IMMERSED – Employment and Financial Resilience for Ukrainian Refugees (2025-2026)
Ensuring employment sustainability and financial resilience through a multi-layered model of well-being and immersion for Ukrainian Refugees in local communities
Objective: To enhance the sustainable employment and financial resilience of Ukrainian refugees in Romania, Poland, and Slovakia.
Partners: Fundacja Innowacja i Wiedza (Poland), People in Peril (Slovakia), CESIE ETS (Italy)
Project Duration: 16 April 2025 – 16 August 2026
Project Budget: 180.561 CHF (total budget – 796.565 CHF)
Project Locations:
- Romania (Cluj, Iași)
- Poland (Warsaw, Katowice)
- Slovakia (Žilina, Prešov)
The IMMERSED project is based on innovative citizen-centered solutions that will provide employment sustainability and financial resilience to Ukrainian refugees. This will be achieved through a multi-layered model of well-being support and immersion in local communities.
The project helps to address the specific social problem of lack of employment sustainability support for Ukrainian refugees in host countries, which also generates inability to achieve financial resilience, low well-being and difficulty integrating into local communities. The IMMERSED project leverages good practices from existing products and adapts them to the new situation of Ukrainian refugees. The IMMERSED project empowers citizens and improves the way our societies and their social welfare systems function and provides support to Ukrainian refugees.
The main pillar of the IMMERSED ecosystem is a strong network and collaboration among partners, but especially with associated partners who represent the quadruple helix model of the four main actors in the innovation process – public, private, academic and civil society.
By assessing existing evidence, the IMMERSED project will build the foundation for a new approach to supporting employment sustainability and financial resilience for Ukrainian refugees through:
- Training and creating materials for employment sustainability trainers
- Creating a new model of discussion clubs
- Mapping local initiatives (barter and networking opportunities – with reference to Quadruple Helix, bottom-up initiatives and local communities)
- Comprehensive (addressing different anxieties and traumas) mental health support program for Ukrainian Refugees
These solutions will be tested in local communities in Poland (Bielsko-Biała and Katowice), Slovakia (Žilina and Prešov), and Romania (Cluj-Napoca and Iasi) with the support of the associated partners mentioned in the proposal, but also with the participation of a wide range of stakeholders.
For more information, please access the project leaflet here.
