The many millions around the world who watched the World Cup in Brazil last month could not have failed to notice the wonderful “rainbow nation” that makes up Brazil.

For hundreds of years, the Brazilian nation has relied on the principle of free and unrestrained mixing of the races and cultures that have inhabited the country. An equality of black and white and brown and yellow go to make up this talented nation. No limits to colours and no boundaries make Brazil, on the whole, a tolerant and peaceful nation.

In a much smaller way, but with similar aspirations, Martin Chetcuti, who is the manager of the Qawra Access Centre, has roped in residents of St Paul’s Bay to turn a centre for social services into a meeting place for anyone of any age from childhood to retirement, regardless of nationality, colour or creed.

These include the more than 100 different nationalities that now make up the burgeoning population of St Paul’s Bay, which has grown from a small seaside resort of a few hundred people to the second-most populated locality in Malta. In the past three years alone, St Paul’s Bay has seen an increase of over 4,500 residents and in the summer the population trebles to around 80,000.

This has posed a formidable challenge which Mr Chetcuti has tackled head-on by embracing a policy of multi­culturalism in his social services centre. A tree for every nationality represented in St Paul’s Bay has been planted at the Kennedy Grove as a symbolic reminder of the multiculturalism of the area and as a means of integrating the community. “We didn’t want to create a specific project for foreigners. I didn’t want to pigeon-hole people,” says Mr Chetcuti. “Integration has to be natural”.

It has led to events where different cultures come together “to try out different cuisines and to watch ethnic dancing from Russia, North Africa and Malta”.

The initiative is a step in the right direction. There are three similar centres for social services in Cottonera, Valletta and Msida. At St Paul’s Bay the emphasis is on working with people. The centre has its own working groups, including one for different nationalities called Paċi Group, made up of people from the United Kingdom, Brazil, the Philippines and Morocco, among others.

Mr Chetcuti’s emphasis on the human contact aspects and the breaking down of barriers between nationalities living in the same community is most commendable. It spells the practical start to what integration should be all about. As the Social Dialogue Minister has rightly said: “Integration is a dynamic, two-way process of mutual accommodation by all immigrants and residents... We need to take significant and substantial action. How to get there must not be a source of division within our nation. Immigration reform is a concern for all.”

It is crucial for Malta to have a comprehensive action plan for integration. It is in the island’s long-term interests to adopt a well-ordered and structured policy of inclusion of those who are already living among us.

Over the centuries, Malta has absorbed many peoples of different nationalities, cultures, backgrounds, religious beliefs and skin colours, making us the nation we are today.

This is why, in its own small way, and most of all by its emphasis on friendship, community and humanity, the initiative which has been taken in St Paul’s Bay is so encouraging.

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