Led by Eurocities, UNITES – UrbaN InTEgration Strategies through co-design, trained and accompanied local authorities to co-design integration strategies with other stakeholders and migrants.
In the first stage, UNITES developed training sessions on co-designing integration strategies that incorporated research on best practices across Europe. A pilot version of the training was conducted with staff from the eight cities participating in the project. The training was then developed into an open-access online course (MOOC) for integration practitioners outside the project, which was tested with stakeholders in the eight partner cities.
In a second stage, the city partners set up a new mechanism for stakeholder consultation and developed their local integration strategy through co-design with stakeholders and migrants. In planning and implementing their actions, they received guidance from colleagues from other cities and migrant organisations in peer workshops and peer visits to each city.
At the end of the project, two non-participant cities were selected, following a call, to benefit from a support package in co-designing integration strategies from two teams of two staff from city partners trained as ‘integration champions’ in the project.
