Dr. Amanda Paz-Alencar of Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication (ESHCC) has been awarded a City Lab 010 grant by the municipality of Rotterdam for the project ‘Becoming a Rotterdammer’. The project will collaborate with groups of migrants, employers, and case managers to find simple strategies that allow newcomers to participate and feel at home in Rotterdam.
Finding innovations hidden in plain sight
As a newcomer, it’s hard to find your way in Rotterdam. Some newcomers, however, managed to find ways to meaningfully participate in no time, despite the challenges that they faced with being the same. Becoming a Rotterdammer will use the Positive Deviance approach to search for innovations that are hidden in plain sight in communities of newcomers: it focuses on identifying so-called Positive Deviants and what can be learned from them.
Sharing lessons via social media
In interactive workshops with three groups of newcomers, two groups of employers, and a group of case managers, we will explore what can be learned from these Positive Deviants and will help to create social media content to share their lessons. In this way, the project stimulates self-learning communities that allow people to take the matter into their own hands, without having to wait for system change.
Jury report
“The jury finds the method clearly described and the prospects for the future great. You make processes easier and more accessible for newcomers. The initiative focuses on building self-learning communities of and for newcomers. It focuses on positive outliers and what already works: a good thing.”
Read the full report here.
Consortium
Becoming a Rotterdammer is an initiative by dr. Roel Lutkenhaus, who is an ERMeCC-alumnus and the founder of social media research agency New Momentum. Other project collaborators are Stichting Mano, a foundation that stimulates the participation of vulnerable groups in Rotterdam, and OopZ! (Ondernemershuis-op-Zuid), a business incubator that aims to stimulate employment opportunities across the city.
- Researcher
