Successful intercultural strategies require change in the mind-set, attitudes and behaviour of both migrants and receiving communities. Building trust and a feeling of belonging to a pluralistic community with shared fundamental principles is key to achieving cohesion. The difficulty of gaining access to reliable information on the real impact of migration on communities is a major obstacle in achieving this goal, and thus people often tend to form their views on the basis of unfounded “myths” or stereotypes.

The “Anti-rumour methodology” has been developed precisely to counter diversity-related prejudices and rumours that hamper positive interaction and social cohesion and that lay the foundations of discriminatory and racists attitudes.  Following a first pilot action launched and tested by the ICC programme in some cities back in 2014, the demand of local authorities for both anti-rumours training and for assistance in designing anti-rumours strategies has constantly grown.

For this reason, the ICC has developed an Anti-rumours Manual as a tool that cities and other stakeholders can use to ensure the proper and harmonised implementation of the standardised/certified Anti-rumours methodology. The Manual includes an evaluation guide, as well as a set of examples of best and innovative practices, chosen after the mapping of the anti-rumours projects run so far.