Refugee projects

TransCity has been active in inclusive marketing and communication since 2003. Besides developing, elaborating and implementing marketing and communication campaigns, TransCity is responsible for more than 250 research projects. The backgrounds of the respondents are very diverse.

Increasingly, research respondents include people with an Eastern European background. For example, for a Travelex project, we spoke with Netherlands based consumers who were born in countries as diverse as Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

A large part of the target groups we spoke to - or for whom we develop communication - have a refugee background. From Eritrean to Afghan, from Somali to Syrian, from Iraqi to citizens with backgrounds in different African countries.

All of our work therefore originates from the bottom up, from the target group itself. Marketing terms such as 'user generated content' or 'crowdsourcing' are often used to describe this. But whatever fashionable name you want to give it, the essence is as follows:

With recent asylum seekers and refugees, a "user generated content" approach is an absolute prerequisite for success, as the gap between new arrivals and Dutch society in various areas can sometimes be huge.

Below is an example of a 2022 campaign statement from the Netherlands Red Cross. The primary target audience are asylum seekers and undocumented migrants from French-speaking African countries:

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The assignments that TransCity has carried out in recent years include:

• For the municipality of Rotterdam, we spoke with Somali refugees about the most effective way to reach and activate Somali Rotterdam citizens with municipal information channels.
• TransCity was the Dutch partner in a pan-European study on the 'integration' of migrant communities, which explicitly included refugee communities.  
• For the Netherlands Red Cross, TransCity promotes the foreign-language corona WhatsApp service, something that is done primarily through programmatic advertising and the use of culture-specific media.    
• Commissioned by the  central government, TransCity also targets refugee communities, including Eritreans, in its campaigns.
• TransCity was responsible for the development and implementation of a campaign to prevent honor violence within a number of specific target groups, including those living in The Netherlands with a refugee background, such as Iraqi, Kurdish and Somali.
• For SOA Aids Netherlands, TransCity investigated the most promising strategy for convincing sub-Saharan African refugees of the importance of STD testing.

In the covid information video developed by TransCity below, a Syrian refugee family plays itself:

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Collaborative partners of TransCity also provide training, workshops and information to asylum seekers and refugees. Projects include:

• Empowering refugees and unaccompanied minor aliens (UMFNs). Many participants come from dictatorial or autocratic countries where freedom of expression is not a given. A specific approach is then needed to get to the soul of people. Because a 'yes' can be a 'no', and a 'no' can be a 'yes'.
• Workshops for refugees and unaccompanied minors. Where do their talents lie? How can they develop them? Do they already have well-defined ambitions? If so,     which ones? If not, how can we inspire them to name concrete ambitions for themselves? And then to realize them?
• Educating adult refugees and unaccompanied minors about rights and obligations. Working towards participation in society. How can we support them in realizing their ambitions? Discovering talents and increasing self-confidence through a variety of working methods. Trainers know the culture of the unaccompanied     minor refugees and also speak their language: Arabic, Tigrinya, Dari, Farsi, Urdu, Kurdish or another language.
• Trainings on cultural differences for staff in the reception and counseling of refugees. Developing mutual understanding between counsellors and asylum seekers.   Recognizing signals that are relevant for effective counseling. How do you communicate with refugees with traumatic experiences? How do you prevent them from developing aggression towards each other as a result of those traumas?
• Assistance with family conflicts, because the work of the social organizations involved is often inadequate due to cultural differences.
• Information and training in a range of areas: sexuality; drugs and alcohol; dealing with each other and neighbors in residential homes and neighborhoods; budget training; resilience training to women and girls; integration and parenting; preventing problems with schools and other organizations; setting up associations or foundations for self-education; supporting detainees in the Rotterdam Airport Detention Center; providing entertainment in an emergency shelter in Amsterdam.  

Below are two more examples of covid communication targeted at Eritrean refugees.

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