On the last 31st January 2023, invited by SOLIDAR, Rede Sem Fronteiras had the pleasure to attend the Spring Project Final Conference, in Brussels.
Focused on the integration of recently arrived migrants in the context of the large-scale arrivals of refugees and other migrants since 2014, this EU-funded project aims to develop a toolbox to improve the innovation, effectiveness and sustainability of the work done by stakeholders at national, regional and local levels.
SPRINGs mobilisesed significant researches, networks and communications capacity and gathers, summarising and sharing the best available research and evidence on the effectiveness, innovation, transferability, sustainability and evaluation methods for integration policies and practice.
Since February 2021, the project has been synthetizing and organizing evidences, highlighting knowledge needs and producing guidance on how to go about integration of newly-arrived migrants. Represented by Beatriz Ventura, RSF could had a close look at the presentation of the project's main results and the maily conclusions of this two-year journey with involved a lot of thoughtful actors.
In addition, the event allowed us to identify and connect with key integration players and communities of practices, access curated knowledge on integration that responds to their needs, get inspired by good practices and learn how and when to transfer practices.
Finally, the project stimulates dialogue with existing communities of practice and reflection on how to bridge the research-practice gap in integration through evaluation.