The growth of the region’s existing SMEs (SMF) is slowed down by staff and skills shortages. In Värmland, 24 % of small businesses believe that the shortage of suitable labour is a major obstacle to their growth. The situation is even more serious in small municipalities with large emigration. At the same time, the county (especially sparsely populated municipalities) has received a large number of new arrivals who are at the disposal of the labour market. However, unemployment is high among those born abroad. Two of the municipalities participating in the project are among the municipalities with the highest proportion of unemployed foreign-born people in the whole of Sweden. The business community needs a better ability to assimilate skilled labour from the foreign-born part of the population in order to continue to develop and create growth. There are also too few new companies in the region, despite the fact that a large proportion of new arrivals have an entrepreneurial background. The causes of the problems are several; * SMEs lack experience, methods and processes to match their skills needs to meet new arrivals’ knowledge * The companies lack the experience and resources to receive and supervise new arrivals * Newcomers with entrepreneurial backgrounds meet specific obstacles at start-up. In addition to language, networking and market barriers, there is also a difficulty in orienting oneself in regulations relating to entrepreneurship and taxes. * Municipalities’ advice is not sufficiently diversified to also respond to the needs of newly arrived entrepreneurs for support. The goal of the project is that more SMEs will be able to meet their personnel/competence needs, through recruitment and introduction of newly arrived Swedes. The project also aims for more new arrivals to start their own operations. The project will develop and test methods and tools, which during the project period lead to 15 companies having access to important skills through internships and/or employment of new arrivals and that 15 entrepreneurs with a foreign background have established activities through self-employment and/or started a business. The project is expected to develop methods and processes that are established in existing business and entrepreneurial activities in the municipalities after the end of the project. The target group of the project is small and medium-sized companies that have a need to employ more skills that can be matched from a diversity perspective. Another priority target group is the part of the newly arrived immigrants who have an entrepreneur background and want to get started with their own business here in Värmland. In the long term, the expertise needs of the Värmland companies will be better met. The companies have increased access to competence and increased diversification and diversity among the employees. This is expected to contribute positively to companies’ innovation, market development, internationalisation and growth. In the long term, the diversity of entrepreneurs and companies in the region will increase.