Leeds City Council’s Communities Team has long been doing great work with migrants and refugees to help them arrive in the city, overcome cultural differences and connect with all the services they need to start their new life in Leeds. Two years ago, Leeds’ Migrant Access Project won a EUROCITIES Award for best practice and since then our colleagues who are working on inclusion have been very active sharing their knowledge with other cities from across Europe.
Earlier this week, Leeds hosted the EUROCITIES Roma Inclusion Working Group and welcomed 50 local and international inclusion experts to unpick big issues like safeguarding, gathering and using migration data, and creating trust between local authorities and migrant communities. The group was joined by representatives of both the Roma community and other immigrant groups who shared their personal stories and were very open about the challenges and opportunities migrants are facing in Leeds.
During the two-day conference, Tales of a City took our guests on a fascinating refugee-led city tour retracing the route of someone who is new to the city.
Taking away the learning from the Roma Inclusion Working Group meeting, EUROCITIES will now lobby the European Union institutions as they are discussing the post-2020 EU strategy for Roma inclusion. If successful, it will have enough weight to reimagine and strengthen the place of Roma communities in all societies across Europe.
Read more about this meeting on the EUROCITIES website.
Leeds, UK
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