DALE BUSCHER
RSRI Co-Founder
Former Vice President for Programs, Women’s Refugee Commission
Dale Buscher is a co-founder of the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative and served as the chair of the RSRI Steering Committee until June 2024. He has been designing programs on and researching refugee livelihoods since 1994 and co-wrote the first-ever ‘how to’ manual for practitioners, Building Livelihoods: A Field Manual for Practitioners in Humanitarian Settings
As the former Vice President for Programs at the Women’s Refugee Commission, Dale oversaw programs on economic empowerment and self-reliance, sexual and gender-based violence, rights and justice, gender and social inclusion, and sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Dale has worked in the refugee assistance field since 1988 in a variety of capacities. He worked with Vietnamese boat people in the Philippines and later with Haitian refugees interned at Guantanamo Bay. He has worked with displaced Kurds in Northern Iraq, with Bosnian refugees in Croatia, and with Kosovars in Albania and in Kosovo. He went on to work as the Director of Operations for the International Catholic Migration Commission in Geneva, where he oversaw the organization’s international programs covering 20 countries. Additionally, he has worked as a consultant for UNHCR, where he wrote a field handbook entitled “Operational Protection in Camps and Settlements.”
Dale has authored numerous journal articles and several book chapters. He earned his Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Utah and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Iowa State University. He teaches courses on refugee protection at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
