The Welcome app brings together all information, opportunities, and support for newcomers in Almere in one single place, in their own language. This allows them to participate from day one — without having to wait for an appointment, a procedure, or a caseworker.
I am new to Almere
I have an activity for newcomers
language classes, sports, volunteering, social meetups
from work to healthcare to legal aid
Available in 20 languages, also available offline
For caseworkers, social workers, volunteers, and anyone supporting newcomers in Amsterdam: here you will find the complete overview. Which organizations exist, what they offer, and how to reach them. Designed for quick referrals, connecting, and collaborating.
For Organizations
Do you have something to offer to newcomers? Add it yourself. Are you organizing a language café, a sports activity, a consultation hour, or a volunteer project? Post it on the Welcome app and directly reach newcomers in Almere — in their own language. No detours through caseworkers, no complicated routes. You manage your own listings; you decide what is visible.
Direct reach among newcomers in Almere
Automatically translated into 20 languages
Free to get started
The first few months after arrival often shape the rest of a person’s integration. Yet, in practice, this period is still dominated by waiting for housing, civic integration, and employment, and implementing an “Early Start” remains a challenge for many municipalities. At the same time, formal barriers persist, such as the work permit (TWV) and the W-document, alongside the requirement that asylum seekers can only start paid work once their application has been under review for at least six months.
In this whitepaper, you will read how municipalities can transform waiting time into participation time, why combining language learning and work is becoming increasingly critical, and how the Welcome app makes this practical with a single, multilingual starting point for information, activities, and local pathways.
Download Faster participation in the Netherlands
If your organization offers activities that are of interest to newcomers, then Welcome app is something for you! This applies not only to activities that directly contribute to the integration of newcomers, such as language classes or informative counseling, but also if you organize cultural, social, or sports activities. Integration is important because newcomers should be able to participate in all aspects of society.
The Welcome app team and the providers of the activities (civil society organizations) are responsible for keeping the content on the app up-to-date. The municipality therefore has no extra work for this.
Yes, Welcome app can be used for both Ukrainians and other newcomers.
The results so far have been very positive! We launched a new approach in April 2022, and there are already 530 organizations connected to the platform. We now have nearly 100,000 users on our app. For more detailed results, please refer to the 2022 impact report (in dutch).
Welcome app now works with seven municipalities: Venlo, Dordrecht, Leiden, Almere, Den Bosch, Oegstgeest and Amsterdam. Do you also want to work with us? Send an email to info@welcomeapp.nl for more information.
The Welcome app is specifically designed to ease the workload of consultants. With all content always kept up-to-date, consultants can efficiently locate the right offerings and share them with their clients. Consultants are not expected to provide or maintain information; this is the responsibility of the Welcome app team and the providers themselves.
Indeed, Welcome app is available for everyone in the Netherlands. We believe it’s important that all newcomers, even if to a limited extent, can benefit from our platform. However, users who do not live in the municipalities where Welcome app collaborates will see a limited version of the app. They can still ask questions to our Support team and find and book national (often online) activities. They won’t be able to find local activities and organizations in the app. Welcome app truly makes a difference when it can connect supply and demand at the neighborhood level, and we do this by partnering with municipalities.
With Welcome app, all local activities, information, and organizations that are relevant to newcomers come together in one place. Through a user-friendly app available in ten different languages, newcomers in active municipalities can easily take control of their integration process. This helps municipal consultants by reducing the time spent searching for up-to-date offerings in the city, decreasing individual client inquiries, and making it easier for clients to find activities and information themselves. Additionally, our Support team is always available for questions, and newcomers can easily connect with other users, both newcomers and locals, via the app.
An additional benefit is that by using Welcome app, all local social organizations involved can more easily find and connect with each other to share information or collaborate.
As an organization, you can create an account by setting up a profile on the web app. You can then list your activities so that newcomers in your municipality can find and book them. Additionally, you can gain insight into how newcomers experience your activities and what the needs are in the community.
The use of Welcome app is completely free for organizations, newcomers and locals!
Welcome app is designed for newcomers with a refugee background. As a local, you can also create an account. You can answer questions from newcomers and participate in activities or organize your own. Additionally, the app is intended for organizations to provide them with an easy and effective tool to reach all newcomers in the municipality and gain insight into which other organizations are active in the community.
Welcome app aims to support newcomers in various stages of their integration process. All these initiatives are excellent and precisely the type of offerings that should be included in Welcome app. Our goal is to provide information to people in the language of newcomers in an accessible way, informing them about all the possibilities available. We aspire to be the tool that newcomers can use to find all the information, activities, and contacts in one place.
We share this desire with you. At the moment, it’s not yet possible, but it’s something on our radar. We would appreciate your feedback on usage to make the web app as user-friendly as possible. Even with the creation of an API, there will still be a need for human involvement in managing activities.
No compensation is given to organizations for providing activities. We think we can be a useful tool to make it easier for your activities to reach the target group. The app is designed for them. This makes us different from other social maps.
We understand that it can be a lot of work to list all the activities. Therefore, we recommend focusing on activities that are of interest to newcomers. For example, consider activities where the language spoken by the visitor doesn’t matter, activities that are free, or activities that are accessible to newcomers in other ways. For recurring activities, you only need to post them once!
We take the security of our app users very seriously. Activities uploaded by organizations are always checked by us first.
As an organization, you can log in to the web app. You don’t need to download the app for this; you can log in on your computer and add your activities. You can log in to the web app or register here.
Maintenance of the activities is the responsibility of the organizations themselves. We regularly conduct checks on the activities in the app and reach out to organizations if we see that their activities are no longer relevant or up-to-date.
Anyone can create an account on the app. For organizations, we have developed a web app to make managing activities easier. This web app is free of charge.
Welcome app is different from the ‘traditional’ social map. Traditional social maps are often websites with a lot of text and a dry overview of projects or organizations. These maps are often not designed with the target audience in mind: information is centralized but not easily accessible (often only in Dutch) or action-oriented. They do not encourage participation.
Welcome app is different because it was designed in collaboration with the target audience. It is a platform that informs people at the activity level and motivates them to participate. The activities displayed are organized into categories (language, sports, creative, culture, etc.), presented in the user’s own language, and linked to their location. Additionally, Welcome app is more than just an app: we are also a community. We continuously gather feedback from our users and provide a needs-driven offering. Moreover, we have a personal approach and are always available for questions via the Support function in the app.
As an organization, you can work together with us to welcome newcomers to your city. Events, workshops, language or sports classes, fun activities for children, drop-in hours, as well as information or announcements about your organization can be uploaded by you to the Welcome app to make them known to newcomers. You can do this through the web app in your own organization portal. There, you can also easily see which other organizations exist in your city and what activities they are organizing. You can contact other organizations to facilitate collaboration. Additionally, you can send messages to newcomers who have expressed an interest in attending your activity. At the same time, we ensure that the Welcome app reaches newcomers in your city, making the offerings of organizations visible to them through our app.
Please note that all questions are approved by the Welcome app team. This is to ensure that no inappropriate questions are asked on our platform.
The Welcome app is not a platform for finding employment. We typically do not have job vacancies in the app. However, you can find various activities within the “work” category that you can attend. These activities include training programs, workshops, and events that assist in building a professional network. Additionally, we also occasionally have job vacancies available ourselves.
If the Welcome app is not yet available in your municipality, you may not be able to find any language activities nearby. Most local libraries offer free language classes or have language cafes. Try Google to search your local library and find language classes. Additionally you can work on your fluency online and network at Vertel es!
In the search bar, you can type in words to search for activities. Additionally, you can scroll through the activities in different categories, such as language, sports, and Dutch culture.
No, we only offer the platform. Local organizations, companies and individuals are the ones who organize and offer activities through our platform.
In the app, you can ask a question and specify the topic of your question. Additionally, you can choose which group of users you want to address the question to, for example, if you want only people in your municipality to be able to answer the question. In addition to asking questions, you can also answer questions from others.
We call Dutch residents locals!
The Welcome app is currently collaborating with the municipalities of Venlo, Leiden, Dordrecht, Almere, Den Bosch, Oegstgeest and Amsterdam. This means that there is a lot of available offerings in the app for these regions. To find an activity, you can enter a keyword in the search bar or scroll through the various activities. If you don’t live in Venlo, Leiden, Dordrecht, Almere, or Den Bosch, there are also national activities offered in the app.
The app has various features:
