Helsinki – IOM Finland, the Finnish Refugee Council and the Diaconia University of Applied Sciences managed a joint project called Navigator – Towards Diversity in Municipalities, which came to an end in March 2021. A report (available in Finnish) on the education model developed in the project has been published.

The Refugee’s Journey to Municipality training supports professionals in municipalities and organizations. It is a basic level training, and its goal is to make visible the role and importance of all basic service professionals in supporting integration. The training also illustrates the reception of quota refugees and the initial phase of integration in the municipalities.

The training was organized in the municipalities of Järvenpää, Vihti, Kerava and Hyvinkää, and it received good feedback from the participants. All of the participants giving feedback reported that the training increased their understanding of the quota refugee's path from the country of origin to Finland. 81% completely agreed with this and 19% somewhat agreed.

Information on how to support integration was provided by Minna Savolainen, an expert on migrant integration at IOM Finland. The infographic on a quota refugee’s journey to Finland and to the home municipality was used as an education material. It is designed to be easy to use, illustrative, and to provide information for different service sectors. The purpose is that municipalities, regions and organizations use the educational model and infographic independently and apply it to strengthen local expertise.

Besides cooperating with the municipality, the training development process benefitted from an integration expert Sirwa Farik. Her job includes supporting migrants’ integration in Finland. She has experienced the integration process herself as well.

At the end of the report there is a summary and four recommendations to consider when organizing such trainings in the future:

1. The basic level training must be directed to experts of different fields.
2. A migrant integration expert with personal experience of integration must be part of the development and implementation of the training.
3. Time should be reserved for participants’ discussion and comments in the training.
4. The training material must be illustrative, easy to use and multilingual.

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Download the report (available in Finnish).

In the current Navigator 2.0 project we offer Refugee’s Journey to Finland and Home Municipality trainings remotely and as a short version. If a municipality is interested in organizing a training in cooperation with us, Minna Savolainen at IOM Finland can be contacted: msavolainen@iom.int.