Our aim is to help professional immigrants integrate smoothly into the Spanish labour market, increasing in quantity and quality services.

The project's target population consists of people in possession of degrees or qualifications issued by a foreign country who want their diploma or degree title recognised by the Spanish system. Most of these people are unemployed or working in jobs requiring low qualifications. They need to validate their academic titles in order to get a job, start a business or as a requirement to keep the work they are currently performing.

We employ different strategies to achieve our goals:

• Information workshops on the degree validation process (group activities), for individual and staff working in immigration services. Workshops take place in different centres in Madrid Region: Participation and Integration Centres for Immigrants (CEPIs), town halls, information offices, associations, etc.)
• Personal interviews at our offices in Madrid. During such interviews, we analyse individual needs and give advice on: the validation of diplomas and degrees, the professional labour market in Spain, freelancing and business start-ups, and the Spanish educational system. The interviews last about one-and-a-half hours and are followed up with successive sessions as necessary.
• Answering questions via email or telephone for people living far from Madrid. 
• Organising conferences aimed at analysing and enhancing the visibility of qualified immigration. 
• Maintaining contact with competent Spanish bodies to make them award of difficulties immigrants find in validation processes

1. An increasing number of people have requested and received information or advice since 2005 (from an average of 400 people per year between 2006 and 2009 to more than 800 in the last year).
2. People who have been informed before initiating the validation process with the Ministry of Education, make conscious decisions about which type of validation they should ask for and introduce documents in a correct way. There is hence a speeding up of the process, on the one hand, and an improvement in people’s self-esteem, on the other.
3. INPROIN is a socialization area and a reference site for qualified immigration.

We base our  evaluation on:

• internal verification sources: monthly users report, individual data files, follow up reports, activities evaluation questionnaires
• external sources: Ministry resolutions, interviews with users and institutions agents.

Our projects are funded by the Immigration and Cooperation Council of the Madrid Regional Government (Comunidad de Madrid). We also have a team of volunteers and some own resources.