IncluCities [closed project]11

Being an inspiration for others is the best recognition of our work

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IncluCities continues the series presenting the key people behind the project with a special double interview. Vincent Vanhalewyn, alderman responsible for social cohesion in Schaerbeek, and Janaki Decleire, Director of VIA association, a vital project partner, answer questions on the integration of migrants and the impacts of the Ukrainian refugee crisis on the municipality of Schaerbeek, an IncluCities mentor city.

Schaerbeek is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region. A rich cultural diversity characterises its population of over 133,000 inhabitants. Where are the newcomers from?

Janaki DECLEIRE:

Schaerbeek is indeed a cosmopolitan municipality. Over one-third (37%) of the population is of foreign nationality, not counting people who have just become Belgians.
Those who come to our BAPA VIA reception office – which is tasked with welcoming newcomers – do not only come from the municipality of Schaerbeek since our reception programme is open to anyone living in the Brussels area. Approximately one-fifth comes from Schaerbeek and another 18 per cent from Molenbeek, and the rest from other municipalities. These people are mainly from Syria, Morocco, India, Afghanistan and Guinea.

Schaerbeek is the fourth-most densely populated municipality in Brussels. How does this affect city life?

Vincent VANHALEWYN:  

Schaerbeek’s population has continuously grown – despite 2020 being an unusual year, with the lowest growth recorded in the Region since 1998 – and higher growth is expected to resume, albeit to a lesser extent. We have a multicultural population, with over 100 nationalities in 2019.

This situation is both an asset and a challenge regarding public infrastructure, with a significant need for nurseries, schools, housing, etc. To meet these needs, we have launched several urban projects, notably with the support of the Region in the framework of the neighbourhood contracts, to improve public space, develop social infrastructures and housing and, to a lesser extent, develop our economic and social fabric. 

Since the 1960s, Schaerbeek has also developed an important and active network of associations, which helps to create links within the neighbourhoods and improve the coexistence of people with diverse backgrounds.

If managing migration is a national competence, it becomes a local responsibility as soon as people arrive in a specific territory. What are you responsible for?

Vincent VANHALEWYN:

Indeed, the municipality intervenes at different levels in the reception of migrants, from keeping and updating the civil register to the registration of new arrivals in the register of foreigners. The objective is also to ensure citizens’ well-being and make sure that everyone finds their place.

With its neighbourhood service and Urban Prevention Programme (PPU), it seeks to create a close relationship with the population to establish a dialogue and improve community life in Schaerbeek. Since 2016, the municipalities of Schaerbeek and Molenbeek have promoted the opening of a Reception Office for Newcomers (BAPA), one of the central actors in integrating newcomers in the Brussels Region, giving Schaerbeek a significant role in the reception of migrants.

We’ve witnessed a united feeling in welcoming Ukrainian refugees across European cities, including in Brussels. How did you manage the first few months of the Ukrainian refugee crisis? What is the trend, and what are the most pressing issues?

Vincent VANHALEWYN:

In the first couple of months of the crisis, the Municipality provided a webpage with basic information for Ukrainian refugees regarding accommodation, administrative procedures and rights, including the existence of the CPAS (the Brussels welfare agency). A temporary coordinator has been appointed at the municipal level to centralise the information and to answer questions from people, both refugees and Schaerbeek citizens.

Thanks to a regional grant, the support has been formalised since July, with two additional municipal officers offering refugees and anyone else involved in the reception process all the basic information, including psychosocial support for Ukrainian refugees.

While waiting for the Region’s provision of collective housing, the municipality had to rely strongly on volunteers to host the refugees during the first months of the crisis.

Janaki DECLEIRE:

VIA reacted very quickly to the arrival of many Ukrainian people and this was done without undermining the reception capacity towards other newcomers. Thanks to the financial support from the French Community Commission, we were quickly able to hire new Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking colleagues to organise 15-hour information sessions adapted to this new audience in their language, thus offering them the same service as any other person coming to our offices.

As part of the IncluCities project, Schaerbeek is participating in a mentoring process with the Latvian city Jelgava. What can you offer them, and what is the most important lesson from this process for you? 

Vincent VANHALEWYN:

In the IncluCities project, we are in a mutual learning process with the city of Jelgava. This allows us to think strategically about the integration of newcomers and evaluate our practices. Thanks to this project, we were able to look into the relevance of creating a digital information tool for newcomers, such as a smartphone application, and to learn from what other local authorities have done in Belgium and beyond. The city of Mechelen has done excellent work, for example, with their Welcome App. The non-profit organisation DUNE has created a special app, Le Bon Plan, listing all of Brussels’ diverse social and medical support services. The project’s funding did not allow us to go further in developing a mobile application; nevertheless, these experiences inspired us to update the VIA website in the framework of the project.

Jelgava has recently had to bravely deal with a large migratory flow due to the war in Ukraine. The municipality of Schaerbeek has already had to deal with numerous migratory flows in the past. We wanted to share this expertise with our Latvian partners by showing them what we have done, hoping to give inspiration in a medium and long-term perspective on integration.

One of the outcomes of this project is also a One-stop-shop, an improved online platform for newcomers in the municipality – can you present the main elements of this website and its objective?

Janaki DECLEIRE:

With the budget allocated by the IncluCities project, we could rework the page on our website BAPA VIA describing the welcome path and make it more accessible to all. The route is explained more playfully and intuitively than before. The content is also translated into ten languages and is available in a spoken version for people with reading difficulties because there are many people who do not read or have very little school education among the newcomer population. We have also created a new page offering an essential directory of services helpful to any newcomer in various fields, such as social assistance and legal services, health, children’s services and French language courses. This way, people who do not wish to start a reception process at VIA will have helpful addresses to find answers to their questions

The IncluCities project is coming soon to an end. What has been the main benefit for you?

Janaki DECLEIRE:

The most significant benefit is the exchange between the different partners of the project. Participating in a programme that brings together eight different cities that share their own experience of welcoming newcomers is inspiring. Even if their context and reality are different, understanding these various realities and seeing what they have been able to put in place, what worked well and what did not, allows us to feed our reflection and enrich our work.

The role of a mentor has also made us even more conscious of the road we have travelled since 2016 when VIA was established.  If we can radiate and inspire other actors in the field of integration of migrants, it is an excellent recognition of our work.

Schaerbeek is described as being “as stubborn as the donkey” (the symbol of Schaerbeek) and “as fertile as the land on which the cherry trees grow”. What do these sayings mean?

Vincent VANHALEWYN:

In the past, the people of Schaerbeek, who grew cherries, had the privilege of taking donkeys to the Brussels market to sell them to the brewers who made beer (Kriek!). When they arrived, the people of Brussels would exclaim: Hei! doë zên die êzels van Schoerebeik (in dialect: Here come the donkeys of Schaerbeek!).

Even today, Schaerbeek is called the “City of Donkeys”, and its inhabitants are proud of it!  New projects regularly flourish in Schaerbeek, like the cherry trees. It is a breeding ground to bring the municipality to life and enhance its value on various levels: community life, solidarity and its rich heritage.

Janaki DECLEIRE:

I agree and can add that our work illustrates this notion of fertility. We are constantly setting up new projects to respond to the needs expressed by our beneficiaries, whether it is the creation of our immersion house the setting up of the volunteering project or the PEPA programme (an entrepreneurial pathway for newcomers). In this way, we draw on the exchanges that we can make, but also, in a co-creative approach, on the needs expressed by the newcomers with whom we work. They are truly the ones who are the basis of all our new projects and we try to be as close as possible to their needs.

As for the word “stubborn”, it perfectly illustrates our desire to keep moving forward and to take up the challenges that come on the way!

“The city is what unites us, regardless of where we came from”

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Fuenlabrada is a Spanish municipality located in the Madrid metropolitan area. The IncluCities mentor city has experienced rapid population growth because of migration. In response, the municipal authorities developed policies of social cohesion and equality that have become a reference for effective inclusion practices.

Francisco Javier Ayala Ortega has extensive experience in the field of public policies and held various positions in the Fuenlabrada City Council before being elected mayor in 2018. He chairs the International Relations Commission of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and is CEMR Spokesperson for Employment. With a degree in law and a passion for the Andalusian dance, he promotes equal rights, active participation and collective work as the foundations of inclusive cities.

In the past year marked by COVID, mayors of cities across the world have faced unprecedented challenges. How did the city of Fuenlabrada manage the pandemic?

We had a clear strategy from the very beginning: making the municipal budget available to support the city hospital and to reach out to people most affected by the lockdown, especially the elderly and children. I am proud that within only a few days, we were able to set up an effective field hospital for COVID patients next to the city’s hospital centre.

The world is being rocked by challenging issues – the pandemic, recovery, climate change, migration. How do you see the role of cities in tackling them?

There is no doubt that local governments are the ones who are the closest to the citizens and, therefore, the ones who know best about their needs and understand the reality of their territories. Of course, the challenges are global, and they require the collaboration of the international community in order to create common efforts and achieve global goals. But the answers, the ways we reach these common objectives of recovery, the fight against climate change or the way we deal with migration, must be adapted to the population on the ground. In this process, the local governments play an essential and leading role.

The population of Fuenlabrada has grown in the past 40 years because of migration. The population tripled, and the average age of the population is now 6 years lower than the national average. How did the city adjust?

In my view, there are two main keys to addressing this challenge: one is civil participation and the other is social cohesion policies. Fuenlabrada is an important point of reference when we talk about citizens’ participation. We’ve managed to develop the participation of citizens through their involvement in transformation processes with a common goal of improving our city and the lives of the citizens. We’ve also been seen as a successful example of cohesion policies in the past decades. In parallel with the population growth, we have developed innovative programmes that helped us decrease the unemployment rate and improve inclusion.  

What is the current migrant situation in Fuenlabrada?

Currently, the foreign population represents slightly less than 13.5 per cent of the city’s population, and the majority are people between 20 and 49 years old. Most of them come from Romania, Morocco, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, Colombia and China. On integration, our efforts are focused on adequate municipal services responding to the basic needs of the newcomers. Furthermore, we support the development of intercultural and transversal integration projects. Our aim is also to promote the associations that best represent migrants, to motivate them to actively participate in city ​​life and to search for solutions to common problems. Thanks to all of these efforts, we established an important network of citizen participation. Among more than 400 registered entities, there are around 60 migrant-led or pro-immigration organizations.

How can we prevent social exclusion, especially among vulnerable groups such as migrants, if unemployment is already particularly high among less skilled young people?

In recent years, Fuenlabrada has developed an EU-funded project called MILMA, which was selected among hundreds of projects across Europe. Its objective was to foster collaboration among the public administration, companies and other organisations. More concretely, MILMA enables job seekers to connect with potential employers. With the development of efficient and innovative models to access employment, we managed to include the unemployed people, both nationals and migrants, in the city life in Fuenlabrada. The response in participation was beyond our expectations, and we intend to turn it into a model that could be exported to other cities across Europe.

What role is played by the narrative about migrants in the integration process? How do you tackle negative attitudes and disinformation in your city?

For years Fuenlabrada has participated in the Anti-Rumours Network. This programme is one of our best practices in tackling racism and xenophobia. It aims to teach children and adults the value of truth and warns against false harmful rumours and prejudice in the local community and society at large. In addition, we take part in an already well-established project like the Coexistence Board (Mesa por la Convivencia), where dozens of neighbourhoods and social or migrant organisations work together. This initiative has also launched a Solidarity Network to help people affected by the pandemic. This showcased how we can all work together side by side if we have a common goal – to fight the pandemic and help all fellow citizens, making sure no one is left behind.

As a mentor in IncluCities, you work together with the Greek city of Levadia to improve its integration practices and develop tools for decent employment of refugees and migrants. What do you expect from this participation?  

We will learn a lot from Levadia’s experience, its policies and its activities, as well as from the other cities, municipalities and associations participating in the project. On the other hand, working on an action plan to improve local integration of migrants and refugees, and sharing experiences, is a very good methodology that will allow us to assess our own actions and improve them.

Do you think that people are where they come from? How much, for instance, did the fact that you were born in Córdoba mark you as a person or as a politician in Fuenlabrada? Do you still visit the Andalusia regional house and dance “sevillanas”?

People have many dimensions. We are influenced by where we were born and where we spent our childhood, and we are also impacted by the places where we spend our lives. We are shaped not only by places but also by people. I was born in Córdoba, I spent part of my childhood in Almería and, since I was 6, I have been a neighbour of Fuenlabrada. I partially represent all those people whose parents came to this city 30 or 40 years ago from Andalusia, Extremadura or Castilla La Mancha in search of a better future. You see, I understand people coming from other countries with the dream of a better life. However, I can say I am from Fuenlabrada, and the city is what unites us regardless of where we come from. Yes, Andalusian blood also runs through my veins, and you can notice this too, especially when I dance.

How do you maintain contact with your city fellows?

Daily, I deal with many people, individuals who approach me on the street or address me through social media. I walk around my city every day. It is essential not to lose direct and permanent contact with citizens. However, it is also important to keep in touch with the space, the streets, the squares and the parks.