Innovation and impact on welcome policies

During the first decade of this century Barcelona was defining a global public policy for welcoming the thousands of immigrants arriving each year to the city, as a first step towards a more global process of intercultural integration. The system had its symbol in a municipal centre called SAIER that was created more than 30 years ago to support immigrant and refugees. The SAIER is funded by the municipality but many of its main services are offered by important NGOs, associations of lawyers and trade unions. However, the massive arrival of immigrants in the past years meant that many local NGOs, civic or cultural centres were providing some kind of welcome services (learning the language, legal advice, knowledge of the environment, occupational training workshops, empowerment of women, youth work etc.). But in order to make all that effort more efficient, there was a need to coordinate and to design a common welcome framework and a practical methodology to share know-how and to collaborate in order to respond better to the daily challenges. This is how the “Welcome Network” of Barcelona was created. It is coordinated by the city and includes more than 100 organisations and agencies. The coordination of all these welcoming services very soon showed great improvements in the efficiency of the system. Specific working groups were created focusing on topics like legal advice or language learning. New tools and materials were also created as a result of common needs and diagnoses. Annuals working plans were approved and members met in working groups and new online tools to share information were created, together with more public resources to support the members’ activities.