Press Releases

20/02/03
NORWAY - Cultural Orientation Seminar
The IOM office in Oslo recently organized a seminar to evaluate the end of the first year of the Norwegian Cultural Orientation (CO) programme.

The seminar brought together IOM CO officers, bi-cultural trainers, resettlement officers of the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), refugees and representatives from recipient municipalities.

Bård Grinnhaug from Vadsø municipality, which has received 53 CO-participants from Congo, gave a strong testimony to the positive effect of CO training as well as the information given to the municipality. Vadsø, a municipality of 6.000 inhabitants, has settled some 400 refugees over the past five years.

The one-year pilot project ended with a total of 450 resettled refugees receiving the training. For the coming year, new funding provided by UDI will allow IOM and its partners to provide cultural orientation training for children aged between 8 and 14. The programme thus far has focused on families and to some extent unaccompanied minors. The next phase will put more emphasis on accompanied minors as they are to a large extent left out of the information process and are in need of CO classes in order to integrate into society.

For more information contact Knut Felberg, IOM Oslo. Email: kfelberg@iomosl.org Tel: +47 23 10 53 20.