For immediate release
Antwerp, 30 April 2026
The DiGiN project, Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive Municipal Organisations, has concluded after two years of supporting municipalities to strengthen diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within their organisations.
Funded by the European Union under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme, DiGiN brought together the cities of Rotterdam, Ghent and Genoa, Leiden University of Applied Sciences and Yellow Window to explore how municipalities can move from commitment to concrete institutional change.
The project’s final conference took place in Rotterdam on 25 March 2026, convening municipal professionals, researchers, practitioners, artists and project partners to reflect on what helps DEI work take root inside public institutions. Discussions throughout the day underlined a key message: sustainable inclusion work needs more than good intentions. It requires practical tools, supportive structures, employee involvement, leadership and long-term strategy.
As its main legacy, DiGiN leaves municipalities with a set of open-access resources that can be used and shared beyond the project’s formal end. These include the DEI Assessment Tool, the Toolkit of DEI capacity-building materials, the Evaluation Toolbox and a collection of inspiring practices from municipalities across Europe.
The DEI Assessment Tool helps municipalities understand where they stand, identify strengths and gaps and support internal dialogue on what should come next. The Toolkit offers practical training materials, case studies, exercises and templates for municipal staff and change agents. The Evaluation Toolbox supports municipalities in defining expected outcomes, mapping change pathways and assessing whether DEI actions are contributing to meaningful and sustainable change.
DiGiN also gathered inspiring practices from municipalities working on inclusion in different institutional contexts, including the Rotterdam Inclusivity Panel, Genoa’s Equal Opportunities Table, Ghent’s work on employee networks and inclusive HR policy, Vienna’s work on LGBTIQ+ inclusion in city administration and Nantes’ approach to becoming a non-sexist city.
Together, these outputs provide municipalities with a practical foundation to assess where they stand, build internal capacity, learn from existing practices and sustain DEI work beyond the lifetime of the project.
As the project comes to an end, DiGiN’s resources remain available through the project website and Zenodo. Municipalities, public institutions, equality bodies, civil society organisations, researchers and practitioners are invited to explore, use and share the materials to support ongoing work towards more diverse, equitable and inclusive public organisations.
Media contact:
Vasia Madesi
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Information about DiGiN
The DiGiN Project, funded by the European Union under the CERV-2023-EQUAL call, is dedicated to integrating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) across European municipalities that reflect the broad demographics of local societies. In response to the growing diversity of European cities and the urgent need to address institutional discrimination and inequalities, our project focuses on embedding DEI interventions as structural and sustainable parts of municipal organisations.
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Visit our website: https://diginproject.eu/
