The city of Atlanta in the USA has undertaken to provide free transportation to refugees for their legal and medical appointments.
In Atlanta, as well as some other cities in the USA, private company Lyft has also offered transportation grants to a number of immigrant and refugee organisations as part of its Lyft Relief Rides Program.
Several civil society organisations in Atlanta also provide similar services to certain immigrants (e.g. refugee children).
In order to absorb sudden influxes of refugees arriving to Lebanon, the city of Brital developed coordination mechanisms with both local and international partners to establish reception and ongoing support services.
Despite the absence of a public government policy to regulate how Syrian refugees are dealt with, the Lebanese municipal law gives municipalities the right to address all local / community related issues, as deemed appropriate and within available means.
The city of Montreal in Canada has a pro-active strategy to make the most of diversity through the appointment of diversity managers who support initiatives to increase diversity in public services notably in the police forces and municipal boards.
The City of Oujda has created a Municipal Action Plan that includes migration and migrants as one of its six strategic axes, together with Local Governance, Partnership and Decentralized Cooperation, Basic Infrastructures and Proximity Facilities, Environment and Sustainable Energy, and Investissement Capacities and Development of Competitive Potential.
Nearly half of Amman’s population are refugees. Amman’s City Resilience Strategy, launched in 2014 as part of the 100 Resilient Cities project, places particular emphasis on diversity and has incorporated actions to make the city more inclusive for refugees and vulnerable groups. To create more welcoming cities able to offer services for all, Amman and other cities in Jordan have invested heavily in improving public infrastructure and services.
‘Cuidamos Centro’ (‘We Take Care of the Centro District’) is an employment training and practice programme that targets groups at risk of exclusion and long term unemployment in Madrid. The programme is coordinated by the Madrid Municipal Employment Agency and District Board. The initiative provides training and paid employment opportunities for those deemed most excluded from the city’s labour market. Whilst it does not exclusively target foreign-born migrants, the latter group are over-represented among the project’s participants (also known as dynamizers).
The Youth College is a free education, training and mentoring programme for young migrants (mostly asylum-seekers) aged between 15 and 21 in Vienna. As part of the city’s broader “Start Wien” integration initiative, the aim of the Youth College is to help young migrants lead an independent life as quickly as possible by preparing them for further education, vocational training or the workplace.
In the region of Los Santos in Costa Rica, public servants are given lessons on the indigenous language Ngäbe-Buglé in order to increase the access of indigenous trans-border communities to public services in the areas of health, education and employment. Clearer communication between immigrant groups and service providers can lead to a higher quality of services and a higher usage of services provided to target populations.
The city of Bilbao in Spain uses the local application of the Intercultural Cities Index to help assess needs and guide migration policy and programming.
Migrantour is an international project coordinated by the NGO Terra Vera, providing a new instrument for integration that promotes the cultural heritage brought by migrant citizens, asylum seekers and refugees. The project contributes to the development of a new narrative on the phenomenon of migration.
Through this project, migrants lead city tours for tourists and locals which showcase the contributions of migrants in to their home cities, and help to to share the personal stories of the guides.