• Posted 06-Apr-2020

COVID-19 – REACHING OUT to migrant communities in Europe

How are cities and regions across Europe reaching out to migrants and refugees and what other measures are being taken?

• Spain – Catalonia region

The Catalan Government has published, with the help of volunteers and civil society organisations, information about COVID-19 and recommendations on what people need to do in 18 different languages. They have also prepared audio recordings about COVID-19 in 35 different languages, which can be shared through social media.

The documents and recordings can be downloaded from the Catalan Government's website, which is updated regularly. For some of the languages, content is not on the government website, but available at the website of the organisation Creación Positiva.

• Sweden – Skåne region

Civic and Health Communication Skåne, which is a part of Partnership Skåne, has received a national assignment related to the coronavirus, given its experience with evidence-based methods of health communication in migrants' native languages, coupled with a nationally unique capacity to quickly produce and share high-quality information in a number of languages nationwide.

Skåne has developed a concept for disseminating daily webcasts in different languages. The webcasts feature general information about COVID-19, daily updates from the Public Health Authority, questions and answers, and basic risk and protective factors. The programme will be launched nationwide.

• Germany – City of Altena (North Rhine-Westfalia)

Altena is sharing important and useful information via WhatsApp and also on Facebook in four differrent languages (German, English, Arabic and Kurdish) thanks to the help of native speakers.

 For more examples of outreach by civil society, regional and local governments, national authorities and other integration stakeholders go to the European Website on Integration here.

Please share your good practices by sending an e-mail to: [email protected]

Source: European Committee of the Regions News (https://bit.ly/3e4kLpJ)