easyRights project, represented by Francesca Rizzo from Politecnico di Milano and REBUILD project represented by Maria Amata Garito from Uninettuno, moderated today (October 15th, 2020) the session: Can co-creation and participatory designs be successful approaches for developing tools and digital public services for migrants? part of the Joint Migration Policy Roundtable 2020.
The Joint Migration Policy Roundtable 2020 is an event proposed by the EC with the scope to brainstorm the ICT component, the co-creation approach and the role of public authorities and policy makers in the delivery of digital public services to the migrants. The closed doors event was targeted at the projects from the migration-06 call together with their consortia and advisory boards as well as the EC representatives. The H2020 migration-06 projects: easyRights, MIICT, Re-Build, NADINE, MICADO, WELCOME work towards the development of ICT-enabled solutions and toolkits for the implementation of inclusion policies by public administrations.
During the 2 hour online call we listened to interesting presentation from the speakers, good feedback and questions from the audience. What we learned from one of the speakers, Ms. Elisabeth Kassimis, Executive Director of Caritas Cyprus, is that local language together with literacy and ability to use computers are actual barriers in the integration of the migrants. For example, in the case of Cyprus where the local language in Greek, Caritas Cyprus noticed that the migrants were not using English but most were French speakers.
The conclusion of the day was that the projects we are all creating are very helpful but we must collaborate closely with the local/regional/country/European authorities and find out who are the stakeholders and target groups and how migrants can use the tools. Also, we must discourage the authorities and the migrants to use paper applications as sometimes these get lost and the migrants end up submitting the same application 3-4 times.
Let’s help migrants integrate better and easier! Together we are stronger!