Archive for category: News

On Thursday the 17thof May,Mendicity and Barka IE organized a manual handling course for the residents of the North Frederic Hostel. 15 people from the hostel took part in it. The manual handling certificate is useful for jobs in catering, retail, warehousing.

On Tuesday the 15th of May Barka IE staff went to visit another hostel in Dublin – Camden Hall. It is a one-night hostel and there are around 80 people using it every night. There are around 10-12 people from Central and Eastern Europe (among them 4-5 Polish people). BarkaIE staff talked to few Lithuanian and Romanian men about their life situation here in Dublin and the living conditions in their countries of origin.Barka workers will visit Camden Hall in the evenings,twice a week.

On Monday the 14th of May the meeting of partners was held in Homeless Agency. In the meeting there were present representatives of: Dublin City Council, Mendicity Board, CrossCare, De Paul, Simon Community Detox, Polish Consulate and Barka IE. Partners discussed the two weeks report and the results of Barka IE work in reconnection and employment projects. The representative of Consulate – Magdalena Nowacka talked about good cooperation with Barka IE. Mary Fleming – representative of Simon Community Detox – mentioned the importance of the process of Barka IE staff gaining trust not only of the beneficiaries, but also of the Irish institutions. This trust is essential for Barka IE staff to present good results of their work. During the meeting partners talked about the challenge of work with other than Polish Central and Eastern European nationalities. Partners also talked about the issue of the date of the completion of the 6-months pilot project of Barka IE which is scheduled for the end of June. Next steering group meeting will take place after the study visits of partners in Poland – on Monday the 4th of June.

Barka organized a meeting in the hostel with Larkin Job Centre on Friday the 11th of May. People from the Job Centre talked about possible option of help in looking for job, writing CV, preparing for interviews, etc. They made appointments for Larkin Centre to work personally with the people interested to extend their job-seeking perspectives. They also stressed that it is very difficult to find job on the labour market in Dublin and also native Irish and young foreign people with good English have problems in finding jobs. 11 people made appointments with the Larkin Job Centre for searching employment options.

Barka IE staff visited Polish consulate on the 9th of May to talk with the General Consul about situation of Polish migrants in Dublin and in Europe. The Consul was interested in the work Barka is doing in “reconnection projects” across Europe. We talked about the cooperation – the Consul thanked Barka for the work done for our fellow-citizens and Barka thanked for the help which we received from the Consulate. We talked about passports which Barka is arranging for Polish migrants and the Consul asked if Barka will be able to pay the debts of the people who need a new passport. Barka was able to pay for the three men which took passport before and did not pay for it.