26 May Meet the Team – ASP Città di Bologna
Meet the team interview
ASP City of Bologna is the Public company for social welfare and personal care of the Municipality of Bologna. The company is one of the biggest public company for social welfare in Italy, and focuses his efforts and its innovative actions on preventing the onset of social emergency phenomena and on promoting social inclusion through services related to different areas of intervention and dedicated to: Elderly people; Adult marginalization, Family Centre and Children’s Services, Housing, International Protection Services, managing locally the SPRAR/SIPROIMI project, the national Protection System for Beneficiaries of International Protection and for Unaccompanied Foreign Minors.
Firstly, tell us a bit about the work you do at ASP Città di Bologna.
Carla: As a Project Manager in ASP, I supervise different research projects in different areas of intervention, most of them related to migrant integration. In MICADO, my tasks focus on coordinating and ensuring the carrying out of the project activities, in cooperation with colleagues from the International Protection Service and Communication department.
Mattia: I support in planning and managing the activities foreseen in European projects, with a focus on project proposals and reporting.
Marco: I am mainly engaged in planning and monitoring, on behalf of ASP, cultural mediation services of the City of Bologna. I also conduct Journalism Laboratories within local school projects.
Francesca: I coordinate the training-work area dedicated to unaccompanied foreign children. The group manages also training projects and accompaniment to work for young adults.
What was your motivation to developing/working in the MICADO project?
Carla: MICADO offers the opportunity to understand the real needs of migrants and provide them with valuable information and services. One of the most interesting aspects of the project is the chance to take advantage of digital tools to make complex information more understandable. Facing the key issue of migrant integration with an international team is an added value.
Mattia: It is a pleasure to be in a team where five European countries work together for a common purpose: making the migrant integration process easier in the destination countries.
Marco: It’s a pleasure to work in a team that is looking for new innovative solutions that could improve the lives of people coming from other countries.
Francesca: At the very beginning I was motivated by the idea of better European cooperation between PAs on important subjects like migration and communication on migration then as long as the project was developing I’ve been pushed by the final expected result that can practically improve migrants’skills.
What do you think are the main challenges you will encounter during the MICADO project implementation?
Carla: On the one hand, collecting a big amount of data about migrants in several domains in different Countries; on the other, managing the convergence of all the inputs from all the partners into one solution.
Mattia: The main challenge could be the respect of the time plan because of the many activities to be implemented.
Marco: It will be a challenge to work with new digital solutions in this work field.
Francesca: We will have to overcome the mistrust of migrants by offering a product that is not only a tool of data acquisition but of actual service and make sure that the app continues to run even after the end of the project
What do you hope to achieve by the end of the project?
Carla: Creating a tool, easy to use, that includes the most important information and services migrants really need at their arrival in a new country and, in this way, improving the capability of the Public Authorities to deal with migrant integration.
Mattia: Personally, I hope to better understand the local migration approach and existing interactions between local authorities and migrants.
Marco: It would be a success if the ICT solution, realized thanks to the MICADO project, works, and improves the daily life of the target groups.
Francesca: A concrete tool, marketable in terms of attractiveness and practicality, able to update the skills of the Public Administration in terms of dialogue with citizens.
What do you personally find most interesting/exciting about the project?
Carla: MICADO gives the opportunity to work in a consortium with partners from different backgrounds, from Social Science to ICT, sharing perspectives and resources for a common goal. In addition to this, the chance to build a real product for migrants co-created by migrants themselves.
Mattia: It would be interesting to see as an ICT app, concerning the migrant integration process, will improve social well-being.
Marco: The most interesting thing is the creation of a definitive output including an innovative integration system for those people who risk being marginalized.
Francesca: The possibility of comparing on a practical level the policies of integration on migrants and the construction of a common language. In addition, the possibility of exchange of good practices between partners