GROWTH: innovation to scale community sponsorship programs

ongoing

The GROWTH Project will support the growth of community sponsorship schemes in each partner country and across European Union (EU) Member States, by applying a range of innovations, including from crisis response contexts, to increase the number and diversity of sponsors and sponsorship stakeholders. GROWTH will be conducted in three leading sponsorship countries of Italy, Ireland and Germany, and over the duration of the project, GROWTH expects to (1) develop and implement evidence based sponsor recruitment and retention strategies, (2) analyse and apply innovations to support the scaling of sponsorship, and (3) strengthen the capacity of community sponsorship programs to respond to crises. GROWTH will analyse innovations in the sponsorship and community welcome ecosystems. The last 18 months have confirmed that the various European communities have enormous untapped potential in welcoming refugees. Citizens have shown important lessons on what motivates individuals and groups to become welcoming families and communities. Through the project we will investigate the reasons that have most influenced the availability of the communities and we will identify the problems and barriers that can retain the availability and support others to do so. Structured in 5 WPs, the project will conduct a research phase (WP2) in IT, IE and DE with the aim of developing innovative strategies for the recruitment and maintenance of welcoming communities and sponsors (WP3). Particular attention will be paid to the promotion and communication phase of the developed strategies. In addition, the project, in order to address the problem of living and finding houses and reception facilities, promotes a series of campaigns, tools and workshops with the various stakeholders on the theme of housing (WP4). Finally, we will work for the implementation of new strategies to support the scaling of sponsorship and strengthen the capacity of community sponsorship programs to respond to crises.