about us

Final Project Report

Aim of this website

With this website we want to support people who have recently come to live in Austria. Everybody wants to learn, work and live well. On this website, asylum seekers and recognized refugees tell their experiences. We hope that these experiences will encourage the visitors of this website to be active themselves.

We gathered their experiences and informations in different chapters:

Learning: Participants of the PAGES project talk about their experiences in compulsory schooling or studies (eg as extraordinary students at FH Salzburg), in different kinds of trainings (eg SALUS Training Course for Health Buddys) or courses (eg sewing course).
Work: Participants reflect on their experiences with the AMS (Public Employment Service Austria), different kinds of voluntary work (learning support of foreign-language children in the elementary, caring for children), community work or the like.

Public Debate and Politics: Here, we inform about the project’s activities in the field of public debate and politics, such as the encounter of refugees with politicians, the participants’ knowledge about the Austrian political system, their own radio show (PAGES Radio) at the Radiofabrik and their contributions to newspapers as well as entries in blogs and social media.

Housing: Here, the participants talk about the experiences regarding housing, living in camps in the city or in the country side and house-hunting (after being recognized as a refugee).

Sports: The participants talk about their experiences regarding different kinds of sports; how it felt and what it meant to learn how to ride a bike, to learn how to swim, to participate in offers from existing sports clubs or offers free of Charge.

Culture: The participants tell their experiences in designing and selling handicrafts in weekly markets and flea markets; the experiences as tourists in the city and country of Salzburg. They also reflect on their excursion to the Mauthausen Memorial.

Health: We inform about health issues and the health system in Salzburg.

These testimonials and informations were gathered between 2017 and 2019 during the PAGES project.

Aim of the Project PAGES (Participation and health literacy of asylum seekers and recognized refugees in Salzburg)

The objective of the project is to open up spaces in the city and province of Salzburg and to sustainably create more opportunities for refugees for participation. Being able to participate in decisions that affect our lives contributes to feeling, getting or staying healthy. In addition, participants take part in workshops to increase their health literacy. As multipliers, participants share their experiences and knowledge about participation and health opportunities with their communities.

Project description

Participation makes you healthy!

Under this motto, the action research project PAGES enables the social participation of people who have arrived in Salzburg. Practice partners, researchers and refugees work together for a healthy coexistence. Together, activities are planned and realized in political, social and educational institutions, in the media and in neighborhoods. Accompanying qualitative and participatory research explores how participation and subjective health perceptions are interrelated.

During the project, participants regularly meet in four groups (each comprising five to ten people) and plan activities together. There are two project groups in the province of Salzburg (Pinzgau) and two in the city of Salzburg; two thereof are exclusively for women. Each group is accompanied by a researcher who uses a variety of research methods to collect and analyze questions on participation and well-being. The participants, who come from different countries of origin such as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Venezuela, are active as co-researchers and reflect on their activities and well-being.

PAGES is an action research project of the Study Program „Social Work“ of the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences

Duration: March 2017 – February 2019

Sponsor: Land Salzburg

Team: Doris Rosenlechner-Urbanek, Heiko Berner, Ulrike Garstenauer, Markus Pausch, Heike Rainer

Contact: Doris Rosenlechner-Urbanek and Heiko Berner; pages@fh-salzburg.ac.at ; Tel: +43 (0) 50 2211-1852 or -1853

Project Participants:

Women’s Group in the province of Salzburg Women’s Group in the city of Salzburg

Alexandra Centeno Rita Mouses

Amneh Gteisch Nanor Mouses

Daniela Infante Sunaari Aways

Farzaneh Sadiki Nida Al Zahawi

Fatimah Mohammadi Ranjes Alzein

Nadja Cheraghei Nazek Musa

Sakie Gholami

Sumyah Almajmair

Zahra Mohammadi

Zahira Ali Youssef

Group Education and Work Group Politics and Media

Esmaeil Niroomand Kamal Hussain Turi

Bahador Niroomand Hasan Khademi

Asghar Maleki Ali Mohammad

Peshwar Darwish

Xanyar Azarbarzin

TEAM

Mag. Dr. Doris Rosenlechner-Urbanek, M.A.Researcher, Soziale Arbeit

FH-Prof. Mag. (FH) Heiko Berner, PhD, MAResearcher, Fachbereichsleiter Soziale Arbeit und Innovation, Soziale Arbeit

Mag. (FH) Heike Rainer, MASenior Lecturer, Fachbereichsleiterin Praktikum, Soziale Arbeit

FH-Prof. Mag. Dr. Markus PauschSenior Researcher, Soziale Arbeit

Mag. Ulrike GarstenauerResearcher, Soziale Arbeit