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Webinar: Routes to belonging: the role of cities in the civic and political integration of immigrants
Mar 24, 2009  The first event in our 2009 series is on the role of cities in accelerating the civic and political integration of immigrants, with city representatives from Dublin and New Haven, Connecticut. On March 24, Cities of Migration hosted a webinar about successful municipal integration strategies, introduced by Howard Duncan, International Metropolis project, and hosted by Ratna Omidvar, Maytree.
Both of these cities are featured in our Good Ideas in Integration collection for their groundbreaking work: Dublin for its recent immigrant voting campaign, and New Haven for its brave “Elm City ID” card for non citizens, the first of its kind in the USA.
Webinar Presenters
Kica Matos
Community Services Administrator
City of New Haven, Connecticut
Kica Matos is the Community Services Administrator with the City of New Haven, Connecticut. Ms. Matos is formerly the Executive Director of Junta for Progressive Action, New Haven’s oldest Latino, community based organization. She is also a clinical visiting lecturer in law at Yale Law School. For most of her adult life, she has devoted herself to advocacy in the area of human rights and civil rights, working in non-profit organizations including Amnesty International and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 2005 she was the recipient of the national “New Frontier” award.
Cormac O’Donnell,
Strategic Policy Manager, Intercultural Unit
Dublin City Council
Cormac O’Donnell is the Strategic Policy Manager of the Intercultural Unit of Dublin City Council. He has undertaken and overseen an array of research and consultative work in the areas of housing, social inclusion, new community development, interculturalism and integration and led the development of policy and practice at local government level. In 2008 Cormac coordinated Dublin’s 2008 Migrant Voters Registration Initiative. Cormac’s was awarded a 2008 ‘Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Award’ for his work with the Central-Eastern European Network.
Howard Duncan
Executive Head, International Metropolis Secretariat
Ottawa, Canada
Howard Duncan is the Executive Head, International Metropolis Secretariat, Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Metropolis is an international network for comparative research and public policy development on migration, diversity, and immigrant integration in cities in Canada and around the world. In 1997, Howard joined the Metropolis Project as its International Project Director and became the Executive Head of International Metropolis in 2002. He has concentrated on increasing the Project’s benefits to the policy community by creating effective opportunities for direct and frank exchange between researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, increasing Metropolis’ geographic reach, and expanding the range of issues it confronts.
Ratna Omidvar
President, Maytree
Toronto, Canada
Ratna Omidvar is President of Maytree. Maytree is a private Canadian charitable foundation established in 1982, committed to reducing poverty and inequality in Canada and to building strong civic communities. Maytree is Canada’s only private foundation that focuses on the acceleration of immigrant and refugee settlement. Maytree has developed well-recognized in-house expertise on creating and implementing practical solutions through its programs, policy insights and grants. As an independent voice, Maytree has demonstrated its capacity to raise public awareness and to speak on the issue of immigrant inclusion from a basis of fact and substance, and in the interest of nation building. Ratna also serves as a director of the Toronto City Summit Alliance. She was the first executive director of the Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council (TRIEC) and is its founding chair. In 2006, Ratna was appointed to the Order of Ontario.
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