About W.I.T.

The Welcoming International Talent project was co-financed by the European Urbact Program.
The City of Parma was a partner with other cities: Groningen-Netherlands (coordinator), Stadt Leuven-Belgium, Magdeburg-Germany, Edc Debrecen Urban and Economic Development Center-Hungary, Zlin Municipal Authority-Czech Republic, Bielsko-Biala Municipality-Poland.
The project started in December 2018 with an expected end date of December 2020, it was then extended by 6 months due to Covid. The goal for the partner cities was to improve the internationalization of medium-sized university cities, specifically city attractiveness and inclusion of students and skilled workers.
The participating cities worked together with the aim of learning the winning strategy adopted by Groningen and adapting it to their own specific context, by developing a series of initiatives that would allow them to improve their policies to attract and integrate highly skilled immigrants in supporting the development and competitiveness of local economy.
The project focused on these specific aspects:

• -Services: access to housing, medical services, services, help with bureaucracy
• -Branding and marketing: identification of target groups, campaigns, online and offline methods to reach them and understand their needs
• -Integration in the social and cultural life of the city
• -Labour market integration policies
• -Governance (as an encompassing theme): creation of a strategic and lasting collaboration of stakeholders to develop and implement welcoming policies, involving target groups

The Project foresaw the activation of an Urbact Local Group composed of the Municipal Administration and both public and private stakeholders with the task of acting on the following key elements:

1. Deepen the good practice of Groningen in thematic meetings;
2. Increasing the competences of the Urbact Local Group members.
3. Learning and deepening, through exchanges between partners, five specific sub-themes addressed by the project.