The annual meeting of the Intercultural Cities (ICC) coordinators brought together the representatives of the 100 cities that are member of the ICC programme, including non-European cities such as Montreal (Canada), Haifa (Israel) and Amman (Jordan), and the cities that joined in 2016 (Rijeka, Paris and Erlangen).
Participants discussed front-line challenges linked to the present migratory situation, as well as ways for building bilateral and multilateral connections, undertaking common initiatives, and further develop both the intercultural cities’ network and the intercultural integration policy paradigm in light of the continuous growth of the number of member cities.
How do the cities communicate their values, ideas and successes? How can the ICC programme better equip member cities with know-how on “hot” challenges? How to capitalise on the knowledge and experience of the members of national networks? But also, and very importantly, how to ensure continuity of political commitment and sustainability of intercultural policies when the leadership in the cities changes? These were some of the questions that the participants addressed, together with the issue of the efficient management of the ICC network.
The ICC coordinators agreed to organise a milestone event next year to celebrate the ICC 10th anniversary and, at the same time, to present the main achievements of the recent years and text new working methods (eg. Induction courses for new members, communication toolkits, wider anti-rumours projects, mentoring from pilot cities, certifications for intercultural NGOs, barometer to measure the diversity in business, etc.).
Finally, the coordinators were also called to approve the ICC Strategy for the period 2016-2019 and to discuss the setting-up of an inclusive integration policy lab that will aim at building an experimental framework for multi-level and multi-stakeholder governance of migrant and refugee integration in order to enable transfer of innovation and good practice from local to regional and national levels.
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