The organisation was founded in the early 80's when the increase in immigration in Italy brought multicultural issues to the fore and created the need to focus attention on the country's gradual move towards a multicultural society. This meant, on the one hand, informing Italians about the new arrivals and, on the other, promoting and safeguarding cultural diversity as a value.

This gave rise to the Organisation's commitment to campaigns of information and sensitisation of public opinion and to intense activity in schools where the process of cultural awareness and exchange begins. The arrival of ever larger waves of immigrants led the organisation to work on migrant needs and especially to facilitate access to public services to foster effective social-cultural integration into the host society. Work, housing, healthcare, education and training thus became the organisation's main areas of involvement. Over the last few years, Cidis Onlus has also strengthened its commitment to promoting migrant's rights and duties and to favouring interaction with the local population so as to establish the right balance between social cohesion and cultural diversity.

The organisation maintains certain values on which its activities have been based since the start:

cultural exchange is in itself enriching, multicultural societies do not arise from words alone but stem from real confrontation, social cohesion is achieved by implementing active policies of integration into the welfare system of the host country, a peaceful multi-cultural society results from equal opportunities for all, migrants included. These are the assumptions on which Cidis Onlus bases its activities when offering assistance to immigrants on accessing citizenship rights and undertaking their duties and ensuring that inner tendencies in the host society towards discrimination and social marginalisation are overcome. The organisation is, thus, actively involved in promoting the democratic ideals of equality and individual freedom in a multi-ethnic society.

Cidis Onlus has chosen a wide-ranging intervention strategy aimed at fostering positive interaction between immigrants and the host society, in order to safeguard cultural diversity and strengthen social cohesion.

In this, it considers it essential to: identify the needs of the migrant population and provide assistance in accessing local services, provide training and orientation programmes for Public Administration to improve their dealings with migrants, encourage and support immigrants in selecting representatives to liase with local authorities, assist in problem solving in the work, accommodation and healthcare sectors via mediation with migrant communities, local associations, institutions, public bodies and business and trade union associations, fight discrimination, both by the systematic, wide-ranging exposure of racism and through sensitising public opinion, offer quality services for the foreign population to foster active citizenship.