Best Practice 10

The Local Immigration and Development Cooperation Centre of the Council of Santander (CMICAD) is framed under the Guidelines set by the Law of foundations of Local Regime (Ley de bases de Regimen Local), in its Article 25 and the following ones, and under the rest of the legal text, which mentions as desirable objectives: promoting and offering all type of activities and services that contribute to the satisfaction of its neighbours’ needs and wishes by boosting the expressions of solidarity and by fostering the social responsibility  of the community in situations of need and by involving the citizens in the problems and solutions of their environment, as well as promoting the pertinent measures that facilitate their the integration and promotion.

The CMICAD, which was founded in 2008, has become a reference site for the immigrant population of our city, establishing a hosting system for the immigrant population; increasing, systematizing and coordinating the tools and the information routes and assuring their access to basic services of the State, the Autonomous Community and the Council of Santander in order to favour their integration and social insertion, as well as to take awareness and development cooperation actions in the least favoured countries.

The main objectives of the Local Immigration and Development Cooperation Centre are:

• Establishing a hosting system for immigrant population; increasing, systematizing and coordinating the tools and information routes and assuring their access to basic services of the State, the Autonomous Community and the Council of Santander.
• Favouring the full social, labour and personal integration of the immigrants, as individuals with rights and duties within society, recognising the consequent responsibility with the municipality and the neighbours, which the immigrants take when they start residing in Santander.
• Collaborating for the training of professionals in terms of immigration and development cooperation.
• Carrying out a coordinated action with the social agents who are involved in the hosting and integration of immigrant population, favouring their association and participation.
• Introducing the gender perspective as transversal axis of all the actions in order to overcome the disadvantages faced by the immigrant women and boosting the measures which favour equality.
• Power awareness actions, aimed at fostering the coexistence and social cohesion through the dissemination of the positive role that immigrants can play in the hosting society and action programmes aimed at practising an integration policy which can help overcome the potential tensions and conflicts.
• Analysing the actions carried out with the immigrant population by adapting the strategies to this collective’s reality and by taking measures that allow their integration on an equal basis to the entire population.
• Contributing to the improvement of the living conditions and the capacities of the population of the home countries through an appropriate policy of development cooperation.
• Fostering the recognition of the citizenship dimension of the immigrant so as to achieve an effective integration, which will involve working at the same time in awareness projects, aimed at the local population, and in integration programmes, aimed at the immigrant population.
• Assembling the cooperation and collaboration of the Autonomous Community, the Council of Santander and the Government for a greater efficacy and sustainability of the actions, introducing immigration as transversal axis of the action.
• Awareness of the population in general in terms of development cooperation.
• Strengthening and supporting the social network of social entities and NGDOs: subsidies, etc.
• Supporting development cooperation social actions promoted by entities in general.

• Quantitatively: The Local Immigration and Development Cooperation Centre has been open for ten years. More than 16.000 people have participated in 2017 in the activities carried out. In 2016 there were 12.500 participants and in 2015 11.400.
• Qualitatively: its reconciliation and action programmes in minors’ education have increasingly more visibility, social impact and institutional support, which makes the number of participants increase each year. The impact is multiplied creating, therefore, a more structured society in the respect for diversity.
• Methodologically: it has direct consequences in the integration of the immigrant population in the community at all levels mentioned. The follow-up of the individuals and their accompaniment in diverse processes, that have to do with the relation with the environment, let achieve a greater inclusion, improving the network of contacts of the immigrants, their knowledge on the hosting culture and, consequently, the mobility within it (judicial, political, cultural, participatory field, etc.).
• Socially: it enhances the welcoming feel, which generates a positive attitude both in the arriving people and in the hosting society.