SAMA For All

The project aims to facilitate the socio-economic integration of refugees in their host countries through training in cooperation with cultural and educational institutions.

The training program with Parisian museums is the benchmark of our organization since 2017.

The fund will boost our activities, accelerate our strategic plan, sustain and take our organization level.

Our pilot program “Refugee talent lab” began with an idea of how we could overcome the distress and the anxiety during the lockdown period? It’s a kind of remedy for mental health.

The prototype workshop “Initiation of Corporal Expression” was led by a professional dancer, a Venezuelan refugee. It’s a weekly activity running virtually on the ZOOM platform and it was tested with participants from France, Dominican Republic, Columbia, Holland, Dubai, and Canada.

The “Refugee Talent Lab” program will launch series of projects in arts and culture for refugees (children and adults), and it will expand geographically.

To scale up the project, we require financial and human resources.

We are in the process of establishing a panel of experts for evaluation and recommendation.

We already have experts cooperating with us i.e., a French Writer, an Iranian film director, a Syrian filmmaker, and a Canadian painter.

SAMA For All is a nonprofit organization, founded by a Syrian refugee and two French citizens.

The organization's DNA: to bridge the gap between host societies and refugees by highlighting the potential of refugees in the host society’s culture, using the cultural sector as a lever of expression and inclusion.

We build solidarity by involving the French community in our actions.

As a social changemaker, we aim to change the narrative about refugees and present them as contributors and not victims.

In the cultural sector, which often suffers from biased narratives on their « elitism », we challenge their posture, and actively highlight what migration can bring.

We promote cultural diversity, build bridges of intercultural dialogue.

Our vision: To be a leading global organization in the field of social and cultural integration of refugees.

Our purpose: SAMA For All exists to serve and improve the lives of refugees in their host countries, through the three main dimensions of cultural integration: social, economic, and identity integration.

Our Strategic goals: to use advanced online technology to help refugees worldwide integrate culturally in their host countries, through learning, training, and events activities, in cooperation with cultural, social, and educational institutions.

By the end of 2019, approximately 79.5 million individuals were forcibly displaced globally.

France (respectively hosting 407,923 and 102,157) by the end of 2019.

The problem is the know-how to integrate those newcomers into their community. Most of the time, refugees end up working in a professional sector that does not match their competencies et experience, which diminishes their potential and does not benefit host societies.

Our program is complementary to the French integration’s policies and relies on socio-economic and cultural integration.

Museums are considered a space for cultural dialogue; we partner with Paris’ best museums to offer a tailored training program that allows refugees to discover the professional ecosystem of museums, but also to maintain a social life and cultural practice. Since October 2017 more than 100 beneficiaries have benefited from this program. 

As language is often an obstacle for newcomers, we designed, along with museums immersion, concise French classes focusing on arts and culture, to emphasize their linguistic competencies.

By offering a complete immersion program to refugees in Paris, connecting them with high-level profiles in the cultural sector, we ultimately aim to change the narrative about refugees, for their real potential to be revealed.

We adopt a transcultural posture based on the user-journey, beneficiaries' dreams, and capacities instead of offering a standard program. SAMA For All is not only an organization but also a community where beneficiaries express their dreams.

COVID-19 has shown that this approach works, as we have thrived in continuing our programs online, which has added value to what beneficiaries could bring. They suddenly started to take a new initiative, by creating together new art projects.

We saw dialogue being enriched among refugees and locals, between newcomers and institutions. Our method is disruptive because the narrative on refugees is often humanitarian, and SAMA For All offers a space where newcomers are actively contributing, helping host societies.

In term of the theory of change, we started by realizing that museums such as the Louvre does not offer their customers services in Arabic for instance, but they gather largest art collection from the Middle East! Now we know that the French cultural sector has a lot to do to become more inclusive.

We aim to help to shape a world in which migration is a source of cultural enrichment, to scale for all museums to benefit what migrants bring to host societies.                                                                                                

The core of our program is to impact positively the refugees’ life, by fostering their socio-economic inclusion. We create an economic value and social link between the newcomers and their host countries.

many refugees face unrecognized qualifications. We aim to move from empathy towards creating opportunities and synergies between refugees and the local ecosystem.  This is through professional training, and social integration actions, that ensure a more prosperous future for generations to come.  Arts play a vital role in social change.

Our approach is based on flowing five steps

1.     Research

-       Identifying the needs of beneficiaries

-       Collecting data

-       Creating a list of refugees willing to join our program and showing interest in arts and culture.

-       Applying the selection criteria and the enrolment process.

2.     Connect

Connect the beneficiaries to our partners and stakeholders.

3.    Cooperate

Cooperate with partners and stakeholders to create and develop solutions that respond to beneficiaries’ needs.

4.     Training and learning

Enroll the beneficiaries in the training program of cultural mediation and French classes.

5.    Evaluate and empower

Measure the outcome of the beneficiaries through a yearly evaluation survey, scale the impact of the training program and their readiness for the job market.