ImpleMentoring project partners meet in Brussels on 26-27 February 2013

On 26 and 27 February, ImpleMentoring “city to city support for migrant integration” project partners gathered in EUROCITIES office in Brussels for an intense two days launch meeting. Two representatives from each partner city (Aarhus, Athens, Copenhagen, Dublin, Genoa, Ghent, Lublin, Malmö, Manchester, Milan, Oslo, Riga, Rotterdam and Tampere) attended the event, led by EUROCITIES’ migration and integration team with four Migration Work consultants.

After a general presentation of EUROCITIES, the Integrating Cities Charter framework and a reminder of the origins and objective of ImpleMentoring, the partners were briefed on the European Commission integration approach as well as on the financial requirements of the project by Mr Johan Bern, Desk officer from the Financial Support – Immigration and Asylum unit of DG Home.

The meeting then focused on training on mentoring skills, prepared by ImpleMentoring trainer Simon Güntner and including sessions on transfer of good practice, necessary skills for mentors and mentees, and action-development planning and implementation of change.

The following day was spent in breakout sessions for the four mentoring schemes “clusters”, all led by their respective Migration Work facilitator. The project partners were given the opportunity to present their cities’ needs and identified gaps before discussing the benchmarks prepared in a collaborative way since December 2012. The visits to implementing and mentor cities were then planned and will take place between April and August 2013.