The course trains students in facilitating the relations between migrants and citizens in the host country, aiming at the mutual exchange of knowledge and the establishment of positive relations between individuals of different cultural backgrounds and ethnic origins. It works to promote awareness of and sensitise stakeholders to 'otherness' issues.

Cultural mediation facilitates the establishment of good communication and mutual understanding between different cultures, including between and among newcomer migrant communities and host societies. It also promotes and enhances access to local services provided in a number of specific areas of intervention, such as reception, health, education, and employment services for migrants. It is important for successful cultural mediation to be exercised by trained and experienced professionals who are able to promote its scope.

Specifically, the course aims to train students to:

• assume and assert their role as cultural mediators while interacting with clients, without intruding into other professional fields;
• apply effectively principles and techniques of trust development, facilitation of communication, conflict resolution, and promotion of collaboration between professionals and migrants in their everyday work;
• be aware of their tasks, what they involve, and how they are differentiated according to the intervention field;
• comprehend how to assess the level of trust, collaboration and mutual understanding in a triadic encounter, and adjust their behaviour accordingly;
• become acquainted with different ways of reviewing, analysing and reflecting on encounters, in order to improve their performance.

Direct beneficiaries are those students who follow the course. Indirect beneficiaries can include everyone in society more broadly: those individuals, groups, and communities with which these students share their knowledge or utilise their expertise.

The diploma has its origins in government’s first national 'Integration = Belonging' Migrant Integration Strategy & Action Plan (Vision 2020), launched in 2017. The University of Malta was entrusted with the development of the course.

Teaching and learning within this programme takes place in line with the department’s mission of promoting inclusion and inclusive practices and pedagogies within the community. Academics and practitioners in the field of education, inclusion, migration rights, communication and language theory, translation and interpreting, accompaniment, conflict resolution and others, work together to offer the best programme of study possible.

The first cohort to follow the course comprised 7 students, all of whom graduated in November 2022. Among this cohort, 2 graduates were Maltese nationals and 5 were international students. One of the students obtained a distinction. Within the qualitative evaluation, the graduates summarised the programme as a "a great chance", "life changing", and "excellent".

Completion of the course gives students access to opportunities in different fields of intervention, such as: Health and Wellbeing, Education, Employment, Law Enforcement, Agencies, Reception and Housing, and Local Services.

Funding for the course was provided under a co-financing scheme by the European Union’s Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) for 2014 - 2020.