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Last week the European Migration Forum – the civil society dialogue platform on migration, asylum and migrant integration – met for the third time in Brussels. At the meeting our member Eurodiaconia held a workshop on integration services for migrants.

Access to quality and affordable social, health, housing, employment and education services for all migrants and refugees is a pre-condition for their successful inclusion in our societies.

I want to take the opportunity to briefly illustrate some good practices of social, health and employment services for migrants and refugees that we gathered with the help of our members, their national members and partners.

The Refugee Mission of the Reformed Church of Hungary, a national member of our member Eurodiaconia, started supporting two refugee families in 2007. It has now provided support to about 260 people of different nationalities: Afghani, Syrian Pakistani, Iranian, Iraqi, Palestinian, Somalian and Nigerian. The Mission focuses primarily on providing housing services for groups of young refugees. They also offer language courses and education and skills development programes with personalised approaches, to best meet the wide range of refugees’ needs. They provide tailor-made support in the area of employment, as they try to match previous work experience and skills with available jobs. Integration is considered successful when families, or single refugees, are able to fend for themselves and take responsibility for their homes after one year. The Mission also facilitates relationships between refugees and public authorities, employment services and schools. This is particularly essential as in Hungary the political environment can be quite challenging. This example could be replicated in other Central European countries with less experience in refugees’ integration, provided that it is adapted to local circumstances.

Another promising practice is the Humanitarian Health Consultation Centre that was set up in Frankfurt as a support service for undocumented pregnant women. It is the result of successful collaboration between Maisha e.V. – African Women in Germany (a national member of our member the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants) and the City of Frankfurt. This service is essential, since it is common to see undocumented expectant mothers contacting medical services too late in their pregnancies as they fear being reported to authorities, or disappearing soon after birth even if there are complications because they have no money to pay for longer stays in hospital. Initially, this service was entirely dedicated to African women. However, due to high demand it was later enlarged to other undocumented foreign nationals, European nationals without health insurance, rejected asylum seekers, and other expectant mothers. Investment in health care for people in vulnerable situations brings far-reaching benefits for society as a whole, not least through prevention; for example, offering service users detailed information about malaria, AIDS, or any other health issue for which they need medication or medical attention prevents the spread of infectious diseases. It is encouraging to see that this service is becoming a benchmark for service provision in Germany.

The last practice I want to showcase is Magdas, a member organisation of Caritas Vienna (a national member of our member Caritas Europa), which developed the concept of a social business hotel run by refugees accompanied by experienced hospitality professionals. The idea was that a hotel could easily become an engaging and motivating project that could bring people with very different cultural, professional and social backgrounds together. The hotel employs thirty people, of whom twenty are refugees. They come from sixteen different countries, including Nigeria, Guinea, Syria, Iran, and India. They also have very different religious backgrounds, and there is a perfect gender balance among employees. All these people cooperate with one another, united by this common project, setting an excellent example for other organisations. Magdas wants to develop a Magdas Social Franchise to facilitate the creation of other Madgas Hotels run by refugees throughout the EU.

It is important to study and learn from these experiences, as they can be replicated elsewhere if adapted to local needs and circumstances. If you want to learn more about our work on investing in services, please take a moment to visit our dedicated webpage.