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Giving Compass' Take:
• Grassroots groups, technology enterprises, and other organizations are bringing new resources and ideas to help address challenges for countries receiving a large number of asylum seekers and refugees.
• What are the most prominent funding barriers for these enterprises to maintain innovation? How are donors positioned to help increase sustainable programs and resources for integration?
• Read more about social innovation inclusion plans for refugees.
The dramatic increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Europe during 2015–16 sparked a burst of social innovation. Grassroots groups, tech start-ups, and businesses of all sizes brought new thinking and resources to bear on the challenges of receiving and integrating newcomers into European societies. Many of these challenges continue to echo across education systems, health services, labor and housing markets, and neighborhoods, even as the keen sense of crisis has waned.
This report explores how social innovation in the field of refugee inclusion has evolved in the three years since the peak of the crisis. Given the successes and limitations of different initiatives thus far, it asks the question: what can social enterprises, funding bodies, and policymakers do to maintain the momentum and turn promising initiatives into broader system change?
Read the full report about social innovation for refugee inclusion by Liam Patuzzi, Meghan Benton, and Alexandra Embiricos at Migration Policy Institute.
In the decades to come, European societies will have to grapple with a number of fundamental structural challenges—from changes in the world of work to new pressures on housing and health-care systems. Much will depend, the authors conclude, on governments’ ability to build on and extend the reach of the current surge in innovation, and to make the case that “innovation for refugee inclusion can be innovation for all.”