New “Know Your Rights” Project Aims To Help Immigrants

A new initiative called the Know Your Rights Project, or KYR Project for short, hopes to assist immigrants with a wide range of issues—both in the workplace and in their daily lives.

“KYR aims to train migrant workers to improve their knowledge on their rights in the workforce, both within specific countries and according to EU employment laws,” the project mission statement says in part. “KYR will develop approaches to reach out to migrant workers using online tools and peer mentoring, presenting information in 3-5 languages in each country in cooperation with trained peers. The project will provide skills on labor legislation to migrants and the overall objective is to create processes and good practices that can then be developed further to reach new migrants groups.”

Some of the topics of their educational materials include labour unions, employment contracts, taxes, health insurance, and more.

“In Iceland migrant workers’ don’t have access to information about their rights, especially those that don’t speak Icelandic or English and workers not belonging to large migrant group that have developed their own support network,” their assessment newsletter states in part. “The key challenges for migrant workers are language barriers, insufficient outreach, unconscious and conscious discrimination of employers and lack of coordination in supporting migrant workers.”

Jeta Ejupi of the Equality Centre in Reykjavík (Jafnréttishús) told the Grapevine that they have received the support of labour unions, the Directorate of Labour, the City of Reykjavík and others in helping to make this project a reality. To this end, they are hoping to launch an educational video series featuring people of many different nationalities participating.

For more information, visit the KYR Project site.

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