Problem addressed

Brno, the second largest city in Czechia, has a large migrant population. Around 8% of the city’s population is made up of 33 000 migrants from diverse cultural backgrounds. Cultural and language barriers can make communication between public officers and migrants difficult, resulting not only in misunderstandings and conflicts, but also in difficulties for migrants to access education and health services.

Innovative solution

The municipal authorities of Brno launched a project in 2017 to make public services accessible to all as part of the Strategic Plan for Social Inclusion of the Municipal Department for Social Affairs and the State Agency for Social Inclusion. The project, entitled Increasing Intercultural Permeability of Public Institutions, introduces a new role in social services – the intercultural assistant. The assistant, employed by the municipality, is responsible for removing barriers between migrants and public service officers. The project’s innovation lies in its dual approach: it helps migrants access public services while also building the skills of public officers on how to work with migrants more effectively.

The assistants provide personalised support and counselling to migrants. They can accompany migrants to meetings with different public services, hospital visits and schools and mediate and translate conversations with public service officers. They can also support with paperwork and administrative tasks. The assistants actively reach out to migrant communities in the city, establishing first contact with them through networking, engagement on social media or through ‘gatekeepers of a community’ – a person who is actively engaged in the community and knows who needs help, for example, a priest.

Intercultural assistants in Brno hold the official identification card of the municipality, which gives them credibility with public service officers. They are experts on issues related to the minority groups they support, as most of them come from the community themselves and speak the language of the minority group. They receive training from the organisation Sociofactor on mediation, conflict prevention and resolution. There is also intercultural training for the officers.

The assistants also share their expertise with the municipality to support with developing a strategy for the integration of migrants in Brno 2020–2026. A coordinator in the municipality is responsible for facilitating this dialogue between the public institutions and intercultural assistants.

Key results and benefits

Four intercultural assistants are now employed full-time by the Municipal Department for Social Affairs.

The final evaluation of the project conducted by Sociofactor found that more than 635 migrants had reached out to intercultural assistants for support over one and a half years. The project eased communication between migrants and public services and facilitated social integration. Intercultural assistants are an example for the public officers who learn how to effectively communicate with migrants from the assistants. Officers who received the project’s support became more open and tolerant towards migrants and increased their intercultural competences such as their knowledge of foreign languages. Overall, more public officers became more engaged in their work with migrants and changed their attitudes towards them.

The intercultural assistants help the largest minority groups in Brno, including Russian, Ukrainian, Arab, Moldavian, Romanian and Vietnamese migrants. Assistants also support dialogue between migrants and public authorities, identifying information gaps and addressing them. For example, an intercultural assistant identified that migrants were not aware that every citizen must pay a fee for garbage in Czechia. Assistants informed public authorities and helped them to provide clearer, targeted and more accessible information on this.

Potential for mainstreaming

Since 2017, the project has received approximately EUR 300 000 in funding. 5% of this came from the Brno municipality and 95% from the European Social Fund (ESF). The long-term vision is to move from a project-based to a structural approach and to create a stable team responsible for migrant integration at the Brno municipality. The project has already inspired Prague and other cities in the Moravia region and in Slovakia. The regional integration centre, Support for migrants in the South Moravian Region, is helping the project to scale-up its activities at regional level by enabling intercultural assistants to directly share examples of good practice with the regional and local municipalities.

The project was inspired by the work of the Czech organisation InBáze, which introduced the use of intercultural assistants in the country and mapped and presented different integration models implemented in other European countries. The Intercultural Assistant project in Brno was inspired by the integration model implemented in Spain and Portugal. It is therefore a model which can be transferred to other contexts. A key condition for such a transfer would be political buy-in from the local public authorities as well as ensuring that training is available to both assistants and officers.

The long-term vision of the city of Brno is to support migrants in finding suitable employment that will benefit them and the local labour market. This is inspired by the positive example of the integration centre in Antwerp and skill centre in Helsinki, where migrants receive coaching, training and language courses.