Feature: Project in Barcelona help integrate Chinese community

The "Xeix" project of Barcelona, which has won the "Diversity Advantage Challenge" award given by the Council of Europe, helps break down the barriers between the Chinese community and local residents of Spain's Mediterranean city.

The president of the Fort Pienc Retailers Association, Joan Farre, told Xinhua that the project gradually could "break down the existing language and distrust barriers between the two communities."

This project, born three years ago within the Association, was able to increase the number of Chinese members within it. Nowadays, 20 percent of the members of the Association that has a total of around 100 members belong to the Asian community.

The project has been promoted by the district of Eixample with the goal of "gradually incorporating the Chinese community into the associative life of the Fort Pienc neighborhood".

The collaboration between the two communities is not only a commercial cooperation, but also a cultural cooperation thanks to the involvement of other actors. Chinese is taught within the neighborhood and employers and children have exchanged poems in Catalan, Chinese and Spanish thanks to the work of the schools.

"In Sant Antoni (another neighborhood of Barcelona) have done this," Farre said, highlighting the importance of extrapolating the project to other districts of the city as well as to other cities.

This feature was essential for the prize of the Council of Europe.

The judges evaluated the projects taking into account social innovation, potential impact, sustainability, possibility of extrapolating the project to other scenarios and initiatives that promote coexistence and cultural diversity.

"260 projects from different countries were submitted, and the technical teams of the Council of Europe selected 15, among them there were two of Barcelona and its surroundings: Fort Pienc and Ateneu Sant Roc of Badalona," Jaime Lanaspa, member of the jury told Xinhua.

All this work reflects on the joint celebration of Chinese and Catalan traditions as Sant Jordi or the Chinese New Year, in addition to other activities, such as the Fortnight Health and Beauty Fair or the Performing Arts Fair, where the two communities participate.

"My feeling is that the Chinese wanted this to happen, they wanted to be invited to participate, they want to prove that they really live here and want the best for the place where they are living," Begona Ruiz told Xinhua.

Ruiz, with 14 years of experience as a mediator between Chinese and Catalonia communities, is also the mediator of Xeix project. "There has been a very important development and Chinese families now have their own business, a family business, and their children speak local languages quite well."

According to Ruiz and to the Fort Pienc Retailer's Association, the project is a success and they hope their model to be followed by other districts to foster the integration of different communities.

The "Xeix" project had the support of Barcelona City Council and the collaboration of the Eixample district, Casa Asia, the Civic Center, the library and the Confucius Institute among others. Endit