IS CAN help Denmark's refugees

Trampoline House is a refugee justice community center in Copenhagen founded on solidarity and bottom up democracy. We include rejected asylum seekers, asylum seekers and refugees in a community where we share and learn from each other. We practice community, inclusion and mutual respect in a society that has decided to confine asylum seekers to isolated camps. For us, no one is a victim.

Rejected asylum seekers´ children are forced to live in the deportation camps with their parents. Trampoline House supports the families and their children, by creating activities for the kids 2 days every week. But we are a house for refugees of all ages. The grown ups are offered free Danish and English language classes, legal counseling, Women´s club, Democracy workshop, Creative workshops.

Our community dinners are an integral part of the welcoming culture of the house. The food is always cooked by teams of refugees and volunteers from Danish society working together. We spend 10.000 USD annually on ingredients for the lovely meals.

 

Trampoline House has existed since 2010 and depends on private donations and grants from humanitarian foundations. The total annual budget for 2022 was 100.000 USD. We spend 21.000 USD annually on transport reimbursement for asylum seekers. The social coordinator, the daily manager and the legal counselor share 35 weekly paid hours. We have around 50 volunteers with legal status in Denmark, and around 200 refugees, asylum seekers and rejected asylum seekers have benefited from the program this year.

 

Concerned Academics Now (CAN) is a group of IS academics that would like to find ways to reinforce the tradition of leaving our conference host locations a little bit better. As we travel to destinations around the globe to attend the International Conference on Information Systems, we leave our footprints behind – in resources consumed, in travel-related carbon emissions.

COVID has taught us that our fates are inextricably joined with those apparently most distant from us. Even as we surmount the challenges of COVID, our fates remain joined through persistent social issues such as immigration, human trafficking, and the myriad of human rights violations, at the bottom of which is the problem of disparate access to resources and to opportunities.

Since 2021, CAN has focused on an issue of concern to our host city/country and attempted to raise awareness of the issue among conference attendees and financial support for a local organization addressing the issue. This year, we are spotlighting the plight of refugees from conflict zones streaming into Europe, the paucity of resources to accommodate them, and the disparate treatment they receive. We are partnering with Trampoline House, a Danish non-profit group that provides services accessible to refugees in Denmark.

https://is-can.org