Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow: An E-Learning Program on Migration

Abstract

The present study presents an e-learning platform based on the educational programs carried out by Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow Association (YTT) and Roma Tre University. YTT is an independent Paris-based Educational & Humanitarian Non-Profit which combines visual language with learning tools to facilitate migrants’ and refugees’ inclusive processes, promote human-rights, the prevention of violent extremism, freedom, diverse, multi-ethnic and multi religious societies. YTT is also aimed at positively affecting national and international migration policy-making. Since 2016, YTT has been collaborating with thousands of refugees/migrants (from more than 50 nationalities, aged from 3 to 70 years old) in over 35 camps and squats across Europe/North Africa. They receive 3 sheets of paper and coloured pens and are invited to draw 3 sketches: one of their life before: Yesterday; one of their current life: Today; and one of their life imagined in the future: Tomorrow. These drawings define the YTT visual language, a raw, emotional and explicative language that speaks logically and directly to the audience. Figure 1 shows the YTT drawings by a 9 years old Iraqi girl, living in the Miksaliste Refugee Camp (Belgrade, Serbia), who represented in her Yesterday (the first on the left) which is what she saw when on a Sunday morning, coming back from church, she found both her parents and brother killed. In the Today, she drew her hands and arms with the cuts she self-inflicts on her body. In the Tomorrow, she drew her dream to be a doctor, so that she can help others.