ECSILI - Empowering Communities: A Local Action Plan for Social Inclusion and Labour Integration of Refugees

As the war in Ukraine persists, the social inclusion of Ukrainian refugees within their host communities in Europe has become an increasingly urgent issue. Despite institutional efforts, language barriers, inability to access public services and skills mismatch are the most significant causes of their inactivity and social exclusion.

Hence why ESN is leading ECSILI – Empowering Communities, a project funded by ESF+ Social Innovation+ Initiative. ECSILI stands as a concrete effort to address the societal consequences of the war in Ukraine within the partner municipalities of Warsaw and Arad. ECSILI was inspired by ERACIS, the successful Regional Strategy for Social Cohesion and Inclusion in the Spanish region of Andalusia. 

In 18 months, the ECSILI consortium will create a social innovation model to improve social and labour market inclusion of displaced people from Ukraine in Warsaw and Arad. 

In the first phase of the project, the municipalities will engage local employers, NGOs, social workers and displaced people from Ukraine to draft a local needs analysis addressing the gaps within the current social services offer. 

The analyses will help them create and implement a Local Action Plan tailored to the cities’ needs for the social and labour inclusion of the displaced people from Ukraine.

In the meantime, the international company SkillLab will adapt their signature skills profiling tool for professional matchmaking to the cities’ local contexts.

In the second phase, under the expert guidance of the Regional Government of Andalucia, the municipalities of Warsaw and Arad will pilot the social innovation model, engaging trained social workers to create personalised inclusion pathways for 50 refugees in Arad and 80 in Warsaw.