can only help the refugees up to a certain extent, due to the fact
that because of the high demand of food from refugees, they lack of
having enough for everyone. The WFP (World
Food Programme) is a humanitarian
organization from the branch of the United
Nations that provides food assistance to millions
of people each year. Organizations such as the
WFP are an example of projects that take place
to help out refugees worldwide, but let's think
how we can help in an ambit of the city where
we live.
Firstly, we need to think about an area where we can obtain information
of the expenses that the government has got. In this particular case, I
chose gardening. If we look at the following document, we can see that
the town hall has spent nearly 400,000 on material for gardening over
the last few years. Some of the material has been bought 3 or 4 times
such as the chainsaw, general working equipment or mowers. By only
buying half of this equipment, we could save up to 25,000 per year
that could be donated for the refugees that arrive in Elche. This would
give them in aids more than 200 per month for food that in addition to
the jobs they would have, would be more than enough to maintain a
good standard of living.

Another way in which we could help refugees to be able to eat would be

by creating more public dining halls every so often, let's say once or
twice a week. In this way, the food that is donated to charity could be
used for the refugees, but we would need a big open place where this
can happen. In the case of Elche, what better place than in schools. In
this way, we would do a big favor for the refugees, as they could meet
up and have dinner together until they find a job or a source of
money where they can pay for their own food.

There are much more different ways in which we can help refugees
arriving to our city, and there are also more aspects that need to be
taken into consideration in order to provide a successful transition for
the refugees from their home country, to the country that they are
arriving at.
 Refugees education

Nowadays there is a global average of 90% of

children attending primary school, and a 84%
attending secondary school. In the case of
refugees this number descend to 50% in
primary education and to 22% in secondary
education. This enormous gap has make us
think of different methods to increase the
average of refugees attending to school.

As we can see in the image, some countries
and organizations have already responded
this problem with some solutions, but all of
this will only increase the refugees average
education attendance in a minimum amount
without a complete solution to the problem.
Elche is in fact a small town with the
incapability of creating new educational
institutions for refugees, this make us create ideas based on increasing the
refugees education for local refugees, because we do not have the money,
resources and support to help more refugees, at least in a big amount.

To solve the problem of language compression that make difficult the

education of any refugee besides the money and acceptation, we thought
that the smartest idea would be to give them extra language lessons. This
classes would have the most quantity of students it can support, the
reason of this is the difficulty to find a teacher available to do it. The
funding and implementation of this is not a big problem as finding a
teacher, hiring a small amount of teachers only for some classes would not
cause any financial problem to the government, and there is no reason for
refugees to decline this type of help.

With the language problem partly solved we can proceed to solve the
major problem. The quantity of refugees can be a problem for the size of
the classes but the solution for this is simple, Elche has a considerable
amount of public schools and private schools that received public funds,
we just need to spread the refugees into these institutions in a balanced
way. The way in which we would decide to
which school each refugee would go is
making them do a test to see how much
they can develop inside our educational
system, afterwards we would choose
which school fits better for the student,
sending the most promising students to
schools with a bigger average difficulty
and the students with more difficulty to
understand our methods to schools that
teach in a more simple and easier way.

After solving all of these problems, the only thing left is the acceptation
from both parts, refugees and local residents. Investigations have shown
that refugees are normally more peaceful and tolerant than normal
residents, so after implementing all the previous ideas is just with time
they will be accepted, but of course we will try to accelerate this process
by showing the parents of the local children some investigation of the true
good nature of the refugees, like the one mentioned before. In the case of
the refugee people, they might be against this program because they
would not learn what their culture tell them to learn. This can be solved
with the same idea as the language lessons, with the teacher being any
refugee with a teaching license. To make refugees assist all the extra
classes, it can cause them an extreme mental stress, so the main idea is
to do not make this class and the language one have an obligatory
assistance formation, so the students will only go when they are capable
of it.

All of these ideas can solve most of the education problems for refugees
inside Elche, but this ethos can be used to solve the problem for any city
that has refugees and a considerable amount of educational institutions.

Jobs for the Immigrants

Each time we have more and more immigrants living on our city. They come to
find a better life so that they can maintain their family. To achieve this they
need to get a job, but the real thing is that there are many places were they
accept this kind of people. Normally they try to search for people of the city or
Spanish people. This is because the companies think that the immigrants are
less formed and with less knowledge than the native people. This is a common
thing that happens, in fact, eighty percent of the people think this.
We have found different jobs and places were this people can work, actually,
they are looking for this kind of people.

The first place we recommend is a company called `` Welcome. This

company consists of finding a house and a job in the city. This company first
talks with the person that comes from another country and then searches all
these things depending on what the person said that they wanted. The
interesting this of this is that they are looking for the job of communicator
inside the company. This is being the one who talks with the immigrant or
refugee and explains them the options and prices. They are looking for this
type of people because they want to put as a communicator a person that has
already passed through the situation that the other immigrant is going
through.

The second place we recommend is a language school for kids from 5 to 16.
This place wants people that has passed through difficult situations just like a
refugee or an emigrant. This is because they want to have some teachers of
different languages that come specially from Africa and from the northern
countries of Europe. This is a great opportunity for the emigrants to go into a
good job that is even well payed. The interesting thing about this company is
not just about the languages. This company is also searching for this type of
people so that they can explain the young people what is happening with
refugees and immigrants emigrants from other countries coming to Spain and
what is their social status situation. It is a great opportunity for immigrants
coming to Elche to start a new life with a fun job.

Finally we have business company that is looking forward to get immigrant

people who at least has got a bit of business knowledge. They want a team of
this people to work on a long term project that is going to last for years. This
project consists of trading with countries as Senegal, morocco, Romania
They are searching people who know the famous natural products that come
out of these countries and trade with them during years because they have a
contract signed with `El corte ingles saying that they will sell them products
from these countries during 3 years. We think this is the greatest opportunity
from people coming from other countries to find a job were they can earn a
good amount of money for long time.

We have been searching for a long time and these are the best we have found.
If you have any doubt call this number and we can specificity data. Nr: 987
672 123