In the beginning of our value creator journey, we quickly realized that topics surrounding refugees are often very popular. Everyone in our environment seemed to have an opinion on it and heard something somewhere. But we also realized very quickly that just very few people had factual knowledge. To give an example this can be what is the difference between a refugee (migrant forced to leave home because of conflict), an asylum seeker (someone coming to the Netherlands asking for refuge, can but does not have to be a refugee) and a migrant (someone leaving their country for work, studying, etc.), or what are the reasons why refugees and asylum seekers are not working (because there are procedures that actively hold them back and not them being lazy).
We became conscious about challenges asylum seekers face that are not their fault and they were attacked for in media. They are viewed as wealth seekers even though the only thing the majority is trying to do is building up a new life in peace and actively contributing to the society they are now living in.
Looking at these challenges we knew that our value creation journey must address a connection between asylum seekers and the host society of the Netherlands. This impression intensified when we hosted our co-creation session and discussed our ideas with our stakeholders. When exploring the challenges of staff shortage and rules hindering asylum seekers from working we found a gap that could act as a connecting tool between these two groups.
Through co-creation with our stakeholders we discovered that it is not impossible to overcome the rules and that against the perception of many people, asylums seekers can be hired. We joined one of our stakeholders to a conference to host and facilitate a workshop on the topic of working abilities of asylum seekers. To raise more awareness on the underlying rules and to break the stigma we decided to create an educational video as our final product. This video aims to debunk the misconceptions the Dutch working society has with regard to working abilities of asylum seekers, give factual information and offer a helping hand to give employers more information. It aims to inspire them to take further steps to employ asylum seekers.
All in all, this value creators journey was a very interesting and inspiring journey and we very much enjoyed interacting with our diverse network, not just professionals in this field but also people with a migration background, who are the experts of their experiences!
Watch our video through the link to our LinkedIn post! Link:
Contact details
Rashel van Limbeek: xrashel0508@gmail.com
Lieke Verlinden: lieke.verlinden@outlook.com
Lotta Winkler: lotta.winkler@web.de
Louise Hoppe: louise@tomhope.de
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