on-line meeting
Concluded / Concluso
The peer-to-peer meeting between the Municipality of Palermo and the Municipality of Heraklion took place online on 24 November 2020. It was organized by the IOM Coordination Office for the Mediterranean in cooperation with the IOM mission to Greece, to allow the two municipalities to exchange information on common integration challenges and share good practices on migrants’ reception and social inclusion.
The two cities were represented at both political and technical level. The meeting saw the participation of the Social Policies Deputy Mayors of both Palermo and Heraklion, and the executives of the respective integration divisions, who presented the initiatives put in place to foster migrants’ inclusion and social cohesion in their respective territories.
In particular, the Heraklion representatives illustrated the many services and activities implemented by the Municipality in the area of migrant integration, including the municipal integration courses, partially impacted by the current pandemic.
The Palermo representatives focused on the human rights-centred vision of the administration, and focused on the services delivered within the municipal House of Rights, whose approach is based on valuing individual differences rather than differentiating between categories.
The representatives of both municipalities expressed the intention to enhance mutual information and exchange in order to learn more from each other and better understand how to replicate some of the respective good practices.
The meeting was part of the EU-funded project ADMin4ALL, which aims at enhancing the capacity of municipal administrations across the EU in the area of migrant integration, including through fostering the exchange of good practices among participating cities. Other peer-to-peer exchange meetings will take place online in the coming weeks.