At the 4th CSO Gathering, the organizations worked on community mobilization and listened to

On the 22nd, civil society organizations came together, once again, to work together to implement the 1st community sponsorship program in Portugal. This 4th Meeting took place at Kübe, in Lisbon and was attended by more than 15 participants from organizations that work with the reception and integration of refugees in Portugal.

Like previous meetings, a specific theme was worked on, this time community mobilization and sponsorship recruitment. Mobilizing and recruiting sponsors is an essential first step in establishing local support for a refugee family. This is one of the pillars of the community sponsorship program and is one of the biggest challenges.

Isabel Martins da Silva from MEERU Abrir Caminho was the guest speaker and shared the work of MEERU and its Approxima project and the importance of the local community for the inclusion of refugees.

Isabel Silva presents MEERU Approach and talks about community mobilization.

After their presentation, the group reflected together on strategies, approaches and tools for community mobilization, through participatory dynamics.

The work of all participants in this 4th Meeting made it possible to identify strategies and solutions for mobilizing for community sponsorship. The contributions were extremely useful for building the first community sponsorship program in our country and will be included in the preparation of a guide on community mobilization and sponsorship recruitment, to be released in the last quarter of this year.

The 5th Meeting will continue this process of joint construction, following a participatory and holistic approach to work on the issues of meaningful representation. As usual, this will take place in November 2023.

Civil Society Organizations meet, once again, in Lisbon to reflect and work on the community sponsorship programme.