Supporting Refugee-led Response to COVID-19

For the past 10 years, Urban Refugees (UR) has been advocating for a better recognition of the potential of Refugee-led Organisations to respond quickly to refugees' needs in the community, with cost-efficient and sustainable solutions.

The Covid-19 crisis gave us a chance to test this assumption.

And we were right !

The global crisis which hit everywhere in 2020 particularly affected populations with poor access to healthcare, to learning opportunities, to the labour market. This is exactly the case of most refugees living in cities today.

Yet, at the same time, the pandemic spotlighted the immense capacity of RLOs to identify and respond quickly to their members' needs, and therefore underlined the extent to which they can efficiently become key responders in humanitarian crisis response.

From July 2020 to April 2021, we worked to amplify the efforts of Refugee-led Organisations (RLOs) to respond to the Covid-19 within their refugee communities through our incubation methodologies.

We supported 50 refugee leaders from 5 Refugee-Led Organisations (RLOs), including 2 exclusively women-led organisations, to enhance their assistance to those most in need within their community. Together, these organisations represent over 35 000 refugees currently living in Kampala.

With the grants they received from us, RLO leaders were able to identify and provide direct support, in record-time to 15 840 refugees (including over 60% of women) through the following activities:

• Relief aid to 4,500 members (food distribution, hygiene products...)
• Referral of 6,600 refugees to local and international organisations, based on their needs and available services
• Sharing of information and development of information channels for adapted Covid-prevention messaging to 4,700 members
• Creation of income-generating activities and business development, which led to the creation of nearly 40 employment opportunities.

We hope that this evidence will help us to support more grassroot refugee-led organisations and refugee initiatives worldwide, for sustainable and meaningful solutions to refugee crises.