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Hello Europe Spring Quarterly!

News & updates from our community this Spring!

By Ashoka, Hello Europe

April 14^th, 2021

In Hello Europe we are celebrating that Spring has finally sprung! The sun is out, the flowers are blooming and everything seems to be a little bit more bright and colorful. To suit this mood, on this edition we want to spread good news and updates from the work that we have been doing over the past few months.

Since Hello Europe was launched 5 years ago, we have worked hard to create a positive impact in the field of migration by building a community of change leaders, creating a policy unit in Brussels and launching local accelerators across Europe and Latin America! Now, we are in a pivotal moment to leverage our assets and create even more impact. We are excited to share with you, that Hello Europe is building a new strategy, shifting its focus from scaling individual solutions to building Ecosystem Accelerators. Keep reading to find out more about this Ecosystem Accelerators together with other exciting opportunities and milestones achieved in the areas of policy and narrative.

Hellopreneurs Gathering and Hello Europe’s New Strategy

We are excited to share with you that last month, on March 18th, we celebrated our Hellopreneurs Gathering, a unique opportunity to bring together the Hello Europe social innovators from across Europe and abroad. This online meeting was the first time that we had invited the whole network of Hellopreneurs in one call. It wasn’t an easy exercise since all our social innovators are scattered all across the continent. Check out the recording here.

During our gathering, we introduced the new Hellopreneurs selected last year through the Call for Solutions and we shared key milestones achieved in the areas of policy, accelerators and narrative. We also had some networking moments and discussed new strategies and opportunities with our social innovators' community.

Over the next three years, we are shifting our focus from scaling individual solutions to building Ecosystem Accelerators. What does this mean? We want to build 4-5 clusters (groups) of social innovators around key migration-related topics. In these clusters, social innovators, migrant leaders and other key stakeholders from policy, corporate, research and media sectors will design insight pieces, a policy strategy and new collaborative actions together. We plan to match this with an innovation fund to jumpstart these joint actions and projects while spreading the insights from these groups through communication efforts to reach key stakeholders within and outside the social innovation ecosystem.

For the first time, we presented the draft of this strategy beyond our team, as we considered it vital for it to be validated by our Hello Europe Community before taking it public. We were pleased to receive lots of positive feedback. Now, we are reaching out to partners for strategic support, including fundraising, media strategy and professional support. If you would like to learn more about how to collaborate with this new Ecosystem Accelerators vision (i.e. through funds, skills, or your time), please reach out to Kenny Clewett kclewett@ashoka.org.

We launched the Hello Europe System Change Learning Community!

We are thrilled to announce that on April 13th we kicked-off our Hello Europe System Change Learning Community! We launched an online platform, WeChangers, that connects people and organizations who are changing the world for the better. This learning community of Hellopreneurs and Changemakers enables them to have access to the System Change Course material. Moreover, participants will be able to connect through weekly group calls and discussion channels with other social innovators working in the migration field.

This course builds on the material and experience provided by the Ashoka Europe Fellowship Program, based on the methodology of Ashoka Globalizer Program. Over the next 9 weeks, the learning community will analyse the system they are working in and will explore a range of interventions to scale their impact. Hello Europe has adapted the course to suit the challenges and opportunities faced by social entrepreneurs and changemakers working in migration and will provide examples of system change from our Hellopreneurs.

Click here to find out more about what we mean by System Change! If you are a Hellopreneur or a Changemaker interested in the course, please contact Tania Barros tbgleisberg@ashoka.org.

SCALING OUR COMMUNITY OF CHANGEMAKERS FOR MIGRATION ACCROSS EUROPE!

Last year, Hello Europe launched a pilot project in Spain to identify leaders with migrant backgrounds who were leading or contributing to small or large-scale social initiatives to improve migrant lives. We discovered many powerful changemakers with migrant background! Over the last few months, we co-created with this group of Changemakers a community and together co-organized different webinars and workshops to strengthen these social entrepreneurs’ initiatives and provided a platform to increase their visibility. We are excited to share that we are now going to scale this community across Europe!

Our first step is to map powerful changemakers with migrant backgrounds and from other underrepresented communities across Europe. This will allow us to identify, select and gather relevant insights from 50+ young leaders in regard to challenges on diversity, equity, and inclusion. It is also the groundwork to build a strong changemaker community, enrich the broader ecosystem and make their stories more visible to change the migration narrative.

To do this well, we need your help! A lot of you know (or are!) powerful changemakers with migrant background and from underrepresented communities. Please check out the criteria below, and if you or someone you know fits it, please nominate him/her or yourself by filling out this short form or contact Tania Barros tbgleisberg@ashoka.org.

Nominated changemakers will be contacted and invited to share their stories and insights through interviews to be collected into a publication. The publication with the changemakers' stories and insights will be shared with the sector at large and other key stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, etc.)

Criteria

A Changemaker for Migration is an active agent of social change with a personal connection to migration who has led a small or large-scale social initiative that contributes to improving the lives of other migrants.

The Person:

Leadership (Entrepreneur or Intrapreneur): changemaker with proven entrepreneurial leadership who lead, founded or contributed to an initiative in the migration field. They may have been a key player in a specific project, or they may have led their own initiative or advocated for the cause.
Personal Connection: a passion driven by their personal connection and relation to migration. Changemaker with diverse racial or ethnic identities or from a migrant background.
Team Player: has a team and track record of team player.
Age: between 18-35 years old.

Their Work:

Innovation: novelty of their work.
Impact: established proof of concept at local or municipal level. Their work contributes to improving the lives of other migrants and/or ethnic minorities.
Relation to Migration, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: their project has a connection to improving diversity, equity and inclusion either directly or indirectly.

To view some examples of Changemakers from migrant background click here.

Nominate here

POLICY: ADVANCING LEGAL MIGRATION AND MOBILITY

We have been busy in our Hello Europe Policy Unit. As our community expands, so does the reach of our policy engagement. We have continued to build on our COVID-19 response to put forward innovative solutions to support migrants and refugees’ inclusion, with a special focus on advancing legal migration and mobility. We got plenty of exciting news to share with you!

policy salon: New AVENUES FOR LEGAL AND LABOUR MIGRATION

The New EU Pact on Migration and Asylum proposes to promote legal migration to the EU through a new skills and talent package, the publication of which is expected to take place later this year. This package will contain legislative changes to current mechanisms - mainly the Directive on Long-term Residents, the Single Permit Directive, and the EU Blue Card Directive.

In a joint statement to the European Commission’s public consultation on the future of legal migration, the Center for Global Development (CGD), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), porCausa Foundation, and Hello Europe assess the implementation of legal migration mechanisms and make concrete recommendations.

To test these recommendations, we organized a policy salon bringing together more than 120 representatives from the EU institutions, cities, local communities, the private sector and businesses, migrant rights associations, trade unions, and diaspora groups! Together, we discussed the role that each actor can play in promoting legal labour migration from third countries to Europe in the years to come and chart a way forward. If you missed this exciting event, you can watch the recording here.

In an op-ed co-authored with MEP Damian Boeselager and published in EurActiv, we call on the EU to seize the opportunity that labour migration brings to our societies by investing in regular channels for migration.

iNNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO INTEGRATION AND INCLUSION OF MIGRANTS

Following up on the European Commission’s Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion for the period 2021-2027 published in November last year, the first of a series of mutual learning events was organised by the Commission to exchange innovative practices, with a focus on skills assessment and development, as well as on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labour market integration and social inclusion of migrants.

Ashoka Fellow and Hellopreneur David Kerber, founder and CEO of More than Shelters, was invited to make a presentation of his Integration Hub concept developed in Berlin through a co-creative and participative approach. Hellopreneur Nicolai Strøm-Olsen participated in an elevator pitch with his Start-up pre-school project.

If you want to read about all the projects presented at the conference, click here.

GIVING SOCIAL INNOVATORS A SEAT AT THE TABLE

Through our Policy Unit, we are bridging the gap between our Hellopreneurs and Changemakers & Policymaking. We connect our social innovators with key stakeholders and decision-makers.

Hellopreneurs and Changemakers in the first meeting of the Commission expert Group on the views of migrants

Our Policy Unit is constantly striving to place migrants at the center of the conversation. We are proud to announce that two of our Hellopreneurs (social innovators) and Changemakers from migrant background are among the 24 members of the expert group, selected from a total of 354 applications!

Last November, the first meeting of the Commission expert group on the views of migrants took place with the aim to involve and consult migrants in the design and implementation of EU migration, asylum and integration policies. This first introductory meeting included an exchange of views with the Commissioner for Home affairs, Ylva Johansson on how integration policies can be part of a broader effort to foster social inclusion and build resilient and cohesive societies.

Creating Positive Change in the field of Migration through Cross-Sectoral Collaboration

Last December, Hello Europe and the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative (GRSI) came together in an online policy workshop to explore ways in which cross-sectoral collaboration in the field of migration can create positive change. It was exciting to bring together so many actors including 11 Hellopreneurs, private sector and network partners, including UNHCR and the Government of Canada! This initial workshop will be followed by a second workshop that will move from the conceptual level to discuss more in detail how social entrepreneurs can become more engaged in the community sponsorship ecosystem.

Hellopreneur in ADMin4ALL Final Conference 15th April

We are excited to share with you that Nuha Boğa, Embark Program Director and new Hellopreneur, will participate on April 15th at the final conference of the ADMin4all project. After 5 years of implementation, ADMin4all, a project co-founded by the European Union and implemented by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) is finally coming to an end. ADMin4all has been doing great work in supporting local authorities across Europe in fostering the social inclusion of migrants with EU officials and representatives from different EU cities. In the session dedicated to private sector engagement and innovative partnerships, Nuha Boğa will share their experience working with the private sector for refugee youth empowerment in Turkey.

Don´t miss the ADMin4all final conference. Register here to attend the event.

5th Network for Dialogue Meeting (KAICIID)

Our Policy Unit also participated at the 5th Network for Dialogue meeting of the International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) which took place at the end of March. Members of the Network for Dialogue come from 11 European countries and represent civil society organizations and faith-based organizations working on projects related to social inclusion of refugees and migrants in Europe.

The meeting aimed to discuss strategies for advocacy for grassroots organisations and how their knowledge from the field can be included in policymaking at the local or national level. We shared the methodologies and expertise we have gained when engaging with policymakers in Europe in the field of migration and integration.