MAYOR OF SOFIA AND UNHCR REPRESENTATIVE MEET TO DISCUSS REFUGEE ISSUES

Ms. Yordanka Fandakova, Mayor of Sofia Municipality, and Ms. Seda Kuzudzu, the new representative for Bulgaria of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, held a meeting on December 14, 2022. They discussed the situation with refugees, asylum seekers and stateless people in Sofia, the pressing problems, and challenges, as well as the efforts of each country for a better response to the refugee crisis and for more effective integration.

Ms. Fandakova and Ms. Kuzudzu outlined the areas in which UNHCR and Sofia can cooperate. Among them are training of volunteers to work in emergency situations with refugees, inclusion of appropriate events in the programs of the municipal cultural institutes, training in the Bulgarian language and others. The mayor and the representative of the UN Refugee Agency agreed to sign a Memorandum of Understanding early next year.

In the coming year, Sofia Development Association will be a beneficiary of UNHCR on behalf of the Sofia Municipality, in order to work to increase the awareness and readiness of the society to integrate migrants and refugees.

SDA CONTINUES TO SUPPORT THE LABOR INTEGRATION OF THIRD-COUNTRY NATIONALS

SDA continues to support the labor integration of third-country nationals in Sofia. Since November, SDA has teamed up with the NGO Arms Wide Open to offer a free business language course in Bulgarian to migrants in the city. Classes are held online and will continue until February 2023. The business language course will be followed by a financial literacy course, set to begin later in 2023. The language training is part of the activities under the AMIF-funded project PLOUTOS, which is coordinated by Halmstadt University in Sweden.

Language training is one of the key enabling factors for migrant integration, and both job seekers and employers underline the need to expand the opportunities for Bulgarian language training in Sofia. We are glad to be part of the solution and will continue our efforts to build a welcoming environment for migrants in the city. We are also proud to announce that for the second year in a row SDA, together with Sofia Municipality, UNHCR, Caritas Bulgaria, and Za Dobroto foundation will honor local employers which offer jobs, training and housing to refugees. The award ceremony will be held on 15^th December at 4 p.m. in SofiaLab. The event will be broadcasted on SofiaLab’s Facebook page.

This project is funded by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

BUSINESS LANGUAGE CLASSES FOR THIRD-COUNTRY NATIONALS

SDA has teamed up with the NGO Arms Wide Open to offer free Bulgarian language classes online to migrants and refugees. Three classes have started in the last two weeks of November and will continue until the end of February 2023. The language training focuses on business and financial vocabulary and will help third-country nationals and refugees, including those from Ukraine, improve their language skills and knowledge of the business and financial system in the country.

The business language classes will be followed by financial literacy classes; both language courses have been developed by language and financial experts to meet the needs of third-country nationals and to facilitate their labor market integration.

The initiative is part of the project PLOUTOS, a multi-partner action, funded by AMIF, which seeks to improve the access to financial instruments and services for migrants and refugees. Follow the website of SDA and the project PLOUTOS for updates on activities.

This project is funded by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

AGORA PROJECT FINAL CONFERENCE

In the 30th month of working together, the AGORA partners got together for their final conference and capacity building. The event took place on December 6-7th, 2022, in Cluj-Napoca, the project lead partner, and online, as a hybrid event.

The final conference engaged all project partners, external experts and key stakeholders like national policy makers, operators, scientists and artists in an empowering exchange, knowledge transfer and networking.

The 10 territorial partners that worked on urban void regeneration policies and implemented pilot actions – with Sofia Municipality and Sofia Development Association among them, reflected on their experience, achievements, lessons learned from the pilots and future oriented strategies. Sofia presented its two pilot initiatives – linking Toplocentrala with the adjacent river (хиперлинк към видеото) and a renovated open-air stage in Sveta Troitsa Park (също хиперлинк към видеото). No matter how different the two may seem, what they have in common is the citizen engagement and empowerment process and participatory decision-making, the core approach of AGORA.

The final conference presented other transferable project outcomes as well – the matchmaking platform, tools and policy guidance developed by the scientific project partners – instruments and practices that will contribute to making the Danube region a more innovative and sustainable place.

CONNECTION project: CONNECTING Cities Towards Integration action, is co-funded by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.  

CONNECTION AT A EUROCITIES MUTUAL LEARNING EVENT IN RIGA

EUROCITIES working groups on Employment and on Migration, as well as representatives of CONNECTION project and interested cities, got together, hosted by the city of Riga, for a mutual learning event. The focus of the event was how to engage vulnerable women with migrant and refugee backgrounds in the labour market and how to mitigate the challenges they face.

Since the invasion, Latvia has taken in over 40,000 refugees from Ukraine, many of whom remain in Riga, where a refugee support centre was, at one point, seeing over 1000 people every day. The host city showed other good practices, including a Ukrainian school, NGO cooperatives working for integration of migrants, entrepreneurs. The Riga examples were presented by the city mayor and deputy mayor, the Ukrainian ambassador to Latvia, civil society organizations and municipal enterprises.

Participating cities were engaged in workshops, one of which – the gender dimension of integration strategies – was conducted by the CONNECTION integration champions. The mutual learning event was also attended by representatives of DG Employment, DG Home, OECD, UNHCR.

The event finished with a strategy development workshop, developing solutions that can be applicable to other cities working to integrate women from Ukraine, and outlining advocacy efforts at European level.

CONNECTION project: CONNEcting Cities Towards Integration action, is co-funded by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.