Helping migrants self-organise and form community groups or associations can have many benefits for both migrants and migrant support organisations. Migrants will be able to:

• Build community power and self-reliance
• Benefit from peer support
• Find shared solutions
• Develop civic participation and leadership skills
• Make migrant voices more visible in local decision-making

Helping migrants create their own groups supports their independence and lets them have control over the help they get or how problems are solved. This also helps make sure that people who are often ignored get heard.

Support organisations can connect better with migrants who don’t trust official services and encourage them to use available support.

When migrants organise themselves, they often build their own support networks, so they don’t have to rely only on your organisation.

This can reduce the workload for your staff and let them focus on people who need more help.

Migrant support organisations can assist in several ways:

1. Facilitate early networking and trust-building: Connect people from similar backgrounds, languages, or interests, host meet-and-greet events, cultural exchanges, or story-sharing sessions, organise a welcome lunch for newcomers to meet others from their region.

2. Support group formation and structure: Help with the basics of deciding a name, purpose, and shared values. Provide templates for group constitutions, codes of conduct, and decision-making models. Explain the difference between informal groups and registered organisations. Encourage low-barrier, informal organising first – formal registration can come later.

3. Support community leadership: Build clients’ capacity and skills by running short trainings on practical aspects of organising, such as how to chair meetings, planning events or campaigns, fundraising basics, conflict resolution and representing others’ views.

4. Guide on legal and practical steps: Help groups understand legal structures (e.g. unincorporated group, CIO, CIC), how to open a bank account, how to apply for funding, or how to register with the Charity Commission. Provide workshops or 1-1 support from legal advisors or community development officers.

5. Mentor and connect emerging community leaders: Link emerging groups to existing migrant or grassroots associations, local councillors or decision-makers, training or mentoring schemes. For example, connect a new women’s migrant group with a local women's leadership network.

6. Promote recognition and visibility: Help migrant-led associations gain public recognition by hosting joint events or forums, including them in newsletters or local directories, encouraging local media coverage or speaking opportunities, or co-hosting community events with migrant-led groups to boost their visibility.

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