 important to mention that all the microphones are actually muted and in case you want them to ask questions there will be a question and answer session in the second part of the meeting and then you can either write your questions on the chat or you can also raise your hand and then we will unmute your microphone. There will be a few presentations after the the introductions and then there will be the question and answer session. We aim to stay into one hour for the for the meeting and now I'm very pleased to leave the floor to Paula Benea to give a few introductory words. Paula, the floor is yours. Thank you, Daniela. Good afternoon all. Good morning to those joining us from the other side of the world. I'm glad to open today's meeting that will present to you a mechanism that we designed to support the engagement of diaspora organizations in the humanitarian context with a focus on the countries where diaspora is based. The model was drawn from the initiative that our mission has been carrying out with the Ukrainian diaspora in Italy since March 2022 to support its efforts in providing humanitarian assistance to war effect the population Ukraine and aid to displaced Ukrainians who have been arriving to Italy. We all know that well-engaged diasporas may help governments and communities resolve a crisis, deal with its humanitarian consequences and contribute to post-crisis recovery and rehabilitation. Thanks to their links with countries of origin and crisis-affected populations, diaspora organizations are indeed able to access difficult areas, have a closer view of the needs and carry out targeted actions. Members of the diasporas are often the first responders and the first to take investment risks and have the potential to reinvigorate and fuel more enduring social and economic development after the crisis. In different crises both men and natural-maids such as Syria, Somalia, Haiti and now Ukraine, diaspora organizations prove the ability to quickly mobilize and release resources also laying the ground for reconstruction and sustainable development. The transfer of diaspora skills can strengthen and build health, education, justice and other institutions in a crisis-affected country and migrant diaspora members can in turn mobilize other support for rehabilitation of the country of origin. A call to involve non-institutional actors such as diasporas within broader humanitarian architecture in a more systematic manner, apologies, was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit back in 2016 where the community recognized the role that these actors have historically played. Diasporas have been for long an important partner of IOM's work in both development work but also in responding crisis. Over the last years an increasing number of dedicated initiatives have contributed towards advancing this agenda through capacity building of diasporas, promotion of new partnerships and coordination frameworks. Among these I'll just mention a few such as the Framework for Diasporas Engagement Humanitarian Systems developed by IOM Washington in cooperation with the Haiti Renewal Alliance, the initiative of DMACC that works for deeper understanding of diasporas humanitarian actors and striving for better coordination between the diasporas organizations and the humanitarian system, the tools created by Shabaka, the knowledge sharing and not encouraged globally within the platform I-Diaspora created by IOM and the work launched by the Global Diaspora Confederation. As the humanitarian system have to meet growing compliance needs more effectively and to bridge the humanitarian development divide, we hope that this model designed a way to be adaptable to other crisis and national context can contribute to ongoing efforts to support diaspora in active partner and during different stages of a crisis. I therefore am glad to now continue and open the meeting. I would like now to also acknowledge the participation of Director General Tatiana Espósito. Daniela, I will leave now the floor to you or I will invite Ms Espósito to continue the presentation of the introductions. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Paula. Yes, now the floor is actually also for Ms Espósito, the Director General of the DG on Immigration and Integration Policy at the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies and we are actually also, I also would like to thank her for her presence here but also for the support along all this journey. Ms Espósito, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much, Daniela and Paula. Good afternoon. Good morning to all the participants and actually I want to thank you to thank IOM for having invited me today to say a few words at the beginning of this webinar. It's very important for us to be here because we have been working hard in recent years on the issue of diaspora engagement in line with the indications coming from international and European institutions. I would like to mention here the EU Action Plan on Integration and Inclusion but this is also one of the main goals of our Director General and this is why for us today's meeting is particularly valuable and we can learn a lot of lessons from this white paper which is launched today. This white paper I would say suggests a model to engage diasporas and I want to stress even before and beyond the humanitarian context and it allows us to understand how to read more in depth and more realistically the needs of the diaspora organizations and also pave the way for a potential systematic dialogue between these organizations and institutions at all levels, national, regional or even at local level. Diaspora organizations are for us an important means of participation, of solidarity, of dialogue but they're also in many cases fragile, volatile subjects. So it's important first of all to know knowledge of these realities, so to know who they are, what they do, in which field or sectors they're active. It's the first step I would say to for any successful engagement pathway. This is why since almost 10 years since 2014 we regularly map the presence of migrants associations in our country. We have this database which is publicly available for everyone on our integration of migrants portal and we publish every year annual reports on the main 16 main largest non-EU communities living in our country but after knowledge then we need dialogue, a direct dialogue with these realities, with these subjects and in this in this direction we are running since a few years an initiative called Voice to the Diasporas which is a series of meetings with representatives of migrants organizations that we are running since a few years and in the same direction goes also the involvement of these associations in the consultative process that we run last year on our new programming documents for the 2021-2027 programming period. So we had a direct dialogue with these associations on our new programming framework for the next years. I would like to conclude that in this way I mean we have learned a lot of lessons including from this work with the IOM and we I think there are a couple of directions that's in front of us for for other work to be done and these two main questions issues are the issue of representation and the issue of structuring of associations and this has to go with the reversal of our perspective so we are used to design policies for migrants but we should learn how to design policies with migrants and this is what we tried to do in this last exercise of consulting them during the setting and defining of our programming document so for this reason I again underlined our great appreciation for the work done in this field and many many thanks for this path initiated by IOM with the Ukrainian diasporas which we have immediately supported because it was really close to to our heart to the way we used to we used to work and we firmly believe it represents a model that we can replicate in other contexts than maybe also with other communities so again many thanks and good work to everyone for this afternoon. Thank you very much, thank you very much Mrs. Posito I think it's really an important endeavor actually we have been going through and I think it's just the starting point because unfortunately as we can see also from the news these days crisis are always there and it's important to try to find solutions to be as effective as possible in responding to them and this was actually one of our starting point in defining why we should involve diasporas during the response to a humanitarian crisis we started in the first place from what are the added what is the added value of diaspora and what they can actually bring in in the process and the first thing that I think it's important to mention is their capacity of of being usually there over time so they are not they are not associations or organizations that tend to enter into a crisis because of the emerging needs in that very moment but because they are they are there even before and after a crisis a crisis happens and this is an important added value that should be always taken into consideration and now I have I can't have the slide of course I was waiting for the technical problem to come but anyway I think this is what this was the starting point and this starting point was was also something that is guiding our work not only on this emergency response process but also on other on other kind of activities and this comes also into a more into a broader discussion that is actually happening on how localizing aid because it is now very clear that because of certain emergencies that we face in the past starting from the pandemic but also others their role of local actors is really critical and crucial because they have a better understanding of the contest most of the time because they are very they have very relevant understanding of the situations and the dynamics that they are in but also because as I was mentioning at the beginning it's a possibility to keep the the presence in in the long in the long term so we we are into these flows of thinking and reasoning but we are also supported by a framework a legal framework in Italy that is also very very good which is the the law 125 which is actually a very important law because it is the the one that reframes international cooperation giving a clear role also to diaspora organizations and recognizing their capacity it is actually because of these law that we have been supported also by the ministry of foreign affairs along these years and I think also their support was really critical in all these this process so because of that we started in 2020 an initiative to respond to the pandemic this was done with the diaspora organizations in Italy because of their presence in some some places in some areas that were difficult to access for the usual for the other players but also because they had the chance to already activate interest and raise awareness on what was actually happening also to their countries abroad so to the countries of origin so this is actually it was a kind of starting point and through these first experience we launched an amico emergency response amico is a national program that we implement since 2010 actually and there is also a kind of re granting and sub granting scheme which we decided to use also for the response of the the pandemic emergency then we continued when it was when there was also the other emergencies that were coming up and we started first actually having a better understanding of what was the Afghan the Afghani diaspora doing in Italy to respond to the crisis in Afghanistan but at the same time we the community the Afghani community in Italy is not very strong is not too structured because the numbers are actually increasing now but at the moment the community is is not as big as others like the Ukrainian community for instance so when there was the crisis in in Ukraine we try to find a way to to involve to engage the diaspora organization so also in in this situation so of course the starting points are different on one side you need to have the sense of urgency that is given by a humanitarian crisis to have the people coming together on the other side you need also to have the presence as simple as that you need to have a structured organized ecosystem i would say of the diaspora organizations that are actually already intervening in those kind of contexts and are actually already able to provide their support and then of course it's also important to have the kind of framework the legal framework or anyway the conducive framework a conducive environment that would allow also other actors to come to come together which was actually what was activated because of the crisis in Ukraine which was a state of emergency in Italy to ensure that our contribution of the country to not only to the country but also to the people that were coming from Ukraine to Italy was was done in the proper in the most appropriate manner so at that time there were also many different coordination meetings that were happening at the same time so in all those meetings we realized that there were many stakeholders at the table that many organizations were actually discussing how to provide support to the Ukrainian community in Italy but what was actually missing was the voice of the Ukrainians so we suggested to include also the voice and the representation of diaspora organizations that were coming from Ukraine of course it was not just a matter of creating a seat or creating a space for this voice to be heard but also to make sure that this voice was somehow recognized as important as representative from the community as a whole so we started organizing a number of different online conferences we were inviting different organizations that we came that we came across in fact we started with what we knew and then we requested them also to indicate and to inform us about other organizations they were aware of so that there was we created we started a kind of snowball effect through which it was possible to have a sort of rapid assessment or a sort of mapping of the diaspora organizations that were present in Italy and we were actually surprised because we are working with diaspora organizations since many years but we didn't know that there were so many Ukrainian diaspora organizations in Italy and at the end we came we ended up having around 60 mapping around 60 associations and out of those 60 associations actually 50 replied with interest to this initiative and decided to join forces somehow and also to join those meetings so the first point was actually the organization of those different conferences through those conference through those conferences though we managed also to to create the venue and the place for different organizations to come together coordinate their efforts and also choose a person a representative that could actually represent them in those kind of fora I was mentioning before so we started this initiative this initiative is built on two different pillars or two blocks the first one is actually the coordination mechanism through the conferences the online conferences and then the second pillar is a sub granting mechanism that we have developed on the basis of our previous experiences the one I was mentioning about emergency for the response to the pandemic so what were the conferences about the first point was really very much about coming together and knowing what everyone was doing in this situation having a better understanding on where where the different what were the different activities different organizations were implementing where were the the areas they were actually operating in not only in Ukraine but also in Italy and also to find solutions to to logistical problems because there were many especially at the beginning but also to come up with a list of needs and priorities that could then be channeled through all those different stakeholders and institutions that were responding to the crisis the modality of those conferences were online we had though an initial meeting that was only at the national level and then we continued having meetings at the national levels but we decided also to have a meeting at the local levels because there were many activities a lot of action that was happening also the local level and the coordination was important to be happening there as well and we continued on the monthly basis also to have those local and national meetings then each conference namely each national or local conference also defined their own terms of reference defined how they were actually functioning and decided how to choose or select a spoke person someone that could that could also that could actually be invited to those coordination meetings or could could have a meeting with institutions whenever they were requested and this was actually the case that happened in at the very beginning with the Ministry of Labor and it was really precious to have their support but also with other Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Civil Protection that was actually the department that was charged with the responsibility of organizing the response to the crisis in in Italy and they were actually the ones who got in contact at the beginning very often with the spoke person and it was very important also to for them to have a better understanding of what were the priorities that the communities the Ukrainian community in Italy was giving to them then of course after the the mechanism of the conferences it's I think very important to to have another practical tool which is the sub granting mechanism that would allow the associations and organizations to be able to respond to to the crisis supporting what they were already doing in in fact because most of them were already implementing activities what we launched was a sub granting mechanism for just 8 000 euro per project and then those these money could be used to support activities that they were already implementing this is actually a very important point then I guess I think Roberta will tell you something more about this point but how it's important not to create new completely new projects but actually to start with what is already there and the support what is already happening so we launched the call for proposal we received a number of 14 different proposals and out of those 14 proposals seven were actually funded and they were operating in a variety of different sectors as you can see here it's food transportation and distribution but also shelter health psychological support and they were covering different regions different oblasts in in Ukraine this was also because of the different areas and regions of origin of the community in in Italy out of all this process I think it's important to mention that 52 associations were actually engaged in in the entire process and they are actually now cooperating much more than they were used to in some cases many of those associations didn't know each other in fact there were five national conferences that were organized and four rounds of local conferences in in four in four region and then of course there is also this white paper which is just a tool that we think it's important for others also to take into consideration just starting from our experience we don't we don't aim to have developed a model that is replicable the way it is just taking and using it somewhere else is not a a solution that is not one one side fits one side solution that fits every context on the contrary we think that every context has its own specificities and I think it's important then just to try to get inspiration to these mode from this model rather than just simply replicate it and and try to see how we try to respond to some of the challenges and what were the different experiences that we learned and actually they learned the learning I think it's the main outcome especially especially for for us and there were many things that we would do differently in the future starting from actually spending more time on the preliminary analysis because this is actually something that we activated just because there was the crisis but it would have been much better if we knew already what the Ukrainian diaspora was already doing for instance in terms of providing aid to to Ukraine but also to making sure that this conductive and conducive environment and the the legal framework is is protected in a way and can be there and and maintained also making sure that there is a management of expectations and there are clear objectives between all among all the differences they call this involved it's important to spend time and have dedicated human resources because we started thinking that of course it was an exercise that was that we were doing because it was important to respond to the to the humanitarian crisis at that time but then it required a lot of of effort a lot of a lot of time and then it's also important to making sure that the voices of the diasporas are heard that there is an efficient communication and efficient communication and also appropriate modalities for the sub granting and training for the diaspora organizations this is actually another important learning because we started with with small funding also because we take it we we need to take into account also the the capacity of implementing those projects especially at the time where the priorities are completely different so maybe is very complicated for the diasporas organizations that is fighting against time also to avail time and energies and resources for reporting for developing a project proposal and so on so it's it's important to adapt those kind of sub granting mechanism to the context and not try to simplify the process as much as possible basically this is very this is a very very important lesson that we learned through this process and then of course it's also about making sure that there is a strong coordination about all humanitarian actors and thinking about new emergencies that might actually come up or thinking about emergencies that are actually happening now unfortunately I think what is really important is also to try to make sure that if there is this kind of effort in organizing those conferences these effort is very well coordinated because we were somehow lucky of being the first one in Italy to to launch the idea and to have the institutional backing from all the different institutions involved but of course if there might be situations where you have different initiatives coming up at the same time to coordinate different diasporas organizations then would end up really in a struggle also because especially the initial in the initial phase it was very complicated to to gain the attention of diasporas organizations because they were very busy doing other things and then it's also important to think about an exit strategy so not only about the closing of this phase of the emergency response but also to what could happen afterwards because as I was mentioning at the beginning one of the added value of the diasporas organizations is in fact their capacity of being there before and after any crisis happens so thank you very much and I would leave directly now the floor to Roberta because she would go to the important aspect of this presentation Roberta the floor is yours thank you thank you so much Daniele and thank you very much to Ion Rome and colleagues especially Marina and Marcella and and all of you for having given me the opportunity to look into this very remarkable case study and experience and as we said the hope is really to make the lessons learned from this experience available to all the actors that are wishing to engage diasporas in a more effective way for better humanitarian assistance and I think the number of participants here today is a testimony of how this is a very relevant topic and unfortunately as you know a tragedy unfolds in these days in Turkey and Syria we know how important is to maintain a multi-stakeholder approach to humanitarian assistance and recovery and bridging toward development in order to provide the best and most effective support possible to affected communities and so I will take it from where Daniele left Daniele gave us an overview of the experience that occurred in Italy last year and is still ongoing and what we have done here is to try to extract some of the best practices and lessons learned from this experience and based on these analyses to come up with a model which we hope can be replicable and adaptable to other contexts and other diaspora communities and we know already in IOM there are many missions that are very interested in knowing how the different steps of these of this experience were implemented and how it can be tailored to their context and the focus here is on diaspora engagement for humanitarian assistance in country of residence so you will see the acronym COR here meaning country of residence which in this case was Italy but obviously is applicable to every context and country where there are significant diaspora communities that maintain important ties with their country of origin but also with sub the sub granting component that has been already introduced is an important financial and capacity building support for boosting diasporas interventions in their country of origin in Ukraine in this case but also other contexts in terms of methodology the way in which this this white paper was this model that is described in the white paper was developed is through a mixed approach on one hand we did the desk review of existing case studies and there has been a lot I will say a little bit more about this but there has been a lot lately over the last I would say a few years there have been a lot of development in terms of trying to systematize a big disengagement in humanitarian assistance and recovery so there is a lot to learn from other case studies as well and then we did obviously direct data collection hearing hearing from representatives of diaspora organizations that were involved in the initiative so a sample of those representatives as well as representatives from institutional actors that were involved in Italy next if I can move directly or maybe yes so the suggested model is composed of three macro components so there is a there was a preparatory phase and then there is a coordination mechanism and the funding here you will see what Danielle explained is very helpful to understand how these different steps have been have been generalized in a way that can become almost a step-by-step outline that can be used and followed in the model replication so for each of these macro components there are some components and obviously the white paper when you will have the opportunity to read it goes very much into the details but here we will give a very general overview it might sound a bit technical but I hope that you will be able to pick and choose the aspects of it that are more interesting for your specific work next so the preparatory phase as the main aim of setting the stage for the engagement and obviously the most the foundational aspect of it is to define the overall scope of the engagement and the scope will vary depending on the context depending on the crisis depending on the capacities and the needs and the priorities of the diaspora organizations involved but this is a very foundational stage and the scope needs to be clear needs to be well communicated to all the stakeholders involved and obviously as Danielle was saying in this specific case the scope was twofold on one end there was the effort to foster internal coordination among diaspora organization actors some of them when as Danielle was saying we're not even in contact with one another or their contacts were very sporadic very ad hoc so the hope was to create a more formalized and structured coordination but also liaise those diaspora actors with institutional humanitarian actors that were involved or leading the response and then the other scope was to provide financial support as a boost for operations on the ground and then another aspect that was mentioned here already is the conducive institutional legal environment so ideally it would be great to have an existing legal framework that recognizes diasporas as relevant actors in humanitarian and development efforts and this creates a fertile ground for the engagement and I would say that Italy in this case is really at the forefront of formalizing this engagement through a through a legal and institutional conducive landscape and but obviously the existence of an environment institutionally it's an important prerequisite but needs to be accompanied by open and regular communication and engagement with diaspora organizations ideally this would happen not only in the implementation phase of the response but also in the strategic and the decision making phase I think the director general is positive at the beginning she was mentioning how you know we really strive to move from working working for migrant community to working with migrant communities and engaging diasporas in the consultation phase is key toward achieving that role then another important aspect is the definition of the target group and the stakeholders and this is important because obviously as we know working with diaspora communities diaspora communities are very diverse in within themselves internally and although there is a relevance in terms of engaging individual members of the diaspora that can be involved for example for for awareness raising communication campaign crowdfunding fundraising there is we have seen in this case and also in other cases that engaging diaspora organizations with a certain degree of formalization so organization that already registered that they have prior experience in humanitarian response or prior experience in interfacing with these traditional actors this really benefits the engagement so those actors are usually the ideal interlocutors and if they are existing would be helpful also to have the possibility to interface with network of diaspora organization umbrella or coalitions in order to increase the representativeness of the engagement and then be sure that you know there is that these organizations are engaged are not only speaking on behalf of themselves but they can represent a larger constituencies an important tool in this preparatory phase what Daniela was saying is the mapping so I will not spend much time here but as you know maybe most of us have been involved and also the director general Esposito was saying how the the government itself is conducting in this case mapping exercises in order to be sure that diaspora communities are known and there is a process of trust building and community building that is created even before the the the crisis hits because when the crisis hits you know the the timing is very tense and very tight so ideally would be great to create this mutual knowledge and understanding the needs the capacities the profiles the areas of intervention and the priorities of the diasporas beforehand so going to the next phase the next phase is what is the coordination so here coordination can take place in many ways in the case of Italy was the choice was on was made to have national and local conferences and I think that there was a very interesting there is a this is a very interesting really case study that could be easily replicated in other context so obviously even when starting this coordination platforms it's important to clarify the mandate and this like this definition should be done as much as possible in close consultation with the diaspora actors that are engaged to be sure that the the engagement is relevant to their own scopes and their own priorities so during this phase of clarifying the mandate we obviously we need to look at objectives timeframes roles and responsibilities different modalities and different functions the the coordination can can really play different functions and here I think we have really looked at how as one single coordination platform can have a multi-layered multi-layered scope so they served as a platform for information sharing peer-to-peer support joint advocacy promotion of collaborative actions the representations vis-a-vis external actors I'll say a little bit more about that address concrete operational challenges that were occurring in delivering assistance both in country of origin and in country of residence and also as we say here there was the very interesting idea to have two layers of coordination in terms of geographical geographical representation one at the national level one of the local level and we have heard from the diaspora organizations how these two levels were able to pursue complementary and equally relevant objectives then there is a very key aspect here which is the facilitation role the facilitator role and we have seen in other cases also in other contexts how the role of a facilitator in this case played by IOM which has you know an independent and neutral a neutral nature is key for diaspora organizations and also for liaising those organizations to institutional actors and this role can be interpreted in many ways depending on the context and the needs but in each in each occasion I think what is important is to balance between the importance of having a neutral actor that can provide guidance and support and be a kind of catalyst for diasporas own engagement and on the other hand you know allow for diasporas to have the ownership and the control over the process so that they can feel represented and expressed with voice more directly and also some key features of this role that we've seen IOM play very well in this case are neutrality, credibility, expertise, cultural competency, contextual knowledge and you know direct and open communication, reliability so I think this was very much appreciated by the diaspora organizations and can be replicated in other contexts here another important role was the one played by the spokesperson of the diaspora organizations and obviously it's clear why this is important is because you know in an engagement that is able to bring together more than 50 diaspora organizations it's important to have a person that can somehow elevate the different voices and the different needs in a joint and coordinated manner and this is relevant and has been appreciated also by the institutional actors that were interfacing with diaspora organizations so that they could have a single entry point and this role was also well played in the sense that was able to bridge the local instances the instances that were collected at the local level at the regional level and bring them back within institutional humanitarian forum obviously there are complexities and related to this role and there are ways complementary modalities that could be chosen and could be applied for example a rotation of this role in order to increase the representativeness and also for example as it has been done in other cases to create within the within the broader coordination platform to create working groups that have specific technical expertise or that focus on different sectors with focal points per sector this could help also in in interfacing with institutional actors next so still continuing on the coordination mechanism I think what we've seen is the modalities that we've discussed you know what are the better what are the best communication channels you know we know the diasporas like to use like what's up groups or like other communication channels that are more informal more personal direct like phone calls in personal contacts that also foster trust building and also the importance of you know elaborating agenda items within the coordination platforms that are really relevant for the diasporas and that are also able to evolve over time as the situations on the ground evolve because we know that in humanitarian context the needs are rapidly changing but also it's important to balance this evolution also with some key aspects related to the adherence to humanitarian principles for example of neutrality the presence of a neutral actor like Iowan can help upholding to that to the adherence another key aspect that we mentioned is the liaison with institutional actors and I think in this case really the way in which this was conducted was quite exemplary different actors were involved both at the national level and the local level embassies consulates civil protection different line ministries and the the cooperation agency and all these actors obviously had different roles and mandates but was I think this is something that needs to be considered for also for the follow-up and here brings me to the last point which is the existential and sustainability so as we know sometimes existential and sustainability are afterthoughts but it's important to consider them since the very beginning and and try to think about you know what's the time frame of the engagement communicate this time frame and also think about what can happen after that all of the facilitator is facing out how diaspora communities can actually take over or mainstream some of these engagement efforts within existing institutional platform for example the Italy has the very interesting experience of the diaspora of the summit of the diasporas and how for example conversations around humanitarian assistance could be included and bridging toward development work I think that would be interesting to see as well next so the third phase was the sub granting when we did the white when we wrote the white paper you know we were in the IOM Rome was in the process of selecting and disborsing the sub grants but also there are other case studies here like an interesting for example project currently implemented by IOM DC providing sub grants to diaspora organizations in responding to COVID-19 we just conducted the final conference reviewing at the best practices of that experience and we see a lot of similarities and complementarities between the experience for example definitely the scope is to boost or scale up existing initiatives and somehow leverage what is the diasporas added value to in a way that is complementary to other actors to what other actors on the ground are doing and in order to do that for example some specific requirements and criteria can help for example ensuring that there is a partnership already existing on the ground there is adherence to humanitarian principles and standards and I think the interesting aspect of the sub grants here is also that there is a two-fold objective on one hand is the financial boosting but also capacity building training coaching that can happen at the same time during and before project implementation and this is being considered very valuable by diaspora organization that can they can see this experience also as a way to further professionalize their own initiatives and then the last point is a promoting coordination with actors on the ground and this is because we know as when when a crisis hits many actors feel committed and compelled to intervene diasporas are very much fueled by a sense of solidarity and they are some of the first responders but often this can create you know a chaotic response if it's not well coordinated and if there are no at least some possible interfaces that happen between institutional humanitarian actors government UN and diaspora actors so that all of the facilitators can also be helpful in this sense so now moving forward there are some just some positive externalities by externalities here we mean some unintended interesting and positive outcomes that were reached and were you know also pursued through this initiative for example the transnational coordination with other dios this is another level so we talked about internal coordination but this is also but diasporas are by nature transnational communities so for example thanks to the you know to the network of IOM country missions we were able to organize an event in cooperation with IOM Ukraine actually it was led by IOM Ukraine where some of the diaspora organizations from Italy were able to present and also have this peer-to-peer exchange and learning which was very relevant and I think that you know this always triggers the idea of transnational diaspora communities and there are also new initiatives happening in this sense like the global diaspora confederation is an attempt to bring diasporas from different communities in different countries of residence and origin together then there is the important of mainstream institutional coordination so obviously an experience like this has in as a beginning as an as an end although many crises are often protracted but I think it's important we think it's important to ensure that some of these institutional and coordination liaison that that have been created during this initiative can be mainstreamed and I think the Italy in this case is a very interesting example where diasporas are more and more mainstreamed around formal consultative tables and I think can be really replicated by other actors we have learned also that engagement in conflict settings is different and it's very and it's very peculiar vis-a-vis for example engagement in natural disasters and it carries a number of complexities in terms of neutrality in terms of independence of separation between the humanitarian aid and the work of you know the military and I think it's important to be aware of those sensitivities and try to navigate them properly and I think that all of IOM in this sense is helpful because IOM is at the same time a humanitarian actor and also an actor that works very closely with diaspora communities another aspect is really you know if the if the final scope is to make this the assistance more effective I think it's important to always keep in mind complementarity how do we ensure that fostering diasporas intervention is done in a way that is really complementary with what local actors you know community organizations governments international actors are already doing on the ground and there is no overlapping of interventions and then finally the localization agenda and this is an agenda which is very much at the core of the work of you know all of us the overall goal is to increase the the ownership and the control of this process by local communities and we have seen how the involvement of diasporas that work very closely with local actors and by doing so they also contribute towards increasing the capacities and the resilience of local communities I think this can really help us to advance the localization agenda. Finally sorry it's a lot of content I'm trying to to be very concise but finally we have looked at this within the framework of two important of global processes that are taking place on one end this is non-new so as I was saying at the beginning there are more and more initiatives that are happening both led by IOM led by other actors like our our colleagues at the MAC for example they are based in Denmark and there is an effort the global effort to bring forward what Paola was saying at the beginning beginning the commitments that were made during the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 and really operationalized them by applying diasporas engagement in different contexts so an important initiative in this sense is the framework for diaspora engagement humanitarian assistance that was created a couple of years ago and has been implemented and piloted ever since by IOMDC but you know with a with a global perspective and it's been piloted so in cooperation with the Haiti renewal alliance and it's been piloted so far in Haiti and Philippines but there are opportunities for piloting every day like in every new crisis I think we should approach the crisis with a more with a more structured approach and then you know why why this model how this model fits within this global framework this model that is drawn by the case study in Italy fits in this global framework in a way that kind of supports an element and a component that was a bit overlooked and that's the one of diaspora engagement in country of residence so in this case Italy to support diasporas intervention both in country of residence so for the integration and the and the welcoming of refugees but also in country of origin and we're really excited really for this experience to fit and complement within the global framework and then the last thing I will say is about some links between this model and the humanitarian peace and access which I think is really at the core of of this of this initiative and definitely something that is obvious and everybody's aware of diaspora diasporas efforts are continuous over time they don't they are not limited by mandate you know humanitarian versus development diasporas commitment is doesn't have a project time frame and a cycle so I think by leveraging this by leveraging this continuity of a of effort we can more organically promote programs that go from the response to the recovery and bridging to our development and also this you know by applying for example sub granting by working on sub granting we could try to identify and give priorities to some interventions that are able to meet shorter term needs while at the same at the same time maintaining a developmental lens we know that development is a lens that can be applied at all phases of the humanitarian response and then also last but not least is to encourage partnership with local actors and and and streamlining the coordination in order to ensure longevity and sustainability of the intervention there is more in the white paper around the nexus but you know these are just some macro areas some conclusions here I think we all realize that unfortunately no I mean unfortunately the the magnitude of crisis show us that there is need for a multistakeholder approach and diasporas are key actors and we need to keep really investing in this in this engagement this is a remarkable case study I have worked with this we know in this area over the last five years and I really am impressed about what IOM Rome has been able to do in this case studies and also in previous engagement efforts so there is a lot to learn and a lot of like cross fertilization to to promote the white paper will be soon available in English and Italian and hopefully you will all receive the link we'll be able to engage more and we will remain available for also bilateral engagement thank you for your attention I'll end over the floor to Daniel thank you very much Roberta and thank you very much for the presentation yes there were many things to say so I guess the time we were being too optimistic in thinking that one hour was enough to say everything we wanted to say but now is also the time for possible questions say if you have any there is one that is already in the in the chat is about where we can see this map I guess it's also what where we can see the white paper the white paper is going to be available as Roberta was mentioning very soon we're just in the final steps for the publication and it will be available on our website but also we will try to to share the link with with all your contacts and then of course about how in case of the YASP organizations from Ukraine present in Italy how to get in contact with us we will put on our on the chat also our email address and of course please write to us so that you would be sure to be in in in our list and and we can actually also consider you for other conferences or for other initiatives if you have questions please just raise your hand and then we will mute you or again you can write on the chat okay okay if yes please Daria yes hello yes my name is Daria from DMACC has already said I just have a question thank you first of all thank you very much for this presentation it's really remarkable work you did and do you plan to replicate this in general I am to replicate this experience in other countries not only in Italy in other countries other than Italy you mean yes yes well actually one then I would leave also to Roberta to to answer on that because she has a better overview on on these kind of aspects but from our point of view of course we would like also to this model to be used or replicated or just get and and and adapt it to other countries as well Roberta I leave it to you now thank you Daria it's nice to have you here and so yes replicability is exactly what we are aiming at and replicability can happen on many levels on one end you know the same country of residents like Italy in this case can replicate the same model with other communities when other you know disaster strike unfortunately or even in the recovery phase and and and you know and and bridging for the for the development as we were saying but also other country of residents should be able to use this model and adapt it and tailor it to their own context like for example this morning I was in touch with colleagues in Brussels as Iowan Belgium is now trying to is trying to engage the Turkish diaspora and and and work together to you know you know in the face of this of this massive tragedy that has hit the country so obviously you know there are many cases in which this same type of engagement process will need will be relevant and will need to take place and our hope here is to make it easier for new actors to to to embark in this engagement by having already some lessons learned and some steps and actually another important element here to mention is that IOM and the MAC plan to work very closely also to to be sure that we learn you know we kind of maximize our own networks our own capacities for better serving diaspora communities so doing it not in a replication or in overlapping of each other by doing it doing in cooperation over thank you thank you roberta and thank you very much for the question any other question martin russell uh yes fascinating presentation in closing you mentioned the need to continue investment in diaspora humanitarian humanitarianism based on the white paper what do you think is the next most strategic investment to be made by donors to progress elevate the prominence of diaspora organizations in humanitarianism thanks roberta this is for you daniele feel free to jump in this is a this is a tough question obviously martin thank you for being here with us i was not i wouldn't expect any less from you and so this is open i think this is open to to brainstorming and to creative approach um i definitely the sub granting model this is something we are looking into and we have seen how what's the what's the impact the i think the return on investment for diaspora organizations in terms of grant sub grants is very high even little seed money can go a long way in terms of scaling up and in terms of boosting diasporas intervention and we are planning to collect you know experiences from not only from italy but from other contexts to kind of uh to build up more evidence so i think that that personally i believe that's a model that should continue but in a way that as i said shouldn't be shouldn't treat diaspora as you know traditional NGOs but really boosting existing initiative ensuring that this is done in a way that foster local actors engagement and capacities and also like really building on the added value of the diasporas intervention so there are there are some criteria there to take into account there might be other financial efforts and financial investment modalities for example a traditional one which i think has been used in the past and maybe can be replicated again is the matching you know like diasporas intervention diasporas can bring their own financial contributions matched by for example government and by donors in a way that can scale up the initiatives and and there are also some private private some modalities that involve private actors for example in the philippines what we are doing in the recovery phase that doesn't work very much in the emergency phase but in the recovery we are working with microcredit institutions to allow vulnerable communities are trying to rebuild after a time after typhoons um to to use micro loans for the reconstruction and diasporas remittances are playing the role of guarantees against these micro loans for communities and members otherwise would not be considered eligible for this type of financial tool so these are just three quick examples but just to conclude these we are planning uh in april to have a side event at the humanitarian networking and partnership week in genie organized by och and other humanitarian actor exactly to look into alternative financing to invest in diasporas intervention including the sub granting so hopefully if you can join us there we will discuss more and hopefully come up with other innovative ideas over thank you very much roberta if i can add also on this because i think it's important of course uh to provide investment that are financial investments but looking it at the perspective of the country of destination i think it's also important for these the institutions to invest their time and their energy also to create this kind of legal framework or at least the conducive environment for all the diaspora organizations and the diaspora communities to be heard because in those phases i think they can make the difference uh i don't know if there are other questions so i would like really to thank you all very much for being here today and of course uh yes as with lana one more question how is the voice of ukrainian refugees who have been in italy for only one year included into these exercise well um yes as i was mentioning actually would be important for all the diaspora organizations that didn't take part of the process because of course we started working with the organizations that as i mentioned we knew or that were present or uh operational already but for all the others it would be really be important that you please get in contact with us for us it would be impossible to understand and to map out all the organizations that are there but if you reach to us it would be uh for sure we will include you in all in all our lease or next initiatives and thank you very much and there is also another question by dmitro please the floor is yours yeah hello everybody i would like to ask is it possible to have an exchange an exchange with experience with other diaspora in other countries we are from italy and we would like to have a possibility to create uh official institutional representative of ukrainian diaspora diaspora in italy and it would be really helpful to have this kind of exchange and also maybe sort of documents to how to build our representation in italy thank you thank you very much mitro yes i think having an exchange with other communities is also something robert is working on so maybe you can answer to that roberta okay hi dmitro thank you so much i think uh there was one event that happened where that was led by ion ukraine and um there was an attempt to bring together diaspora ukrain diaspora organizations from different country of residence there were representatives from us canada italy other european countries as well definitely i think would be helpful to replicate because it was very well attended it was very appreciated and helpful so i think we could work closely with colleagues in ion ukraine or other other country of residence and see whether we can replicate this exchange at the transnational level there have been also if you there is the global diaspora confederation if you can if you are able to check their website they have been having consultations on a regular basis focusing on the ukrainian crisis i think the last one was a few months ago but there might be the interest and the need to organize another one in order to foster this peer to peer exchange um and i and i then eventually you know it's also up to the organizations to to create formalized networks alliances coalitions an interesting example for that is from the syrian diaspora unfortunately the syrian diaspora has been dealing with a decade of conflict and currently also affected by this current earthquake and they have created transnational coalitions in order to ensure that this engagement is not just ad hoc but takes place in a more regular structured way so this could be also an interesting case study to learn from and we could put you in touch with colleagues from the syrian diaspora they are very generous in sharing their experience over thank you very much roberta and actually larissa larissa lara from gineve she's also sharing a few other links that i think are also very very useful on the on the chat then i see uh the tatiana's positive raise their hand please tatiana the floor is yours yes thank you daniele i would like to provide um some some information trying to to offer um an example to mitro who has for examples of um building a formal representation of the diaspora we have been running an experience at the ministry of labor in last years um addressed to young people with the migrant migrant background the so-called second generation of migrants and we accompanied them through a process of formalizing a representation of young people of second generation so we supported them with a capacity building intervention together with iom iom once again we supported them in um building and formalizing this umbrella association of associations of young people of with the migrant background coming from more than 40 countries around the world and living in italy so this could represent an example for this process of formalizing a representation and this umbrella association now sits in formal tables and that has a dialogue with institutions and can have access to financing from european national even local local institutional actors so we could offer this as an example and you can find more information on this experience which is called congi coordinamento nazionale of the new italian generations on our portal on integration of migrants portal thank you very much yes um thank you very much because this is actually a great experience and a great example on how it is possible to build representation also from different diaspora organizations or in this case organizations that have a multicultural background there is also just to finish also on these are mentioning there is also another example which is the so-called national diaspora forum that is actually a project that is going to create the the a forum for diaspora organizations in italy in that case and this is also common to to the congi experience all diaspora organizations are coming from all different countries of affiliation or of origin so we do not have many experiences of a formalized representation of diaspora organizations that are coming from one community only and actually this is also something that somehow we have been encouraging also through our through our work to make sure that the different diasporas can create platform and forum for their joint representation rather than representation divided by communities that sometimes are already very difficult to bring together so thank you very much and now the time is really up but thank you very much for all your for the presence and for staying here until the end but also for all your comments suggestions and questions stay in touch really just for to look to our website and to see when we are going to launch new initiatives and especially for the white paper to be launched to be shared soon today was the launching because we were very impatient to launch the white paper even if the link is coming is coming soon and and also for other new initiatives but even for other questions or for just no better what we are doing thank you very much and have a nice afternoon or the rest of the day thank you thank you so much bye thank you bye