RaCIP will enhance capacity building for organisations operating Private Sponsorship (PS) schemes or otherwise engaged in community-based support to refugees’ integration. The project will feature several pilot schemes aimed at scaling up existing PS and strengthening community-based efforts by experimenting PS initiatives in the Member States involved.
ABOUT THE RACIP PROJECT
Goals
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Provide support and strengthen capacities at local level to attain a durable solution in terms of refugees’ integration across EU societies;
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Shift part of the costs of refugee integration from public to private sector. Such shift will provide fundamental support in light of decreasing budget allocation to government-run programmes;
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Enlarge the local networks of CSOs involved in the PS pilot schemes at the national level inspired by the PAR community-based sponsorship model. Increasing the abilities of private actors will lead to better reception and integration prospects;
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Focus on transnational cooperation between experienced sponsor organisations, such as leading actors operating HC and PAR model, and newly organisations already active in the migration field. This collaboration will enable participants to achieve a focused and high-standard training to support refugees and improve their autonomy;
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Experiment two less used PS in the European scenario: co-living, i.e. hospitality of refugees in local families and workplace mentoring envisaging job mentors’ comprehensive support to refugees in all aspects of daily life.
Expected Results
RaCIP will replicate the community-based sponsorship model developed in Portugal by Jesuit Refugee Service. This model will be further improved through the assimilation of good practices experimented throughout the MS such as, among others, the family-based sponsorship operated by the Refugees Welcome Programme. Two goals inspire this action: boosting the capacities of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and local communities and promoting the active involvement of refugees in their integration process.
Thanks to study visits and desk research the project will gather and analyse existing good practices to design training paths in the MS addressed to families, students, social entrepreneurs and CSOs participating in the pilot schemes. The project will develop mentoring and peer-to-peer activities to provide refugees with social, educational and professional support throughout the settlement process.
The project will facilitate access to the job market designing tailored vocational training for refugees. To ensure the correct implementation of the project and establish the basis for future replicability, a monitoring system will be developed. Monitoring activities will gather crucial information needed to develop an evaluation system in order to assess the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of the project.
Beneficiaries
In the short and medium term, the beneficiaries will be both the refugees located in partners’ countries and all the participants involving in the pilot phase. In the long term, the institutions and European CSOs will benefit from the project’s enhancement of good practices through dissemination activities.
Partnership
RaCIP's deliverables are created by a European consortium within the framework of the Asylum, Migration and Integration fund of the European Commission, whereby nine public and private organizations from five different countries participate (Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, France).