Sweden

About IFALL – Integration För Alla

Address: Kungsvagen 22, Örkelljunga, Sweden

Status: NGO / Nonprofit organization

Website: http://ifall.se/he-art/

E-mail: neco@ifall.se

Tel / fax: 0046736123462

IFALL is a Non Governmental Organization, founded in 2013, in Örkelljunga, in south Sweden. It is a volunteer based organization with volunteers coming both from the local area and from international exchange programmes like Erasmus Plus EVS (European Volunteering Service).

”IFALL” stands for Integration För Alla which translates as integration for all. Our main objective is to promote integration between cultures and counteract possible violence between them, in Sweden and other countries.

In order to fulfill our objectives, we provide multicultural meeting places based on leisure activities, international exchanges, and training courses both for youths and adults. In this way, we enable people to exchange experiences and build a multicultural social network based on shared values. As a result, the awareness of the meaning of culture increases as well as the quality of individuals’ lives.

Our office is multicultural and we like it! Current working employees are from Sweden, Turkey, United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy and Afghanistan. The team members working on the project “Heart of Europe HE-ART” are Necmettin Meletli, founder of IFALL, project leader and drama and theater expert for children, and Gemma Terzi, who worked in IFALL as project and dissemination coordinator with a previous experience in the organization as an EVS volunteer.

    

IFALL has an extended network with collaborators and partners from different working areas. On a local level, we collaborate with municipalities, schools, local sport organizations and youth centres. On an international level, Erasmus Plus and Nordplus are the main funds we are working with. We have been involved in several international projects, both like partners and project coordinators. Thanks to these ongoing opportunities, IFALL develops itself as an organization and we improve our skills and competencies.

Our work is mainly based on non-formal education and methods, such as Creative Drama and Film-Making regularly used in our youth exchanges and trainings.  Among the topics and subjects we care about and we have been working on during our previous projects there are: the commitment to encourage young people to take responsibility in the society and to enrich their experience as European citizens; to help young people to develop an understanding and a meaningful commitment regarding the refugee population arriving to European borders; to research and focus on the social and economic integration of refugees in the hosting countries; to empower women of any age and different needs by an intergenerational learning approach.

We are proud to have contributed to create engaging and creative intellectual outputs in some of our previous projects. This year we completed a guideline in a partnership project lasted two years. The guideline has been developed to help teachers, trainers and social workers to use drama and theatre for education and literacy learning of migrants in Europe. In the last couple of years we also developed and created a board game aimed to help increase the awareness about European Union, cultures and democracy.

 

About the local and national areas we work in  

The municipality of Örkelljunga consists of four small towns, with 9’831 inhabitants counted in 2015.

Örkelljunga is surrounded by nature, with beautiful lakes and forests all around the town. Örkelljunga is not only a suitable municipality to live and work in, but thanks to the short distance to Denmark it results also a tourist destination with the opportunity to make day trips in the surroundings.

        

Some people might think there is not so much to do in a small town like Örkelljunga, but this is not the case. The active municipality offers several activities and special events throughout the year, especially through the dedication of the municipality’s Leisure and Culture department, the library, the church and many sport and volunteering organizations.

IFALL also contributes to offer several activities, mostly for young people. On a weekly basis, we arrange sport and circus activities, language cafés, homework support and women group activities. During the summer, we organize events such as football and e-sport tournaments, planning and creation of musical, and intercultural evenings where we play games, eat and/or cook together, watch movies and promote our projects.

We care about cultural heritage, and we’re dealing with different cultures everyday. As a country with a precious cultural heritage that is valued and enhanced by its inhabitants, Sweden is a source of inspiration for us.

Swedes are really proud of the two hundred years that their country spent in peace and the positive consequences that followed. As an example, the development of the Nordic model, the social democracy scandinavian model with common traits among the Scandinavian countries. A model that started to earn attention after World War II due to its commitment to promote gender equality as well as egalitarian and extensive benefit levels. The set of cultural aspects, historical legacies and the feeling of unity that each Scandinavian country tend to share with one other is something particular of this region of Europe; a feeling of togetherness that, now more than ever, every country belonging to the European Union should experience and be committed to along with the other Members States.