Abstract:

Relevance of research and problem statement. The migration of people between the countries of the European Union and the recently increasing number of arrivals from third or post-Soviet countries encourages demands of the search for solutions to the problems of immigrant integration. One of the key means of integration is education (formal and non-formal), which must ensure the opportunities for immigrant children and youth demanding to learn the state language, integrate into civil society, and pursue higher education, which would increase the employment rate of adults.

It should be noted that young people arriving in host countries are different: they have different education, different social skills, come from different countries to a culture completely foreign to them, so their integration needs to be very flexible in understanding these differences, as children and young immigrants are more vulnerable, face language barriers, emotional problems, maintaining friendships, and so on.

This work focuses on the possible role of non-formal education institutions as one of the Lithuanian education service providers, helping to integrate immigrant children and youth, emphasizing the quality and efficiency of the services provided and the specifics of non-formal education.

The paper aims at reviewing, how can the education sector be maximized, with a focus on non-formal education, in order to provide significant support to immigrants' children and young people for easier integration in Lithuania.

For this purpose the significance of the need for non-formal education was explored on both theoretical and empirical grounds, revealing its applicability for successful integration of immigrants and seeing the possible organization, management, accountability and supervision of non-formal education.

Will be analysed in this paper: the problems of integration of immigrant children and youth in the education system and the role of services provided by non-formal education institutions in the process of integration and socialization; how much Lithuanian non-formal education institutions are ready to work with immigrants and what challenges they would face.

Main methods used:
Analysis of scientific literature, a qualitative method was chosen for the empirical study, semi-structured interviews are used to determine the opinion of the respondents, interviews with respondents were conducted individually, qualitative content analysis was performed, recommendations have been prepared.

Main results:
Cultural and linguistic factors influence the successful integration of immigrant children and youth into the education system, their achievements at school, hence they should be offered more opportunities, which would help to reduce the gap and exclusion of immigrant children and young people. Empirical research after analyzing the possibilities of Vilnius non-formal education institutions to contribute to the strengthening of the integration process of immigrant youth, was found that a smart organization of activities could make all non-formal education institutions an effective basis for the integration process.

Keywords:

Non formal education, immigrant children and youth, multicultural class, languages, teaching methods.