SIforREF
Integrating Refugees in Society and the Labour Market Through Social Innovation

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Working Approach
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SIforREF aims to enhance significantly existing refugee integration policies on the regional and local level. Our goal is that social innovative and inclusive measures become mainstream. This is not only an exchange of good practices; our task is to jointly design and implement methodologies and identify the social innovative conditions that must be met. The main outputs will be tools for evaluating and designing social innovative practices and pilots that result in inclusive policies.

To do so, the partnership will investigate and build on best practices and initiate a mutual learning process among central European regions, especially the five neighbourhood regions involved in the project.

Main objectives of the project:

Refugee integration: Enhance existing policies on the regional and local level.
Inclusive innovation: Advocate for the mainstreaming of social innovative and inclusive policies.

Download PDF file about the project.

SIforREF strives to make a difference in the lives of refugees in central Europe

Working approach

May 2019 - february 2020

1. Setting up
a toolbox

First, we design a method (which includes defining specific indicators) for measuring the social innovative approaches of policies and pilots to foster the integration of refugees (this is the output). Since the evaluation of the impact of migration policies on the integration of refugees is rarely implemented, we believe that it is crucial to begin our project with the development of an evaluation tool.

february 2020 - jan. 2021

2. Developing
a toolbox

Second, we aim to develop a toolbox to support policy makers, practitioners and NGOs as operators in the design and implementation of measures for the integration of refugees on the level of societal and economic participation. We will examine measures which indeed adopt a social innovative approach. We have chosen not to provide top down guidelines, but instead to co-create open guidelines with a diverse pool of actors engaged in the issue of refugee integration.

januaray 2021 - nov. 2021

3. Development
of pilots

Next, we test the developed toolbox - where open guidelines have been produced on how to design social innovative approaches for integrating refugees. Furthermore, we will determine if these can be successfully translated into 7 actual projects. These we will implement in Italy (one each in Bologna and Parma), Austria (two, both in Vienna), Germany (two, both in Berlin) and Slovenia (one in Ljubljana).

june 2021 - march 2022

4. developing
a joint strategy

Finally, we aim to achieve two main outputs: 1) local agreements among key public and private actors that recognise the relevance of refugee integration for the promotion of social cohesion and the need to jointly address this challenge through the practice of virtuous governance and social innovative approaches gained during the pilot activities. 2) a Transnational Memorandum of Understanding.

Fact Sheets, Best Practices & Guidelines

Vienna, Parma, Ljubljana, Bologna and Berlin - Each partner city in our project has its own base case for the successful integration of refugees into local society and the labor market.

FACT SHEETS: We have compiled up-to-date demographic data and characterised key political, social and economic strengths and weaknesses for each of our partner cities in comprehensive Fact Sheets.

BEST PRACTICES: Best Practices are what we consider outstanding projects and initiatives in regard to refugee integration within the cities and territories of our partnership.

GUIDELINES & CHECK LIST: We have developed a clear set of indicators that act as guidelines to develop social innovative policies and practices for the inclusion of refugees.