As a part of project #INTEGRA, Centre for Peace, nonviolence and human rights made an interview with a migrant who lives in Croatia. Twana Murad Rasul is a good example of a well-integrated person in a foreign country. He was born in 2000 and moved to Croatia in 2015 at the time of the massive migrant and refugee flow. He knew only Kurdish by the time of immigration but in only 2 years, he learned to speak Croatian, English, Persian and Arabic.
Q: What is the hardest thing to get used to in Croatia?
A: The hardest thing to get used to is the way some people insult Muslims.
Q: What do you miss most from your home country?
A: I miss my mother and my family.
Q: What is the most annoying thing that has happened to you in Croatia?
A: People perceive me differently because I am not from here and they look at me strangely while I speake my native language.
Q: What do you like most about Croatian people?
A: Some Croatians are very polite and civilized, they seem to understand what I have been through in my life and they really listen to me while I am telling them my story.
On June 27th, Integration Centre Prague organized another event as a part of the INTEGRA DAY series. This time, it was a guided tour of SAPA for elementary school students. SAPA is a well-known centre of trade and culture of the Vietnamese, the second largest TCN community in the Czech Republic and the third biggest one in Prague. It was also one of the places identified within the INTEGRA city audit conducted last year - ICP organized one of the city walks there as it belongs to one of the most interesting and relevant migrant-related places in Prague. Furthermore, it is where one of ICP´s offices is located.
The guided tour was a great opportunity for the participants to learn about the Vietnamese community living in the Czech Republic as well as to meet some of them in person. The tour was guided by one of ICP´s most experienced intercultural workers for the Vietnamese community, who showed the students interesting SAPA places, including the famous Dong Do restaurant, the “financial road” where various businesses and institutions are located (banks, insurance companies, travel agencies, etc.) as well as the SAPA Buddhist temple. She also discussed with the students the specifics of Vietnamese culture as well as some of the hardships the Vietnamese face integrating into the Czech society. At the end of the tour, the participants enjoyed tasting of authentic Vietnamese cuisine.
Finally, the event was also a great chance to share and disseminate the INTEGRA project results and campaign outputs, as well as a great networking opportunity - it was just a start of future and potentially fruitful cooperation between ICP and the schools in the Prague Libuš city district (where SAPA is located), that deal with integration challenges (not only regarding the Vietnamese community) in their everyday work and who can thus greatly benefit from the INTEGRA project and ICP´s work more generally.
