Aachen likes to use the phrase “Europe is here” to highlight its location in Germany on the border of Belgium and The Netherlands (known as the Euregio Maas-Rhine), as well as its historic status as home to the legendary emperor Charlemagne. Once a manufacturing hub, today the city’s economic strength lies in its high-tech sector and international status as a university research centre. In a city of approximately 260,000, representing over 150 nationalities, one in six residents is a post-secondary student, many with international ties.

Not surprisingly, a city that can attract and retain bright, young minds is also home to a growing number of international companies. One in twelve companies in Aachen is foreign-owned.  The city is also seeing the emergence of a significant rise in the number of  “transnational entrepreneurs.” The city wanted to tap into networks already in place where immigrant entrepreneurs have access to two or more sets of networks, in Aachen and other cities in Germany and in the country or city of their birth.

The network

In 2010, the city began planning the Business Network Aachen with the goal of targeting innovative, growth-oriented “ethnic” companies. Its aim was to combine regional economic expansion with the integration of migrants in the city. By developing a member-driven network of entrepreneurs, executives and leaders from trade associations, public institutions and industry-related organizations, the network would stimulate the growth of business opportunities while changing public perceptions about immigrants and their contribution to the city. Funding for the project came from the city and a state grant, “KOMM-IN North Rhine-Westphalia,” which focuses on innovation in municipal integration work.

Officially launched in April 2011, the Business Network Aachen holds regular networking events as well as workshops to discuss strategies, plans and goals to develop existing and new contacts for building business opportunities. Since the emphasis is on inclusion, not all members need to have an immigrant background. They only need to be interested in strengthening Aachen as an international business location to become a member of the voluntary network. To ensure success, other prominent organizations are also involved, such as the Aachen Chamber of Commerce and the RWTH Aachen University.

Success

“For Aachen, globalization means a great opportunity. We are an international city,” said Mayor Marcel Philipp at the launch of the Network in March 2011.

The Business Network Aachen has already achieved some significant milestones.  Under its winning slogan, “International networking par excellence – made in Aachen,” the organization now has members representing 37 countries and 35 different industries and is seen as a community of “internationally-active/interested” companies. This has given entrepreneurs of all backgrounds the opportunity to break out of the usual pattern of limiting their networking to German-only circles and leverage their skills, resources and diversity to strengthen their potential on national and international economic markets.

The Business Network Aachen has sent successful trade missions to Istanbul and Bursa in Turkey, and hosted a follow-up German-Turkish Business Forum in Aachen that was co-organized with the city, the Aachen Chamber of Commerce and AGIT (Aachener Gesellschaft für Innovation und Technologietransfer), the economic development agency for ‘Technology Region Aachen’. Based on the success of its first year, the network plans to incorporate itself as an association.

As Frank Malis, the director of the Aachen Chamber of Commerce, has commented on the region’s economy: “The much-quoted ‘globalization of the economy’ is taking place right on our doorstep.”

It was an opportune idea. Two years later, the US Census defined Boston as a majority-minority city (where minority groups make up the majority of the population). Today immigrants make up 27 per cent of Boston’s population, speaking 140 languages.

The Mayor’s Office of New Bostonians is the municipal agency dedicated to welcoming the city’s newcomers and getting them established. What makes it successful is the centralized coordination of services, including a pool of interpreters fluent in 17 languages that is available to 20 city departments and for newcomers, free legal advice relating to discrimination and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes offered by the city. The agency also conducts research and serves as an advocate for immigrants citywide. It is the go-to place where an immigrant can find help with practically any problem, confident that the city will respond.

“I created the Office of New Bostonians because I recognized how important diversity is to our city,” said Mayor Thomas Menino in a MNOB newsletter.

Incorporating Change

Run by founding director, Rev. Cheng Imm Tan, the Office’s success comes from it’s ability to work across city departments. Services that are not supported directly may be accessed through a paid staff of five, helped by some 60 volunteers, ranging from community workers to immigration attorneys.

Beyond providing services, the MNOB also monitors the changing needs of Boston’s immigrant communities and fine-tunes its work accordingly. In 2006, a survey of 800 immigrant communities resulted in the New Bostonians Summit Initiative and its focus on three policy priorities: English language acquisition, economic success through family-sustaining jobs, and kindergarten to grade 12 education. A series of summits have since brought together stakeholders from a wide range of sectors (such as business, philanthropy, and labour) as well as extensive input from immigrants and the organizations that serve them.

Success

The success of the Mayor’s Office of New Bostonians is easy to assess. It funds 25 English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for some 1,000 adult learners annually; has helped register more than 5,000 immigrant voters; holds an annual event for immigrants to help them learn how to access city services; developed an ESOL curriculum for parents and caregivers in partnership with the Boston public school system; and developed a dual strategy to help immigrants find productive work through employment and support for immigrant entrepreneurship. The annual “We Are Boston” fundraising gala celebrates the achievements of individuals from diverse communities.

The Mayor’s Office of New Bostonians has become a national model for helping newcomers connect with city government. The latest city to follow Boston’s lead is Chicago which opened its Office of New Americans in 2011, dedicated to welcoming its newly-arrived residents and getting them established in productive lives.

May 30, 2012

10:00 EDT in Toronto, New York
15:00 BST in London
16:00 CEST in Brussels, Berlin, Barcelona

Check your timezone

Free Event!

Learn about the power of city-led public service campaigns in Barcelona (Spain) and Sheffield (UK) that create safe, welcoming communities while challenging myths and changing misconceptions about immigrants and refugees. Local governments have significant capacity to use the authority and instruments of public office to integrate migrants and provide equal opportunities for all residents.

Participants will learn about:

• In Sheffield, with the support of City Council, the city became the first “City of Sanctuary” in the UK.  The movement has been adopted by over 14 cities to dispel the misconceptions around refugees and build a culture of municipal hospitality for people seeking sanctuary.

• In Barcelona, the City Council’s Barcelona Anti-Rumor Network is part of a long-term strategy to improve coexistence among local and new immigrants. This clever public service campaign uses undercover community ‘agents’, humour, up-to-date facts and figures to dispel rumours and prejudice about minorities and immigrants.

• Making it work for you! Find out how these good practices could be replicated or adapted by your organization or in your own ‘city of migration.’

Technical Requirements

No cost to participate. You will need a computer with internet access and a landline telephone. Pre-test System Requirements (may require Flash Player 10.0 to run system testing).

Unable to attend?

• Email us your questions for the Q&A with presenters in advance!
• Tweet your questions during the event @CitiesMigration
• Watch it later! Register now and receive an email notification when archived presentations are online

Speakers

Sarah Eldridge
Development Officer, City of Sanctuary (Sheffield)

Sarah Eldridge started working with refugees after some 20 years as a journalist with the BBC. Her experience in communication led to an interest in the way messages are conveyed, particularly relating to controversial issues like asylum. After two years as Media Officer with the Information Centre about Asylum & Refugees at London’s City University, Sarah decided she wanted to work more closely with how asylum messages are played out on the ground. City of Sanctuary is a movement started in Sheffield that aims to promote a culture of welcome by encouraging acts of hospitality amongst local people and organisations. As Development Officer Sarah works with asylum seekers and refugees to raise awareness by appealing to the basic human instinct of empathy. Refugees share their stories and experiences in the hope of provoking a positive response that will lead to greater understanding and supportive behaviour. City of Sanctuary also organises events where local people and refugees share food, music and other aspects of their cultures, exploring issues of common interest and concern.

Ramon Sanahuja
Director of Immigration and Interculturality, City of Barcelona

Since July 2011, Ramon Sanahuga has been the director of Immigration and Interculturality at the City of Barcelona. Previously, he was the Director of the Immigration and International Cooperation Department where he was responsible for the Barcelona Intercultural plan. He is the Chairman of the Migration working group of Eurocites on behalf of the city of Barcelona (since 2009). He was re-elected as Chairman in March 2012. These working group includes main cities in Europe like Helsinki, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen. Oslo; Stockholm, Munich, etc. He has participated in many Congress on Immigration issues, Seminaries, University Post degrees (ESADE, University of Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and other Communications and Speeches, locally and internationally.

A working plan on immigrant immigration does not happen overnight. In Barcelona, a sustained commitment from city leadership and a willingness to experiment contributed to a winning strategy for the intercultural city.

Unveiled in 2010, the Barcelona Interculturality Plan is the result of more than a decade of work by Barcelona City Council. Intended to serve as a road-map for the Council’s desire to address the challenges of “coexistence in diversity in Barcelona,” the plan represents a new kind of city policy that makes interculturalism, with its focus on the relationships and interaction between citizens, a fundamental and integrated part of city practice across all departments and services.

The model that we have begun to develop in Barcelona has its roots in what unites us, not what separates us.” – Barcelona Interculturality Plan (March 2010)

Rapid Response

In a period of ten years, the immigrant population of Barcelona jumped from 3.5% in 1997 to just over 17% of the city’s residents. It was an important trend that Barcelona City Council was prepared to address, especially since more than 150 nationalities were represented in the city.

In 2001, the Commission on Immigration Policy was established by the Barcelona City Council to identify a pragmatic set of policies that would have the support of all stakeholders, from politicians to local citizens. Chaired by the Mayor, the Commission produced the first Municipal Immigration Plan in 2002, approved unanimously by all the political parties. The Plan was to provide a framework for monitoring the city’s immigration policies and the integration of immigrants at every level of civic life in Barcelona and in Catalan society.

Next, in 2008 the Barcelona Intercultural Dialogue was initiated to engage the wider community on these issues through a programme of collaborative community projects, consultations and public debates aimed at bringing city institutions, organizations and residents into a conversation about the importance the city’s new diversity and its impact on the city’s responsibilities, from town-planning to social participation.

By 2010, this deliberate, broad-based process of community consultation culminated in a new vision for the city. Barcelona’s revised Interculturality Plan was launched to foster “positive interaction, contact, dialogue, and mutual familiarity” amongst immigrants and long-time residents alike and to provide a shared foundation for community life that would transcend cultural differences

Developing the Plan

The Barcelona Interculturality Plan was developed in three stages (2008-2010). The first stage included studies that defined the plan’s concepts and goals as well as an analysis of how Barcelona fared regarding diversity. The second was participatory, based on public opinion surveys (“Five Questions on the Plan”) for both city departments and citizens; survey themes included: “valuation of diversity, difficulties identified for interaction, factors facilitating interaction, common elements shared by all Barcelona residents, and identification of real spaces of interculturality in the city.” Finally, all inputs were brought together to form the core content of the plan itself.

The public consultation was a critical part of drafting the plan. A new website (www.interculturalitat.cat) was designed to host public discussion on the plan and to let visitors follow its development through news updates. Submissions ranged from 1,200 fresh ideas for the Mayor from students aged 14-18 to in-depth interviews with experts to interviews with 170 people across all sectors of the city. Social media like Facebook helped get the word out while nearly 40 public working sessions were held in different territorial and sectorial councils with over 400 participants.

Specialized software was used to analyze all of the data, including text, video and audio. The results showed that 34.5% of respondents saw cultural diversity as an asset while another 21.2% believed it was a threat to society. This analysis also provided a benchmark for monitoring the city’s commitment to developing public consensus around its intercultural goals.

Interaction is at the heat of the strategy

A key outcome of the consultative process was a ‘strategic commitment to interaction’ in all municipal policy — from economic promotion to education. Putting interaction at the centre of the Plan was identified as key to building a shared sense of belonging and a common set of civic values.

The Barcelona Interculturality Plan provides a detailed list of principles, strategies and targets for implementation ranging from the promotion of trilingualism (Catalan, Spanish and the language or origin) to ensuring that new immigrants have easy access to entrepreneurial start-up and business incubation support. The BCN Anti-Rumour campaign addresses discrimination directly while inclusionary policy ensures local services support the ordinary pleasures of daily life, such as sporting and recreational facilities.

Barcelona City Council’s commitment to interculturality – from Council leadership and voice to its action plan, budget allocation for implementation, dedicated cross-departmental co-ordination structure and systems for accountability – is paying off. In August 2011, the Council of Europe ranked Barcelona 6th among 29 cities in its Intercultural Cities Index.

The Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities is often described as a “tool of pro-action”—one which lays out the responsibilities of both the municipal government and citizens towards each other, establishing a common framework for moving forward as a city. It is meant to be the groundwork for a new understanding of citizenship in the city.

A Living Legacy to Human Dignity

On January 1, 2006, the city introduced the Montreal Charter of Rights and Responsibilities (Charte montréalaise des droits et responsabilités), following in the footsteps of many European cities.  Five years later, the Mayor Gérald Tremblay views the development of the charter and its translation into languages like Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic as an important moment in the life of the city.

“It’s a legacy,” he said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette, “because it’s our values that unite us as a people and if we have those values and we start focusing on what’s essential – family, the community, proper housing, parks, cultural activities, we are sharing our values.”

“Then we’ll be recognized one day as people who have respect for human dignity.”

An Idea Grows

Montréal occupies a unique role within Canada. It is a fully bilingual city located in a province that is officially French-speaking. The city has always had a very delicate balancing act to master,  ensuring that speakers of both English and French are treated fairly, while respecting Quebec’s need to preserve its French identity within the larger Canadian framework. As one of the country’s largest urban centres, it is also Quebec’s economic hub, receiving the majority of the province’s immigrants.

Into this mix came an idea that first took root in 1998, in the form of the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City. By 2000, the “Right to the City”  was enshrined in the first such charter and approved by more than 70 cities. Its aim was to identify “the fundamental rights of city dwellers and the basic principles that must govern city life in order that the human rights of all those who live there be respected and encouraged.”

Today the movement to recognize urban rights includes more than 350 European cities. However, in 2002 when the Charter found its first footing in a North America, Montreal  was grappling with a recent provincial decision to amalgamate 27 boroughs in the region around the city of Montreal.  In the mayhem of municipal and administrative re-organization, the Charter offered city leaders an important symbolic document and set of governing principles to guide the way forward.

Charter for an Inclusive City

The Charter is the product of a municipal task force on democracy. The task force met over two and a half years, consulting extensively with the public, and completed its work with the submission of a draft document to the municipal government. By using a process of civic engagement to define the roles and responsibilities of citizens, the Montréal Charter was able to create a covenant between citizens and the city administration that underpins all urban service provision.

It begins by describing the city’s common principles and values including:

• The city is both a territory and a living space in which values of human dignity, tolerance, peace, inclusion and equality must be promoted among all citizens.
• Human dignity can only be preserved as part of a sustained struggle against poverty and all forms of discrimination, and in particular, those based on ethnic or national origin, race, age, social status, marital status, language, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.
• Respect, justice and equity are values that give rise to a collective desire to enrich Montréal’s position as a democratic, united and inclusive city.

The Charter also advocates that active citizenship is necessary to build trust and belonging in the city; that diversity is a resource that “is further enhanced by fostering the inclusion of and harmonious relations among its communities and persons of all origins”; and, that Montreal is a French-speaking city that provides services in English, under the law.

The Charter further delineates the rights and responsibilities under seven broad themes, including democratic life, environment and sustainable development, and municipal services. It also empowers an independent ombudsman to act to investigate complaints based on the charter.

Success

The Montreal Charter has received much international attention, including recognition at the 2006 UN-HABITAT World Forum III as part of its focus on inclusion, urban policies and local democracy. It is one of the reference documents for the Global Charter Agenda for Human Rights in the City project. In October 2011, the Council of Europe’s Intercultural Cities project reported that Montréal placed 5th out of 40 cities in the Intercultural Cities Index.

The city of Montreal has continued to develop tits Charter, fulfilling the final provision of the original charter to review and revise it after four years in 2010, when the review was conducted through a public consultation process. And in partnership with McGill University, the city has started a translation project to ensure a broader community could gain access to the charter which has resulted in versions in seven languages.

The average immigrant entrepreneur has the initiative, drive and appetite for hard work that’s required for success. But managing risk and understanding the legal structures of a new country?  That really is like speaking a new language.

Sanjay Pandrala knows this all too well.  Equipped with a background in horticulture from India and  a dream to start his own business, Pandrala had already attained the required licences his business needed (as mandated by the province of Ontario ) when he ran into trouble. When it came to actually starting his business – registration, contracts and the like – Pandrala found himself lost in the Canadian legal system.

Fortunately Pandrala got help when he needed it most.  A unique Toronto-based legal service called Connect Legal introduced Pandrala to its Free Lawyer Matching Program. It wasn’t long before his new company, BUGMAN Pest Control Landscaping Services and Trading, was up and running thanks to the volunteer  lawyer from a major Toronto law firm who helped him create the customized contracts essential to running his business.

“I could not have started the business without Connect Legal,” said Pandrula while sharing his story on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.

Providing services to new entrepreneurs

Founded in Toronto in November 2009 by commercial services lawyer Marion Annau, Connect Legal fosters entrepreneurship in the immigrant community by providing legal education workshops and pro bono (free) commercial legal assistance to low-resource immigrant entrepreneurs.

Many immigrants are accidental entrepreneurs. A 2010 Statistics Canada study found that 33% of self-employed immigrants became self-employed due to a lack of job opportunities in the paid labour market, compared to just 20% of those self-employed who were non-immigrants.

This makes the services provided by Connect Legal, a not-for-profit, even more critical for newcomers.

“I understand the complexity of legal requirements,” says Annau, “For people who didn’t grow up in our legal system and are speaking English as a second language, they would be even more opaque.”

Connect Legal’s business model was inspired by Annau’s work in New York City with an organization called Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA). Like other American legal clinics serving low-resource groups (for example, North Carolina Lawyers for Entrepreneurs Assistance Program),  VLA relies on volunteer lawyers to deliver pro bono legal assistance to individuals who could not otherwise afford a lawyer.

After returning to Toronto, Annau approached the head of pro bono at the law firm where she had started her career, McCarthy Tétrault LLP, and found support for the fledgling non-profit. Other high profile legal firms were quick to follow.

Two-pronged approach

Clients like Pandrala work with Connect Legal in two ways. First, entrepreneurs are identified for the program through Connect Legal’s partnerships with local community organizations, non-profits and educational institutions with existing programs to support small business. Once these organizations have pre-screened the business idea for viability, the aspiring entrepreneur is eligible for Connect Legals’s commercial law workshops which are targeted to entrepreneurs and small business owners.

For clients whose businesses need further assistance and have been in Canada for less than ten years,  Connect Legal also provides the Free Lawyer Matching Program. Successful applicants to this program are paired with volunteer lawyers from Connect Legal’s well-established professional network. Each lawyer works one-on-one with the client/entrepreneur to address specific legal needs related to the growth of his or her business. This includes drafting contracts, obtaining permits and negotiating agreements that are essential to starting and building their business.

“In my workshops, I tell them it’s like the rules of a soccer game,” says Annau. ”If everybody tries to play soccer and nobody knows the rules, it will be the worst soccer game ever.”

The purpose of commercial law, Annau continues,  is to set up a playing field where everybody knows the rules:  ”Until you know the rules, you either crash into them head first or you run your business in a very inefficient way.”

Success

In the past two years, Connect Legal has worked with over 300 businesses in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA),  engaging a growing network of community partnerships that includes including Centennial College, Microskills Development Canada, Newcomer Centre of Peel, and the Canadian Youth Business Foundation Newcomer Program. In the 2011 program year, 214 entrepreneurs participated in a total of 20 legal education workshops.

Hundreds of hours of pro bono services have been provided to immigrant entrepreneurs who would not otherwise have had access to legal advice. At the same time, 100% of the participating lawyers surveyed are interested in doing more pro bono work with these enterprising new Canadians.

Learn about successful programs in Dublin and Toronto that engage newcomer communities around the rights, responsibilities and rites of urban citizenship. Find out how smart cities are shifting the conversation from voting rights and citizenship status to political participation and a sense of belonging.

Watch the Webinar Video

Resources

• Download the Webinar Powerpoint slides (PDF)
• Watch and listen to the Question and Answer (Q&A) with speakers, Claire Reid, National Program Manager, Building Citizenship, Institute for Canadian Citizenship and Fidèle Mutwarasibo, Integration Manager, Immigrant Council of Ireland

Participants will learn about:

• In Toronto, the Building Citizenship Program connects new  Canadians to welcoming communities through community celebrations and the rites of citizenship. Canada’s well-established citizenship ceremonies travels to the heart of newcomer communities. Watch the webinar presentation
  

• In Dublin, the Count Us In campaign promotes the right to vote to the city’s newest citizens, while educating political parties and candidates about the diverse electorate in Ireland and the need to engage citizens on immigration and integration issues. Watch the webinar presentation.

Speakers

Claire Reid
National Program Manager, Building Citizenship
Institute for Canadian Citizenship

Claire Reid is the National Program Manager of the Building Citizenship program at the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. The program aims to involve the community in the welcoming of new citizens and encourage collective reflection on the importance of open citizenship. Claire is responsible for developing and fostering a national network of over 500 volunteers who organize roundtable discussions on questions of belonging and engagement as part of community citizenship ceremonies. In her work, she liaises frequently with Citizenship and Immigration Canada and is responsible for developing new creative projects that further the mission of the program. Claire has a Masters of Arts in International Human Rights Law and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Politics and International Development.

Fidèle Mutwarasibo
Integration Manager
Immigrant Council of Ireland

Originally from Rwanda and he has been living in Ireland for 16 years. He is currently working as Integration Manager at the Immigrant Council of Ireland (the ICI). He has been managing a number of integration projects and campaigns. In 2011 he ran the Count Us In campaign during the Irish general elections campaign. Before joining the ICI in 2002, he worked with Canal Communities Partnership and the African Cultural Project. He is a regular public speaker on issues pertaining to immigration and integration in Ireland, Europe and further afield. Fidèle is a fellow with the Transatlantic Forum on Migration and Integration (TFMI) established by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and Robert Bosch Stiftung in 2008. He was conferred a PhD in Sociology in December 2010 at University College Dublin. His doctoral thesis is titled: (New) Migrant Political Entrepreneurs: Overcoming Isolation and Exclusion through Creative Resistance in Ireland. He is a founding member of the Africa Centre. In October 2011, he won a special judges’ Metro Eireann’s media and multicultural award.

“That was a real wake up call obviously,” says Claire Whitney, Community Engagement Manager for Waltham Forest, “having terrorists, local people, educated in the borough, and arrested on terrorism charges.”

The arrests were a turning point for the local authority which moved quickly to invest more emphasis and resources into its social cohesion work, first with the local Muslim community and quickly, broadening its efforts to include all youth. Council leadership was rewarded with public recognition for the council’s achievements in dealing with a critical situation.

In 2012 all eyes are once again on Waltham Forest as the borough plays host to the 2012 Olympic Games. Opportunities and challenges co-exist in equal measure as economic and social drivers shape the borough’s future.

Mapping and Tracking

Waltham Forest is one of London’s 32 city boroughs, and among its most diverse, with a history of migration going back to the early nineteenth century when the earliest Jewish immigrants arrived from Central and Eastern Europe. Today, it has a population of 235,000; more than 40 % of its residents have a minority ethnic background with post-war migration coming from the Caribbean and South Asia, and most recently, refugee settlement from Somalia and Eastern Europe. The borough has the third largest Muslim community (15%) in London and one third of the population is under the age of 25.

Improving social cohesion was on of the Waltham Forest Council agenda long before the 2006 arrests. The council established launched its Community Cohesion Task Group as early as 2003 in response to rising tensions related to British participation in the Iraq War. The multi-sector taskforce conducted a survey, Religion and Faith in Focus, that mapped religion, ethnicity, gender and economic activity in the borough and established an invaluable benchmark to guide future development of its cohesion work.

But it was the 2006 arrests that spurred the council into greater action. It commissioned a report, “Breaking down the Walls of Silence,” by the Institute of Community Cohesion (iCoCo). Among its chief findings, it reported that many members of the Muslim community felt unrepresented by the council; young people felt disengaged and often worried about gangs and gang culture; and intergenerational tension were felt across the community.

Where to begin?

A re-assessment of its social cohesion work-to-date against new survey data suggested Waltham Forest Council still had much to do. For example, it became obvious that little of its previous community cohesion strategy had been embedded in schools or within the community. Also, the prior assumption that the borough’s twelve Muslim councilors ‘represented’ their religious community, or a wider Muslim mosaic, was dashed when closer examination revealed that all were members of the same mosque.

Determined to get it right, Council turned to the iCoCo report to inform the next iteration of the borough’s Community Cohesion Strategy (2008-11). The revised strategy identified three priorities:

1. understanding and responding to the impact of migration and newly arrived communities;

2. building trust, contact and dialogue between communities; and

3. promoting active citizenship and engagement.

The strategy led to a new wave of reports documenting and measuring migrant and cohesion issues as well as projects involving interfaith activity, youth engagement and women’s groups.

New Ideas

Two projects among many from Waltham Forest have been singled out for their innovative work from different parts of the borough’s cohesion agenda.

The iMuslim project was developed in direct response to the tensions in the borough due to the arrests. A series of short films were made by a group of young Muslims to explore the portrayal of their community in the mainstream media. They helped recruit the film company and were then trained to storyboard, film, edit and even animate the films. They also conducted interviews and discussion group sessions with nationally renowned journalists and script writers from the television series, The Bill. Not only did the young people appreciate having their voices heard by media professionals, they also learned that the media is not all against them and that they can change negative perceptions and stereotypes.

On the other hand, the Youth Independent Advisory Group (YIAG) was developed to create a way for young people to interact productively with police. In particular, the group developed training for police regarding a controversial subject for area young people – to improve how police conduct ‘stop and searches.’ Another part of the work involves youth as peer trainers on anger and conflict management. The feedback on the sessions, which have involved young offenders has been very positive with comments like “they could relate to me, they understood us more.”

In the background to this work, however, was the implementation of the national Prevent strategy in 2007, the “preventative strand of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy.” It too became an element of the Waltham Forest Community Cohesion Strategy (2008-11). Admittedly, Prevent has remained a challenge for the local ‘cohesion agenda.’

Success

“Waltham Forest’s robust leadership, particularly from elected members and officers, has been augmented by police, head teachers and faith community leaders. It has been a crucial element in terms of tension monitoring and maintaining cohesion in the longer term.” [Beacon Award]

Waltham Forest’s many-pronged response to the high profile arrests have led to much recognition. It first received the Beacon Status (now the Local Innovation Awards Scheme) in 2008, followed by another Beacon award for Building Cohesive and Resilient Communities in 2009 and 2010 with the Waltham Forest Metropolitan Police Service.

New Challenges

Today cohesion work in Waltham Forest has new challenges. The national government introduced severe austerity cuts in the spring of 2011, resulting in an immediate loss of funding for Waltham Forest’s cohesion work, totaling 65 million pounds over three years and a reduction of 40% of staff. This was followed by the UK riots in August, which spread to the borough.

“There are two issues emerging for Waltham Forest. One is how do we deliver cohesion work going forward and building on the good work that we have done,” say Whitney. “But also the potential cohesion impact as a result of the budget reduction.”

While the YIAG program is still running, the pressure means that local authorities like Waltham Forest, are looking to continue their work with existing voluntary agencies.