2nd Arrival Cities Transnational Workshop, Vantaa 24-27 of January 2017

On the 24^th to 27^th the Arrival Cities Network partners met in Vantaa for the 2^nd Transnational Workshop and SGM. The theme of this 2^nd Transnational Workshop was the “Integration of migrants in the labour market”

On the 24^th of January the Arrival Cities delegates received a warm welcome from Vantaa Deputy Mayor and the Tempo Orchestra which delighted us with a wonderful concert (see video). The Tempo Orchestra is a very nice example of integration, it has been created in the framework of a previous URBACT project (MILE- Managing migration and Integration at a local level - cities and regions) in which the City of Vantaa and the Municipality of Amadora participated. The idea born during a workshop in which Amadora showed, as example of good practice, the Orchestra Project, based on the Venezuelan experience of Simon Bolivar. Form this exchange of good practice the Municipality of Vantaa decided to replicate the experience firstly by sending a delegation to Amadora to study the methodology and later by adapting the method to the Vantaa social context. Nowadays there are in Vantaa two schools that developed the tempo orchestra project.

After the concert the Vantaa’s Deputy Mayor, Jaakko Niinistö in his welcome speech thanked Amadora for the collaboration had so far an welcomed further opportunities to work together.

On the 25^th we had an intense exchange of good practices, and experiences. During the morning after an introduction and welcome speech of the Vantaa’s Deputy Mayor we have been introduced by the Lead Expert Mr. Haroon Saad to the theme of the workshop “integration of migrants in the labor market”. Later 4 case studies have been presented by our network partners following the peer review methodology. In the late afternoon, after the workshop sessions, the local coordinators together with the lead partners, lead expert and communication officer met to hold the 4th Steering Group Meeting.

On the 26^th the host partner, the Municipality of Vantaa took us in a tour to see some initiatives that have been developed by local NGO and supported through Municipal and EU funds. During the morning we visited three interesting experiences of integrated services that support migrants, women, young and vulnerable groups in general. The first one has been the "NiceHearts" experince an excellent example of women supporting women project, then we have been introduced to the "Vantaa Russian Club" a project that support women and children of Russian origins. This initiative is very important, more if we consider that the Russian is the biggest foreigner community in Finland. Later we have been introduced to the "Working in Vantaa" project another good practice of training, counselling and support system for locals and migrants. Later we visited the "Youth services Ohjamo" project who is dedicated especially to young and adolescents living in Vantaa. In the afternoon as closing session we visited the "Enterprise Helsinky" a training centre dedicated to support new entrepreneurs to build and run their businesses. The centre offer several services and counselling also in different language and is very used by immigrants who need support to create and run their own business.

I has been a very fruitful exchange, for all of us and we really appreciated the great organization effort of Vanta’s team.