All the numbers immigrants need are here

Data shows that adolescents are emigrating from Africa alone and at increasingly younger ages, between 10 and 17 years old, often travelling for years. In a doubly peripheral experience, of loneliness and isolation from the world. If we take on the issue of developing their skills to enable them to integrate into a setting that has different rules to the one they came from, if we understand that this generation of adolescents often have keen but underused qualities and aptitudes, we should ask ourselves collectively what other routes we can take, beyond the rationale of the initial reception.

TEEN, Teenagers Experience the Empowerment by Numbers,

wants to tackle this challenge with the capability approach, that is, putting the individual and his as yet untested abilities at the centre, within a framework of challenge. Using innovative teaching methods, it aims to stimulate logical-mathematical proficiency, the ability to do maths and know how to interpret numbers so they are aware and can live in a complex world. The goal is to teach the teenagers how to use logical and mathematical tools to manage the common issues of daily life. Not abstract mathematical problems, but situations that connect the teenagers and their host communities with the outside world. Vulnerability and poverty can – and must – be challenged by new tools and that rational thought and logic can stimulate the majority of teenagers and reveal a more lively intelligence, to support them in their individual and personal journey.

The challenge operates on multiple levels. Firstly, involving the network of teenagers who will first spread the results on the social networks relevant to them. Involving the communities by taking a structural approach to introducing the education within training programmes. Involving public opinion, developing a social media communication campaign on youth immigration, which will accompany the project as it develops from its first stages, through experimentation to the full release of the educational tools.