On Friday, February 11, Mayor Claudia López, accompanied by a high-level team from different district secretariats, participated in the Bloomberg Harvard Collaboration Track, a space aimed at exploring best practices for public policy implementation. This initiative, led by Bloomberg Philanthropies, supports cities in strengthening their capacities and making the best use of talent, resources, and energy, to devise solutions to complex problems.
“We appreciate this opportunity, and we are here with the leaders of the secretariats to advance the effective inclusion of the migrant flow that arrives in the Colombian capital and define actions for migrants’ social, territorial, and economic integration through the cohesion services provided by the various District secretariats”, said the Mayor.
This exercise is part of the Harvard Bloomberg Cities Leadership Initiative, of which Mayor Claudia López is a member. Thanks to this participation, Bogotá will receive 6-month consultancy service to strengthen the inter-institutional collaboration that began with this diagnostic event.
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During the meeting, the participants sought to answer questions related to the phenomenon of migration and the best tools to provide effective solutions to the social demands that these flows generate.
“The work that we will carry out with Bloomberg and Harvard is a great opportunity to work towards the objective of achieving real integration of the migrant population,” affirmed Mayor López.
“Perhaps due to the urgency of addressing all the issues caused by the pandemic, we have not achieved a real inclusion of the migrant population, but it is time to face this situation in the right way. In order to do this, we will put together a high-level team that will take charge of this mission," she added.
The Mayor's Office of Bogotá has been implementing actions and strategies to move from humanitarian aid to the social and economic integration of migrants, taking into account that, according to data from the Bogotá Personería, 88.2 percent of Venezuelan migrants living in Bogotá have no desire to return to their home country.
As part of these strategies, the Intersectoral Commission for Service and Integration of the population that arrives through these various migratory flows was created. This is a key space to coordinate the work of the 15 city secretariats, as well as actors from the national government and international cooperation.
In upcoming innovation sessions, the Bogotá team will receive specialized training from the Bloomberg-Harvard City Leadership initiative. This training will be given through workshops, classes, and personal sessions by a team of experts from Bloomberg Philanthropies. These sessions will be attended by a team made up of members from the Secretary of Government, Felipe Jiménez; the coordinator of the Bogotá Delivery Unit, Juan Sebastián Ramírez; and public servants from the Secretaries of Education, Economic Development, Women, Social Integration, and Habitat.
