MOBILE INFO TEAM:
THE IMPORTANCE OF INFORMING
REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS
Supporting the delicate organizational restructuring of MIT
in a constantly changing environment
Introduction
Mobile Info Team (MIT) is a Greek non-profit organization based in Thessaloniki dedicated to supporting refugees and people on the move along the Balkan route by providing them with information and assistance throughout the asylum application process. It has been active since 2016 and over time has significantly expanded both the number of people it serves and the support staff it works with.
In 2023, MIT requested our support to address the challenges posed by its ongoing growth phase and, at the same time, the potential turnover of some key figures for operational management.
System Analysis
The exploration of what specifically Mobile Info Team is and how it works began, as usual, through the analysis of documents and reports made available by the organization. Subsequently, we immersed ourselves for a few days at MIT headquarters, where we organized a series of interviews and a focus group with various members that allowed us to reconstruct a matrix of the main meanings and dilemmas that characterize the organization. The opportunity to spend time, including informal time, with MIT members within the places where they operate daily allowed us to grasp the complexity of the relationships and dynamics at play – fundamental context elements in “reading” an organizational reality – which were added to the various contents gathered through the interviews.
The collaboration
The analysis of the material collected through the GENERATIVE method allowed us to identify the main strengths of MIT, as well as the main dilemmas that characterized the delicate development phase that the organization was going through. In particular, one of the major challenges that MIT was called to measure itself against concerned, as already observed in other realities engaged in the humanitarian and social fields, the difficult and delicate positioning of the organization with respect to its founding values when its development generated conflicting needs between the protection of founding values and the needs for professionalization and structuring.
Through a series of participatory meetings and the establishment of a small group for self-reflection and redefinition of the organizational structure, we have started a consultancy and support process that is leading MIT to take charge of its own delicate choices, without necessarily having to “resolve” its own dilemmatic dimensions, but seeking operational forms that are sufficiently functional to allow the organization to continue its activities with success and well-being.