Stockholm, Sweden

It all started with a practical challenge: If it takes 7-8 years for a foreign-born person to find a job in Sweden, what can Axfoundation do to help speed up the process? This was obviously too great of a challenge for us to solve on our own. We needed to hook arms and build alliances between sectors if we were going to make an impact. We also needed to test different solutions and quickly achieve scale. This led to Axfoundation creating the integration initiative ÖppnaDörren (OpenTheDoor) in 2015. Five years later, over 59,000 new and established Swedes have met through ÖppnaDörren’s partners Yrkesdörren, Svenska med baby and Nya Kompisbyrån . Of the participants, 24% had landed a job or an internship. We had proven that our approach to change worked: Meetings lead to networks – and networks lead to jobs.