It is important that integration does not stop during the coronavirus crisis

Kompis Sverige is a non-profit organization that has been creating meetings between established and new Swedes since 2013. The association has matched friends in pairs, organized activities, workshops and other forms of meetings to facilitate integration.

With the coronavirus crisis, Kompis Sweden has had to completely rethink its operations to prevent them from grinding to a halt. In 48 hours, staff developed the Språkkompis Online service to replace physical meetings.

- We realized that we needed to do something quickly to keep our business going. When the schools where new Swedes study SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) were forced to close and switch to distance learning, we realized that it would have very negative effects for the target group, both for language training but also socially. We are passionate about creating meetings between new and established Swedes and when the physical meeting no longer worked, it felt natural to take the business online," says Johan Bäckström, CEO of Kompis Sverige.

Integration is about meetings between people but they do not necessarily have to be physical. Many new Swedes are also used to video contact, given that they have family and friends in countries other than Sweden.

Through Språkkompis Online, the number of matches has increased significantly. In a typical year, the organization matches around 1000 people, but in the first six weeks since the launch, over 1800 have been matched. The difference is that individuals have to take more responsibility for making the matches happen. But since you enter which apps you use when you register, it is part of the matching itself. In this way, it has worked well so far.

The association also sees several positive results with Språkkompis Online. For example, the threshold for registering is lower and there is a greater geographical spread now that the meetings are not linked to a physical location. To date, participants have been matched in 177 municipalities across Sweden. A full 94 percent of those who have been in contact think it was easy and convenient to book a meeting and 9 out of 10 people also feel that it works well to meet a new person via a video meeting.

To support the conversations, Kompis Sverige, together with LYS Förlag, has produced various conversation cards that the participants can use. The conversation cards are available for different levels and address different topics that the people can talk about.

- Our intention is not to completely replace face-to-face meetings. At the same time, Språkkompis Online has proven to be so successful that we absolutely want to continue offering it even after the corona crisis. We see that many companies offer their employees to get involved in different ways and this is something very simple that can be done almost anytime and almost anywhere. We think anything that facilitates integration is a good thing, and this is clearly one such initiative," says Johan Bäckström.