09:00 – 09:30 Welcome Coffee & Registration

09:30 – 10:00 Welcoming Remarks

10:00 – 10:30 Keynote Speech: What Do Community Sponsorship Experiences Tell Us About Integration in Europe?

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee Break

11:00 – 12:15 Panel Discussion: From Pilots to Practice – Lessons Learned from the RISE Community‑Based Integration Models

12:15 – 13:15 Lunch

13:15 – 14:15 Panel Discussion: Perspectives from the Field

14:15 – 14:45 Coffee Break

14:45 – 15:45 Parallel Workshops

15:45 – 16:00 Closing Remarks

Opening the conference, the keynote sets the scene for the day by inviting participants to reflect on the broader lessons of community sponsorship for integration across Europe.
It explores how practical experiences from the RISE project reveal both the potential of community-led approaches to foster inclusion and the challenges shaped by different national and policy contexts. By linking evidence from practice with wider reflections, the keynote provides a common foundation for the conference discussions on how to strengthen, scale, and sustain community sponsorship in the future.

How do you take an idea as ambitious as community sponsorship and turn it into something that actually works — across three countries, three legal systems, and three very different housing landscapes?

This panel goes behind the scenes of the RISE project to explore exactly that. It brings together the partners and practitioners who were responsible for designing, adapting, and launching the community sponsorship pilots in Lithuania, Italy, and Belgium.

The panel also offers a rare side-by-side view of two distinct pilot experiences — what each one looked like in practice, how they diverged, and what those differences tell us about the conditions that shape whether community sponsorship can take root.

For anyone working to develop, fund, or replicate community sponsorship programmes, this panel offers something concrete: not just inspiration, but the thinking, the structure, and the hard-won lessons that sit underneath a working model.

What does it mean to commit to accompanying a stranger through one of the most vulnerable moments of their life? What does it feel like to arrive somewhere new, and to have someone show up — consistently, practically, humanly — to help you find your footing? What does a diaspora community bring to sponsorship that goes beyond language, and how does shared experience shape the kind of support that’s possible? And what does someone working within the housing system see that others miss — the structural realities, the gaps, and the moments where the human and the institutional finally meet?

Perspectives from the Field brings together a rare and deeply human mix of voices —  sponsors who gave their time, their networks, and often much more; a newcomer who received support through RISE and navigated the journey of building a new home in a new country; a diaspora representative and sponsor from Belgium who understands what it means to straddle two worlds; and a housing expert from FEDASIL who has seen the system from the inside.

Together, they offer something that no report or evaluation can fully capture: the texture of what community sponsorship actually feels like, from every angle.

This panel doesn’t offer a single story. It offers several that together paint a fuller picture of what community sponsorship means in practice, and why it matters not just as a model, but as a way of being in relationship with one another.

What does it take to embed community sponsorship as a lasting, locally-driven volunteering practice? This interactive session explores how community sponsorship practices can evolve from isolated, project-based initiatives into stable, locally embedded practices that endure over time.

While community sponsorship has proven effective in supporting inclusion, particularly in access to housing, many initiatives remain fragile. They often rely on motivated individuals, informal arrangements, or favorable conditions that are difficult to sustain. The central challenge is therefore not whether such initiatives work, but what allows them to last.

Rather than introducing new models, the workshop builds on participants’ existing experience. Through a sequence of structured exercises, participants analyze real practices, identify their points of fragility, and examine the conditions that affect their continuity.

The session focuses on three core questions:

• What enables initiatives to becoming durable practices?
• Which elements of a practice depend too heavily on specific people, relationships, or conditions?
• What needs to be stabilized, adapted, or intentionally kept flexible for practices to remain locally relevant over time?

The workshop introduces key enabling dynamics-such as role clarity, local networks, mediation capacity, and learning mechanisms-not as abstract principles, but as responses to challenges identified by participants themselves referring to their respective experiences.

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a practical lens to assess and strengthen their own initiatives, and with one concrete step to increase the sustainability of their practices in their local context.

What does it take to build and sustain a diverse volunteer base in Community Sponsorship? This interactive session explores how to engage, mobilize, and retain volunteers — including from diaspora communities — as an inclusive and lasting practice.

Volunteers are the backbone of Community Sponsorship. Yet recruiting and retaining them, particularly from diverse backgrounds, remains one of the most persistent challenges initiatives face. Motivated individuals step forward, then step away. Diaspora communities hold invaluable capacity, yet often encounter barriers — practical, cultural, or structural — that prevent meaningful involvement. The central question is therefore not whether diverse volunteers matter, but what it actually takes to reach, include, and keep them engaged over time.

Rather than offering ready-made solutions, the workshop builds on participants’ existing experience. Through structured exercises, participants examine real recruitment and retention practices, identify where engagement breaks down, and reflect on what conditions enable sustained volunteer involvement.

The session focuses on three core questions:

• What practical and structural barriers prevent people — especially from diaspora communities — from getting involved?
• What strategies help reach and meaningfully include volunteers from diverse backgrounds?
• What sustains motivation and prevents drop-out and burnout across the full sponsorship journey

Drawing on experiences from the Belgium Community Sponsorship Pilot, the workshop explores key enabling dynamics — such as accessible entry points, diaspora networks, role fit, and ongoing support structures — as responses to challenges identified by participants themselves.

How can community sponsorship become more visible and relevant to key stakeholders and the wider public? This interactive session explores practical approaches to raising awareness, strengthening outreach, and building the connections that allow initiatives to grow and gain lasting support.

Community sponsorship often remains under the radar — known to those already involved, but unfamiliar to the institutions, communities, and individuals who could become its strongest allies. The challenge is therefore not only to communicate better, but to communicate more strategically: reaching the right people, through the right channels, with messages that resonate.

Rather than offering generic communication advice, the workshop builds on participants’ existing outreach experience. Through structured exercises, participants map their current stakeholder landscape, identify gaps in visibility, and examine what has and hasn’t worked in their own contexts.

The session focuses on three core questions:

• Which stakeholders and audiences matter most — and how can they be reached effectively?
• What communication channels and messages generate the greatest impact across different sectors
• How can strategic connections be built and maintained to sustain awareness over time?

By the end of the session, participants will leave with a clearer picture of their stakeholder landscape and one concrete step to strengthen the visibility and reach of community sponsorship in their local context.