The NGO Zentrale Information und Beratung für Flüchtlinge gGmbH was established on January 1, 2006. The Refugee Centre Hamburg (Flüchtlingszentrum Hamburg) has been practicing for more than 35 years in form of its pre-societies. The Zentrale Information und Beratung für Flüchtlinge gGmbH is a non-profit company of the Hamburg associations of Arbeiterwohlfahrt (Workers’ Welfare), Caritas, and the German Red Cross. The members of the multicultural, interdisciplinary and multilingual (currently about 20 languages with more than 30 consultants), age-mixed counsellor team have partially more than three decades of relevant social work experience in the field of professional refugee aid and counselling.

Our main counselling center „Refugee Centre Hamburg“ performs numerous tasks of professional refugee counselling in the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg. Due to our many years of experience and our diverse competences, we have been able to provide central services for refugees in Hamburg, so that we play a significant role in the provision of refugee aid in the metropolitan Hamburg area. Our advice is sought by political and governmental stakeholders. Examples of the outstanding tasks of the Refugee Center Hamburg are the clearing office for medical care for foreigners, the clearing office for refugees in need of special protection, and the central German course consultation, registration and approval for asylum seekers. For the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg we are responsible for the support of participants in the German resettlement and humanitarian admission programms in Hamburg (e.g. contingent refugees from Syria and local Afghan staff).

Through the years of counselling and EU project work, we have developed stable network structures, e.g. to the German Red Cross association level as well as to other refugee and return counseling centers in the entire German territory. Reliable and partnershipbased working relationships with the responsible federal and state ministries and authorities as well as with international institutions such as the IOM have also been established.

Our long-standing practice of refugee counseling, as well as the fact that all our employees are professionally qualified and some of them have their own refugee or migration background, is the reason for our excellent networks in the refugee communities. We are a firmly established and low-threshold access point with our central headquarters at the Hamburg Main Railway Station and are recommended to new asylum seekers through our own public relations work, through refugee networks and multiplicators.