Project Springboard: Development project with immigrants in upper secondary schools

Abstract

The Vietnamese community in Iceland is isolated because most of its people came as refugees. Some of them had limited education, and learning Icelandic has proved to be very difficult for them. As a result, parents with school age children had limited understanding of the Icelandic school system and society, and didn’t know how to effectively seek assistance for their children. Also, there was a great number of Vietnamese youth who dropped out of secondary education. As a result, Project Springboard (PS) was established in December 2004. Thirtyfive youth of Vietnamese background between the ages of 16 and 25 registered as participants. Participants who were in schools were provided with tutors, mentors and other support personnnel and counseling. Youth who were not in school were assigned to Fjölsmiðjan (Youth Work Centre) or companies to do training and building up their Icelandic to prepare for vocational schools or further training. Project Springboard was a three year pilot project involving systematic interaction with all participants – the youth, the schools, the mentors and the companies – with constant cooperation, evaluation and intervention. It could be categorized as a qualitative research inquiry. It actively worked to assist Vietnamese youth and at the same time collect data for annual progress reports. Data was collected during regular interviews and meetings that the project director and staff held with the participants to follow up on their cooperative progress and an evaluation. The first goal of the project was to support and strengthen its participants’ education and integration in Iceland. The second goal was to activate individuals and institutions to contribute towards creating changes in the education system and the society to bring about more educational success to first generation immigrant youth. To realize these goals PS needed to activate both private and public sectors of the society and their families to take part in it. To assess the success of PS the research question that needed to be answered was: How can entities that have the most influence in the development of youth – parents, employers, institutions, mentors, and schools – by cooperating to facilitate the integration process of youth of foreign backgrounds?

After the three years, PS reported the hindrances with which immigrant youth had struggled in their quest for education and integration and how it had managed to counteract these hindrances. The first hindrance was the lack of courses available to learn and become proficient in Icelandic in order to attend upper secondary school. The second hindrance was the lack of Icelandic proficiency and low educational background. The third hindrance was the lack of motivation and selfesteem. The fourth hindrance was difficult family situations. For these youth, without the vigorous support of their families and the school system, the academic road was just too long and difficult to endure. The overall findings were that PS succeeded in completing the two goals it set to accomplish. The response to the research question was a working model of how entities that have the most influence in the development of immigrant and disadvantaged youth could cooperate and facilitate their education and integration process (Framtíð í nýju landi 2004–2007, 2007). Furthermore, even though PS was designed for Vietnamese youth in Iceland, the model can be used for disadvantageed youth anywhere in the world.