SIRIUS brings together key stakeholders in migration and education from around Europe, including policy makers, researchers, practitioners and representatives of migrant communities (see partners). The essential mission of SIRIUS is to promote and enhance the knowledge transfer among stakeholders in order to improve the education of children and youngsters from migrant background.

SIRIUS’ mission is based on three actions:
(1) Knowledge transfer;
(2) Influencing policy development and implementation;
(3) Bringing together partners from EU countries and key stakeholders, including policy makers, researchers, practitioners, representatives of migrant communities, NGOs, international organizations, etc.

SIRIUS was born within the project “SIRIUS: European Policy Network on the education of children and young people with a migrant background” funded within the framework of the European Commission’s “Lifelong Learning Programme” for the period 2012-2014. Multi Kulti Collective became the national SIRIUS partner for Bulgaria in 2014. Since then, the network continued its development thanks to the support of Mercator Foundation, Open Society, etc. The national partners were also able to work on other projects together such as:

• NAOS – Professional capacity dealing with diversity (2014-2017);
• MEMA – Migrant Education Monitoring and Assessment (2016);
• ALFIRK – Collaborative Networks for Migrant Parent Empowerment (2015-2018);
• Multi-country Partnership to Enhance the Education of Refugee and Asylum-seeking Youth in Europe (2016-2017);
• Exchange of knowledge and good practice to enhance the education of refugee and asylum seeking youth (2017-2018), etc.

Because of its successful work and the high importance of the topic across the EU, 24 national SIRIUS members and individuals co-founded a Brussels-based NGO in December 2016. Multi Kulti Collective is one of the co-founders of the new legal entity SIRIUS aisbl.

On 9 June 2017, SIRIUS secured EU co-funding for the next four years. The approval of the project submission by the European Commission shows that SIRIUS as a Policy Network on Migrant Education is considered to be relevant for stakeholders, policy makers and the privileged European level platform for dialogue, exchange of good practices, research and advocacy in the field of migrant and refugee education. Multi Kulti Collective is a national partner in the project so we are going to share more news in the recent months.