Building a bigger Diaspora – Reaspora bridge

Eugene Brcic Jones in his interview with Ina Vukic in 2019 said –

https://inavukic.com/2019/12/07/croatia-championing-small-business-with-western-knowhow-interview-with-eugene-brcic-jones/

“Our ultimate goal is to become a bridge for diaspora to move to Croatia”

Correct me if I’m wrong. To me the current Diaspora-Reaspora bridge is like the pedestrian bridge across the Yarra river in Melbourne. Its gets the job done for the little traffic that there is. However, it doesn’t get things done fast. If we really start having a serious influx of returnees I think the current bridge will become a bottleneck.

Again Eugene Brcic Jones said,

“One of our ultimate goals is to become a bridge for diaspora to move to Croatia and to that end we are looking for an investor (high financial and social return) from diaspora to help make our wish come alive: To provide diaspora a job and roof over their head on the first Monday they arrive.”

I think that this bridge needs to be more visible to achieve this on arrival goal. How do would be returnees get that information now?

I think we need to do a build it and they will come big fat Sydney Harbor bridge. One that is like a highway.

Not every returnee is open to networking, however, those that are should either be partially or totally visible.

This bridge should cater to returnees and potential diaspora investors.

Returnees or investors should be able to have access to a list of english speaking doctors, accountants, lawyers etc. They shouldn’t need to ask people, it should be in a directory.

There are lot of locals that will take advantage of returnees through jobs, building etc. New returnees should be able to find other returnees in their local area instantly and share information about who not to work with etc in their town/city and know who is the best person or company for this and that.

Its not easy finding other Croatian returnees in social media as a lot of the groups are expat groups and you get all sorts in there.

It think this just needs to start as a list with social media links to those that are open to networking. Also we need to go on a proactive search for all returnees that would be willing to be part of this and turn it into a big national network. Many of us are only slightly connnected or have very few connections.

I would start with three lists –

A list by field/profession.
A list by country of origin if people want to find other people from Australia, USA etc.
A list by current location in Croatia.

Then eventually it would be a full blown directory with member profiles etc. This would then evolve into a from start to finish list of services that help people return.