CapaCityMetro - SSIMM international

THE CONTEXT

In addition to the municipality of Venice itself (that includes the city of Mestre), the Venice Metropolitan Area (VMA) consists of three quite distinct subareas, making governance of the 44 municipalities that compose it all the more difficult.

As for migration flows, in the past twenty years the number of migrants living in the VMA has been growing at a higher pace than in the Veneto region and in the country.Many small-size city governments find it increasingly difficult to cope with the needs of the foreign population. In recent years, the problem was further compounded by the arrival of a growing number of asylum-seekers.

Nevertheless, within the VMA there are numerous services focussing on the foreign population, ranging from all-purpose or issue-specific helpdesks to different innovative practices of reception and integration. However, local authorities, ngos and associations carry out such services as one-off initiatives without concerning themselves with the objective of sharing results and lessons learnt.

OBJECTIVES AND RESULTS

CapaCityMetro is an action-research project conceived to foster the exchange of experiences, results and lessons learnt among the many actors providing services to the foreign population within the VMA, and the activities they implement.

Among the main results/products:

the creation and consoldation of networks, established through a series of participative workshops organized during the project (more than 300 participants in total);
Capacity buiding of local stakeholders through a series of training courses (LLL) on crucial issues such as participation, cultural mediation, social work with migrants, legislation (video of the courses, in italian, available at this link)
The on-line map “M-APP, MigrantiAPP” providing detailed information on all the services in the VMA, accessible here: for PC | for smartphone/tablet (SOAndroid)

detailed information on activities/products available (in italian) here