In the Basque Country, Spain, it is the Basque Government that leads the Community Sponsorship Programme. They offer funds so that organisations implementing the project can hire qualified staff, can cover some extra expenses and can offer financial support to refugee families. The organisations then work with a team of volunteers to provide social and practice support.

"With this project and this teamwork we do not want only to focus on supporting refugee families but building strong local communities willing to share their daily lives with new people living in their neighbourhoods. The organisations not only support refugee families but also help local groups managing their expectations, training them about intercultural skills or giving orientation when needed or asked for".

Unlike the approaches we've looked at in previous modules, the Basque Country start not by identifying a group of volunteers, but with an offer of housing. The partner organisations then build a team of volunteers who are based in the local area, near to the housing:

"In our case, social organizations are the main responsible for finding housing. It can be done together with volunteers and in one case it has been so that the location and the group came almost at the same time. But due to the tight calendars, the task for searching volunteers usually depends on the location.

Sometimes we have found housing thanks to the parishes or religious orders and sometimes it has been thanks to the public housing system. But we have been facing the situation that until we did know the exact location we could not start searching for local volunteers, for those volunteers that then will be supporting the family in their daily lives helping them to the doctor or helping bringing children to school, etc".

Once they have identified the house, they will then reach out to organisations in the local area, who they have connections with. This is usually based on pre-existing relationships through faith-based communities.  

"Our goal is that we can build a group who are as local as possible. We also try to find housing where families can stay once the programme is finished so they can keep all the network they have built during two years".

In part, this is possible because each refugee family also has support of a social worker, funded by local government, who provides on-going support throughout the programme. The social worker also coordinates the team of volunteers, who provide additional support and social activities. Therefore, even if there is some turnover of volunteers, the social worker is always a constant steady presence for the family.