You Belong Here: Six Cities, One Vision for Welcoming Children and Caregivers

The youngest among us remain the most vulnerable: though children make up just 29 percent of the global population, they account for 40 percent of forcibly displaced people, and, in 2020, the number of migrant children grew to a record 36 million worldwide. Each day of 2020, nearly 30,000 children were displaced by climate-induced disasters alone.

These numbers are not just statistics. They reflect childhoods interrupted, educations cut short, playgrounds disappearing. Yet, the needs of children on the move and their caregivers, most of whom settle in cities, remain overlooked by national and international responses.

That’s where city governments come in. Through the Mayors Migration Council’s Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees (GCF), six cities—Amman, Dunaivtsi, Guayaquil, Milan, Montevideo, and Ramallah—stepped up with inclusive solutions for migrant, refugee, and internally displaced children and their caregivers. 

With support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and the Van Leer Foundation, the GCF Children and Caregivers six cities – adding to the GCF’s total reach of 26 cities since 2020 with more being announced soon – designed and implemented programs to model that, as migration and displacement introduce uncertainty and instability, cities lead the way in including cities’ youngest agents of change, especially in their critical first years of life, while also supporting their caregivers to thrive.

Early Interventions

Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, welcomed newly arrived children and their caregivers with direct, coordinated services at a single, innovative hub. 

The City of Guayaquil’s Centro Municipal Ciudadanos Integrados provided children with point-of-arrival services in city’s busiest bus station. The Centro offered legal aid, medical support, and safe childcare in a single, accessible hub by connecting over 4,000 migrants, refugees, and returnees to 8,000 direct services, making 600 referrals to 40 partners. In a landscape where social service systems can be fragmented and hard to navigate, Guayaquil built something rare: a centralized model that connects, rather than duplicates, existing services. 

Offering another example of a one-stop shop, the city of Dunaivtsi converted a former hospital into a family shelter, providing 30 internally displaced Ukrainian families with not just a roof but psychosocial care, after-school programs, and community-building activities. Children attended local schools and regularly participated in extracurricular activities that aimed to provide a sense of normalcy and connection. The project also provided mental health trainings and consultations for caregivers. The city unlocked nearly $50,000 in follow-on funding to sustain the family center’s wrap-around operations.

Two-generational Approach

Montevideo, Uruguay, and Milan, Italy, led the way in intergenerational inclusion, combining women-led caregiving with programs that nurture children’s critical early years. 

The City of Montevideo launched Resueña, the city’s first-ever care center for migrant women and their children under four, offering 25 families gender-responsive services that combined legal aid, health care, job training, and early childhood education under one roof. “The most important goal is the welcoming of our children in this space, where they feel comfortable,” said one participant. While caregivers accessed resources, their children received nourishing meals and play-based learning. Montevideo unlocked $200,000 to extend Resueña programming for an additional year. 

The First Steps in Milan program, led by the Comune di Milano, took a similarly intergenerational approach. At the heart of the program was a multidisciplinary team of educators, psychologists, and neuropsychiatric specialists who crafted individualized learning plans for more than 320 children up to age six. Children participated in creative workshops and played in local parks. In parallel, 250 caregivers received Italian language classes, psychosocial support, pre-school enrollment support, and cultural orientation courses. Milan secured more than $400,000 in funding to expand and sustain First Steps, proving that inclusion is a winning bed.

Community-led Design

Amman, Jordan, and Ramallah, Palestine, focused on participatory design processes that placed communities, especially children and families, at the heart of efforts to include displaced communities. 

The Greater Amman Municipality reimagined public space as a site of healthy development and education, particularly for children navigating displacement and climate change. Amman is transforming an underused space in the Al-Hussein Refugee Camp into a climate-adaptive public park and Children’s Climate Academy and unlocked nearly $600,000 in co-funding toward the project. Designed through a participatory process that included refugee and receiving families engaged through multiple community workshops, the park integrated green infrastructure with hands-on environmental education. By centering child engagement and climate learning in its design, Amman’s approach reflected a trailblazing vision: where children become stewards of their communities and the environment they call home.

In nearby Ramallah, the city pursued a similar community-driven vision for including children and their caregivers. In Qaddura Refugee Camp, home to 700 children, the municipality partnered with local leaders to rehabilitate the camp’s only public park and modernize its aging waste collection system. Improvements to the park, which receives over 1,000 daily visitors, included new lighting, benches, gender-inclusive play equipment, and a refurbished basketball court. A city official from Ramallah reflected that “one key lesson is the importance of tailored community engagement—by involving children from the displaced community in environmental campaigns, the city not only empowered them to contribute to ecologically sustainable activities but also created a sense of ownership and inclusion.”

The Global Cities Fund in 2025 and beyond

From Montevideo to Amman, the GCF Children and Caregivers grantees demonstrated what’s possible when cities lead. 

This work is far from over – it is the foundation upon which deeper investments, broader inclusion, and systemic change will be built. As the GCF in 2025 focuses on unlocking economic opportunities for urban migrants and refugees – with six new grantees to be announced on the sidelines of the 2025 UN General Assembly –  one lesson is clear from previous GCF grantees: when you invest in cities, they deliver tangible, lasting impact where – and for whom –  it matters most. Now, it’s time for global actors to follow cities’ lead.