West Midlands cities secure European funding to improve migrant cohesion
While Britain struggles to finalise any coherent plans for Brexit, three West Midlands cities have become the recipients of more than €4m of European funding designed to help them cope with one of the main issues in the EU exit negotiations.
The funding, supplied through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) is to help the region’s communities get the maximum benefit from migration and improve migrants’ and refugees’ sense of belonging.
The West Midlands Combined Authority-backed ‘MiFriendly Cities’ project has been awarded €4,280,640 in total from the ERDF. The money will see Coventry, Birmingham and Wolverhampton roll out a three-year programme of activities designed to help refugees and migrants feel that their contribution to society and the economy is valued.
Flagship proposals for the project, which forms part of the EU’s Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) initiative, include a new hub in Coventry through which migrants to the region can get involved in community and social enterprise projects.
Urban Innovative Actions is an EU initiative that provides urban areas throughout Europe with resources to test new and unproven solutions to address urban challenges.
Other planned activities as part of the MiFriendly Cities project include:
• weekly mobile employment information drop-in sessions for locals and migrant communities, held in the most deprived areas of each city;
• regular language classes delivered with the support of student volunteers from the cities’ universities;
• the training up of 60 so-called ‘health champions’ to help point fellow migrants and refugees to important health services they often struggle to reach;
• the establishment of a ‘fair recruitment’ agency to support employment for the wider community, with a focus on migrants and refugees;
• using what are termed ‘fabrication labs’ to provide qualifications to migrants and refugees to enable them to deliver training and home makeovers for locals;
• a £70,000 social enterprise fund to support 16 migrant and refugee start-ups with investment and mentorship;
• specific work to promote rights awareness and undertake legal health checks among migrants and refugees, with a focus on paths to citizenship for children and young people;
• training over 100 refugees and migrants as citizen journalists and citizen scientists to engage with the media, share their stories, and help evaluate the MiFriendly Cities initiative.
• learning from and sharing learning with other European cities
Coventry City Council will lead a consortium of 11 partners on the project, including the three city councils, Coventry University (and its community interest company CU Social Enterprise), Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre (CRMC), Central England Law Centre (CELC), The Refugee and Migrant Centre Black Country and Birmingham (RMC), MigrationWork, Migrant Voice and Interserve.
As well as introducing new initiatives, the project intends to bring further coordination to existing migration networks in the three cities, supporting the work of the West Midlands Strategic Migration Partnership (WMSMP) and the region’s two refugee and migrant centres, which between them support more than 300 people each day.
