Mentor families were involved in most, but not all, of the resettlements organized by the dioceses.
11 host communities had neither mentor families nor volunteers; 8 had a mentor family but no other volunteers; 16 had groups of volunteers but no mentor families; and, finally, 17 had both volunteers and mentor families.
Different communities used different mentor family models:
Mentor family on its own, that is, not part of a group of volunteers, which coordinates and deals solely with the local team of Caritas social workers for bureaucratic matters and to develop the plan for hosting the beneficiaries.
Mentor family as part of a network of volunteers. In these cases the mentor family’s role was to serve as the chief point of reference for the beneficiaries, based on their various needs, and for the volunteers, too, while the volunteers handled specific aspects of the accompaniment plan (for example medical issues, the job search, or helping with schoolwork). In some cases the volunteers were also couples or families, but for the most part they were individuals who already volunteered with Caritas, or who were getting involved for the first time for the specific purpose of working with the Humanitarian Corridors.
Mentor families made of up friends, rather than actual families. In these cases, too (which represented a very small percentage), the presence of additional volunteers depended on the organization of the diocesan Caritas branch and the openness of local people to get involved in the project.
In three cases, the mentor family hosted the beneficiary family in their own home. This kind of mentor family, however, was unsuccessful, because sharing the spaces used for domestic life generated significant culture clash, permanently damaging the relationships between the people.
The study revealed that the more the mentor families and volunteers were prepared to welcome the beneficiaries before they arrived, the better the host community was able to handle the hospitality program and face the challenges and problems that came with it.
On the contrary, it found that problems in accompanying refugees arose more frequently when the following elements were found in combination: mentor families working alone, a lack of mediators, a small number of Caritas social workers (1 or 2), and the beneficiaries were large families and/or had serious physical or mental health needs, or needs that were discovered only after their arrival.
