BACKGROUND
The organization started out based on a combination of meetings and conversations between URWs founder and refugees, an interest in helping people and the insight into how the Swedish asylum process looked like. Lead times in the asylum process were extensive and it also took a very long time for the majority of refugees who receive residence permits to get a first internship or a first
job. Through conversations with the refugees, it became clear they were very grateful for having escaped the unrest in their homeland and to be given the chance to receive a Swedish residence permit. A major problem however was the slow asylum process and the time it took before they received their residence permits. Once they received their permits they had to wait before they were assigned to a municipality and a place to live. It was not until they had been situated in their new municipality that they could be registered at the local employment office and officially start a job search and an integration process into the new community. After being registered at the local employment office it takes a long time before the newly arrived get their first internship or a first job where they start to earn a salary. Their stories revealed that the feeling of hope, engagement, happiness and excitement they felt when arriving to Sweden slowly started to fade away as a consequence of not having anything meaningful to do during the long wait, and was instead replaced with a sensation of hopelessness, lack of motivation and frustration. Unfortunately, the situation has become even worse since our first conversations with the refugees. The asylum seeking process is today 12 – 18 months long and during this time the majority of the refugees live in asylum accommodations without anything meaningful to do or without any positive exposure towards the new community. Once a refugee has received their residence permit it will take an average of nine years before they get their first job with a salary. There are groups of refugees that are more exposed and vulnerable than others and for them it can take a lot longer than nine years. Our goal and conviction is that if a refugee gets an earlier and better start to integration, the average time to their first job will be reduced. There is a lot of research and studies showing that people without meaningful existence or any type of occupation run a greater risk of suffering negative psychological effects. For an asylum seeking refugee you also have to add the uncertainty related to whether or not their application will be approved, the suboptimal living situation associated with asylum accommodation and the trauma that many of them have experienced during their escape. All of these factors further increase the risk that the refugees will develop negative psychological effects which will most likely influence their ability and chance to quickly integrate into our society. We at URW are convinced that it is extremely important to, in a simple way, be able to quickly offer these refugees an occupation allowing them to do something practical, to make them feel that they are contributing, have them included in a community and receive some experience and positive exposure to the Swedish society. So, from the stories told by the newly arrived, together with a strong desire to help people and the knowledge of the challenging asylum seeking process and the long lead times to get a first job, the URW organization together with its concept and model was created. URW now offers a voluntary meaningful occupation for the refugees during the long wait of the asylum seeking process and at the same time creates value for the refugee (by language exposure, community, occupation, exposure towards customers, society and businesses), the local community (by creating new jobs, positioning the refugee as a resource/asset), and the international aid organizations. By doing this, in a structured manner, we create a better chance for the refugee to have earlier contact with the new community, create conditions for a better and earlier integration, assist the local community with resources and give the international aid organizations an additional revenue stream to support their vital cause.
