Project Details

Twinning for social inclusion of Mahdia’ fishermen in Mazara del Vallo

Short Description and Goal

Half of Mazara del Vallo’ fishermen are immigrants; nonetheless they face continuous precariousness as they lack technical and linguistic skills and are the most exposed to the oscillations of the work market. For this reason the Sicilian town of Mazara del Vallo has taken on the agenda of town twinning an important local issue: social inclusion of Mahdia’ fishermen

Detailed Description

  • The project “Euro Mediterranean – Culture, economics and development thanks to the vivacity of citizens”was organized by Mazara del Vallo (IT) in July 2003 with their twin towns of Mahdia (TU), Santa Pola (ES) and Volos (GR).
  • Its dense programme focused on the social inclusion of immigrants in the economics of Mazara del Vallo, prevented by a close system of integration of the immigrant community. The Fisheries sector is pointed as the appropriate sector in favour of this inclusion: need of an abundant workforce and a large demand compared to other sectors.
  • The objectives of this project were multiple: promoting and developing international cooperation for the economic development of the territory; promoting the knowledge of the cultural and artistic patrimony as well as productive activities such as fishing and artworks; sustaining and saving resources of the environmental system; promoting the diffusion of the information to all citizens.
  • More precise objectives were to outline the difficulties of integration between the communities of Mazara and of Mahdia and identify solutions, mainly for theTunisian immigrants working in the Fisheries sector.
  • Concrete actions were therefore undertaken during this meeting, namely the creation of a Counter for information, orientation and training of the immigrants, within the Fisheries Service Centre of Mazara del Vallo. This would provide immigrants with: multilingual information and orientation on opportunities and administrative modalities of work, organisation ofItalian language course, training in relations to their working activities including a training on “on board security rules”, and definition of means to valid ate their competences.
  • The meeting resulted in defining agreements between the Sicilian authorities and their counterparts in Mahdia for the implementation of the following actions: host and create more opportunities for potentialTunisian fishermen who intend to include themselves in the fisheries sector in Mazara, and define for them training sessions and recognition of their competences.
  • These thematic actions reinforced consequently the existing links of Mazara del Vallo with Tunisia.
Source: Town twinning projects on Social Inclusion
Innsbruck, AUSTRIA 10-12 May 2006
Brochure of best practices

Initiators are

• Public institution

Contact Info

MAZARA DEL VALLO – Comune di Mazara del Vallo
Tel: +39 0923 93 29 19 Fax: +39 0923 93 31 77
SANTA POLA – Ayuntamiento de Santa Pola
Tel: +34 96 541 11 00 Fax: +34 96 669 27 72
VOLOS – City of Volos
Tel: +30 42 12 30 93

Project Topics

Inclusion & Welfare

Level / Project Complexity /

Medium

Participating Cities

  • Mazara del Vallo
  • Mahdia
  • Santa Pola
  • Volos

Sizes of Participating Cities

• 20.000 - 100.000
• 100.000 - 500.000

Participating Countries

  • Italy
  • Tunisia
  • Spain
  • Greece

Project Region(s)

• Europe
• North Africa

Media Credits

Cover picture: https://unsplash.com/