Press Release

Thursday December 17, 2009

Immigrant Council produces guide for groups to establish migrant mentoring programmes

The Immigrant Council of Ireland (ICI) will publish a guide for organisations wanting to establish mentoring programmes for migrants tomorrow, International Migrants Day.

The booklet will be available on-line (www.immigrantcouncil.ie), in hardcopy and on CD.

ICI chief executive Denise Charlton said the booklet was produced in response to the positive reaction to the ICI’s pilot mentoring programme, which formally ended in September.

“The ICI’s pilot mentoring programme brought together migrants with Irish citizens or well-established residents to spend time together and learn from each other as individuals,” Ms Charlton said.

“The participants spoke of how their lives had been enriched through the process and many expressed the wish that the programme could be rolled-out nationally so that more migrants and Irish citizens could benefit.

“A number of organisations also indicated they would like to include a similar project in their work programmes.”

Production of the booklet was co-funded by the European Commission and supported by the Office of the Minister for Integration and Pobal.

Also tomorrow, the ICI will release statistics from its client database showing that it continues to deal with more than 10,000 enquiries a year from migrants and Irish citizens.

For more information, please contact Ruth Evans on 087 067 3676.

Immigrant Council produces guide for groups to establish migrant mentoring programmes (PDF)