Building Communities of Practice for Urban Refugees - Europe Regional Workshop Report

This paper is the fifth in a series of five reports on workshops designed to broadcast and replicate good practices for urban refugee programmes. The workshops are the result of the Building Communities of Practice for Urban Refugees project funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau for Population, Refugees, and Migration (BPRM). A workshop has taken place in each of the five geographic regions. In addition to the workshops, roundtable events have been held in a particular city in each region. The Building Communities of Practice for Urban Refugees Workshop in Budapest hosted 35 participants (11 UNHCR staff, 24 partners) from 11 countries. There were a total of 17 panels on urban refugee-related topics including, but not limited to, coordination, public awareness campaigns, community work models, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS), mentoring and volunteering and livelihoods. The overall findings from the workshop’s good practice presentations revolve around three main themes: the primacy of the government’s role, the potential to engage local communities and the importance of minding refugee and asylumseekers’ language needs.