Focus on
We Need Books

By Virginie Kremp

Second meeting of Partners at We Need Books in Athens: a welcoming place to process our data.

We feel good at We Need Books, the intercultural library of Athens. The atmosphere is soft, calm and warm. Everyone is welcome. Children, adults, teenagers, speakers of Greek or other languages, from the neighborhood or elsewhere, allophone or native, find their place in the armchairs or sofas, around the dining room tables found here and there. Everyone chats in a low voice, studies, browses or attends a class. Books in foreign languages ​​are classified by language, identifiable by labels in Greek and English. Teenagers have a snack at the bar then head off to exchange secrets under the tent of the youth area.

Ionna and her team, Vivi and Emma, ​​a young French librarian, welcome, encourage and sometimes educate, with patience. It is in this supportive climate that the Eupheme team met to process the data collected during 50 interviews conducted on reception, in the 3 partner countries of this European project: in Belgium, France and Greece.

What does welcome mean to you? How did you feel when you arrived in France, Greece, Belgium; what did you need? Here are some of the questions asked to new or long-term migrants, of different generations, and to social workers in order to identify each other’s needs.

The project team analyzed the interviews and identified themes with a view to creating an easy and pleasant tool for communicating with newcomers and creating an initial link through informal exchange, in order to get to know each other by asking for help. language of the other. The tool also allows migrants to be informed about their rights and duties and to discuss the values ​​of host countries. It is now being tested by the Eupheme team and will be refined over the next 12 months before being made available to the social and educational world.