On October 15 in Barcelona, the iSocial Foundation and other 8 other organizations have taken the kick-off meeting of the project “App for adolescents and young people migrated alone”. The project will develop and experience a package of digital tools, which will be accessible through an App for mobile phones, that may be useful in the future to about 4,000 adolescents and young people migrated alone who are in Catalonia and who receive a socio-educational support by the Catalan’s care and protection system, both under-guardianship, and over 18 years of age; both boys, and girls.

The objective of the project is to contribute to the innovation in the existing care model, in line with line 4 of the “Catalan Strategy for the welcome and inclusion of Children and Young people migrated alone”, in January of 2019. This Strategy aims to “create tools and conditions to welcome and include in society and empower children and young people migrated alone, from a community perspective”. And the project will contribute to this aim through the experimentation of a technological tools that facilitates the development of a non-contact socio-educational intervention model that complements the current model, considering that all adolescents and young migrants they have today an smartphone.

The growing arrival in Catalonia of these teenagers and young people in recent years has raised a challenge of enormous magnitude and extreme difficulty for the care and protection system, because the difficulties that they experience from their arrival to their full emancipation and inclusion are only partially attended and satisfied with current resources. That is why there is consensus among professionals and experts, that innovation in this area of social action is now urgent and necessary to find solutions to the limitations and difficulties of the existing model. The App and the digital tools that will include will be intended to become a new socio-educational resource of the care and protection system, in order to help solve the needs of reception, network support, empowerment, emancipation and inclusion in the society of these adolescents and young people.

In addition to the iSocial Foundation that leads the project, the other 8 organizations involved are the following:

• University of Barcelona (UB) / School of Social Work
• Open University of Catalonia (UOC) / Degree in Computing, Multimedia and Telecommunications
• Idea Foundation
• Punt of Referencia Association
• Sant Pere Claver Group
• Unió de Joves Extutelats de Catalunya
• Save The Children Foundation
• Víctor Grífols i Lucas Foundation

The project has the initial funding of the Fèlix Llobet Nicolau Foundation, and the support of the Secretariat of Children, Adolescents and Youth of the Catalan Government.