“My Swiss family is incredible. They have helped me so much”, says Morad Essa, a young Eritrean and the first migrant to be welcomed into a Swiss family. He arrived in 2015 in Lully, a small Vaudois municipality and the first in Switzerland to host migrants, a practice that has now taken off in several Swiss cantons.
In Vaud, over the last two years, 200 migrants have benefited from it; 120 are being hosted by 60 families while 40 others live in flats and/or houses provided by 10 different municipalities.
Hosting refugees in families accelerates their integration while facilitating the language learning process and the transition to work, thanks to the hosts’ social connections. It is less expensive for the canton and helps to reduce prejudices. In Switzerland’s Italian region, Adem, a fifteen-year-old unaccompanied migrant, has been living near Lugano with the Schoepf family since August 2017. “Adem is like a son to us now. We welcomed him into our family because we wanted him to have the best possible chance to make it in Switzerland. […] Adem has been a great gift,” says Simona Spinedi Schoepf.
