Good Practice Criteria
Inclusivity & Participation
Does the practice ensure that its services are accessible and responsive to diverse groups?
Meeting the specific needs of LGBTIQ persons in all matters related to asylum is the core objective of the Queer Base project. Information is available in English, German, Persian, French, Turkish, Kurdish, Russian, Ukrainian and Arabic, via a multilingual telephone hotline and contact form. Project services are delivered by mixed teams and interpreters with experience of the asylum procedure, in order to ensure both accessibility and suitability for the target group.
Good practice checklist
✓ Adopt a participatory, gender mainstreaming, age sensitive, inclusive approach and secure equal opportunities for beneficiaries.
✓ Make sure to provide precise and accessible information on how to access services in different languages, formats and through different communication channels
✓ Ensure that equality and diversity are an essential part of how services are delivered, taking into consideration different needs and capacities.
✓ Make reasonable adjustments to service delivery in order to take into account particular needs of the target group.
Does the practice involve the active participation of the receiving society?
Queer Base follows the innovative approach of community organising with the local LGBTIQ community: the “Friends of Queer Base” platform connects the target group and local civil society via a buddy programme.
Inspiring tools:
the Friends of Queer Base platform.
Good practice checklist
✓ Consider integration as a two-way process, and aim for change on the side of the receiving society.
✓ Foresee an active role for the receiving society in the design and implementation stages of the practice, and involve actions that encourage native communities and beneficiaries to work together.
Does the practice consult its beneficiaries and involve them in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the action?
Queer Base is a grass roots organisation wherein activities are planned and implemented by both beneficiaries and organisers. The practice is innovative in its combination of professional support, other service provision and grassroots organising, and the interpreters hired tend to be queer refugees themselves.
Good practice checklist
✓ Organise consultation activities with migrant beneficiaries in order to co-create actions where possible and secure their feedback on the design and evaluation of the action.
✓ Provide appropriate feedback mechanisms by which beneficiaries can safely express their opinions on service quality.
✓ Use flexible and interculturally-adapted formats and compensate participants for their contribution.
Relevance & Complementarity
Are the objectives of the practice relevant to the needs of the migrants?
The project was conceived in response to the overwhelming and well documented need for support of the LGBTIQ migrant community. Besides the provision of individual counselling and support, integral objectives of the practice include structural lobbying, awareness-raising and capacity building.
Good practice checklist
✓ Identify and analyse the needs of the relevant migrants and prioritise methods which directly ask them about their needs.
✓ Identify and analyse gaps in integration support and design actions to fill these gaps.
✓ Aim for systemic improvement, satisfying the needs of the majority of target groups in the target area.
Is the practice relevant to the empowerment of migrants, the strengthening of their autonomy and the support of their long-term integration?
Queer Base takes an emancipatory approach, working to empower LGBTIQ refugees with the involvement of receiving communities. Ensuring that their asylum applications are professionally dealt with guarantees a refugee individual access to a residence permit, which is essential to their long term integration and reduces the time they are required to spend in temporary reception facilities.
Good practice checklist
✓ Devise actions with the overarching goal of providing positive feedback and making migrants more confident, autonomous and independent.
✓ Contribute to migrants’ engagement with the community for the common good.
✓ Ensure that services contribute to the strengthening of the capacities of migrants/migrant communities.
✓ Include (or create the preconditions for) actions that facilitate long-term integration.
✓ Address discrimination and information gaps as obstacles to long-term integration.
Does the practice align with the priorities, strategic goals and policies of other relevant stakeholders, and contribute to the wider integration framework?
Queer Base cooperates with all relevant stakeholders in the asylum sector and beyond, to ensure the mainstreaming of support for the particular needs of LGBTIQ refugees. It also takes into account EU standards for the inclusion of particularly vulnerable groups with specific needs. Further, it participates in discussion fora and lobbying, and writes position papers on legislative and policy amendments. In 2017 Queer Base provided substantial input to expert recommendations on first interviews in asylum procedures, and a position paper on fair and high quality asylum procedures.
Good practice checklist
✓ Ensure that all actions are in line with international and European human rights standards.
✓ Employ regional/local, national and EU/international level integration-related guidelines and tools.
✓ Make sure that the services offered contribute to the strengthening of the capacities of relevant institutions to support future development.
Effectiveness
Is the practice adequately planned and based on a comprehensive design?
he project is a reaction to the well-documented need for individual and structural support of LGBTIQ refugees, and was planned within the community and in consultation with relevant external stakeholders. Statistics in the annual report show the impact and relevance of its support (legal; administrative; psycho-social). Given the sensitive context, knowledge and understanding of the particular needs of the target group is a prerequisite for all staff, and is key to ensuring the trust of participants and the effectiveness of the work.
Good practice checklist
✓ Aim for actions that achieve observable outcomes among the target group or contribute to changes during the implementation of the action.
✓ Make sure that the objectives and planned results of the activity are feasible and clear.
✓- Develop a communications strategy during the design phase of the action and pay attention to communication with host communities and local authorities.
✓ Develop a staff management plan to identify team members with the right skills to work with beneficiaries, and their needs for training and further qualification.
Does the practice regularly monitor implementation and evaluate its results?
Regular monitoring and evaluation of project results is not only key to ensuring the functioning of its services, but also forms part of its annual planning and reporting. Positive feedback from beneficiaries, ongoing cooperation with partner NGOs, and consistently high demand for the project’s counselling and support services shows that the outcomes of the practice are so far successful.
Good practice checklist
✓ Ensure regular monitoring of action implementation and compare actual performance to goals set during the design phase.
✓ Anticipate obstacles that might occur and plan alternative scenarios during the design phase of the action.
✓ Ensure achievement of intended outputs / outcomes.
✓ Determine whether practice outcomes are considered successful by beneficiaries, the host and practitioner communities, funders, and policymakers.
✓ Assess whether interventions contribute to long-term sustainable change.
Sustainability
Does the practice attract structural funding and support from new sponsors and individuals, or have the potential to develop a business model to generate its own resources?
After an initial phase built on crowd-funding and other donations, the project secured structural funding from the municipality of Vienna. It remains in need, however, of more structural funding and new sponsors.
Good practice checklist
✓ Develop partnerships and relations with relevant stakeholders at the early stage of the action to ensure that the practice has strong support and potential partners for after the primary funding terminates.
✓ Identify new EU and national funding opportunities for long-term integration (e.g., shifting from project-based initiatives that are limited in time or dependent on one (external) donor to a comprehensive, multi-year strategy based on secured funding or diverse funding opportunities).
– Diversify funding opportunities and identify options for self-financing through business activities or social entrepreneurship.
Partnership & Collaboration
Does the practice establish communication and coordination with other relevant actors to foster the integration of migrants? (e.g., migrants, civil society, public authorities, businesses)
Cooperation with all relevant actors in the field is necessary not only to support individual cases, but also to work towards structural change and the sustainable integration of LGBTIQ refugees in Vienna / Austria.
Good practice checklist
✓ Ensure the involvement and participation of key stakeholders in the development phase and create strategies to involve them in the action.
✓ Include multi-stakeholder consultation with professionals, institutions, and citizens, in order to promote the meaningful participation of refuges and migrants and support a joint sense of ownership of decisions and actions.
Does the practice contribute to discussion on the improvement of integration support policies?
The organisation regularly takes public positions and cooperates with other actors to highlight areas in which improvement is needed to ensure the better inclusion of LGBTIQ refugees. While the project is primarily focused on securing access to safe legal status for its participants (as a foundation for long-term-integration), as well as on developing safe reception environments, broader educational and support activities are also offered depending on available resources.
Good practice checklist
✓ Seize opportunities to contribute to the development of comprehensive integration strategies involving EU-level/national/regional/local authorities, service providers and civil society.
✓ Work with relevant partners to jointly review operations, practices, services, and integration outcomes.