OUR MISSION
The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative expands opportunities for refugees and other forcibly displaced populations to become self-reliant and achieve their goals.
The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative is a catalytic global network of more than 250 organizations, including NGOs, refugee-led and community-based organizations, host and donor governments, funders, academics, think tanks, UN agencies, and other multilateral actors.
It was co-founded by RefugePoint and the Women’s Refugee Commission and is currently hosted by RefugePoint.
OUR VISION
We aspire to transform the way the world responds to refugees and other forcibly displaced populations, creating a future where the journey from displacement to self-reliance is accelerated and marked by dignity, opportunity, and inclusion.
WHAT WE BELIEVE
Refugees should not have to wait to lead their lives with dignity. For many, this means being able to support themselves and their families.
Refugees deserve the opportunity to exercise their rights and contribute to the social and economic fabric of their host countries.
Host countries and communities should be supported in order to benefit from the social and economic inclusion of refugees, enhancing overall peace, security, and prosperity.
OUR HISTORY
The RSRI was co-founded by RefugePoint and Women’s Refugee Commission, and is hosted by RefugePoint.
2015: RefugePoint and the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) realized they were both working on ways to prioritize refugee self-reliance. The two agencies found many similarities between their respective measurement tools (RefugePoint’s Self-Reliance Measurement Tool and WRC’s Wellbeing and Adjustment Index) and agreed to work together to build a movement to transform and shift the refugee response paradigm away from a ‘care and maintenance’ model towards a model built on self-reliance that responds to the urgency and scale of forced displacement today.
2016: RefugePoint and WRC continued their partnership towards strengthening self-reliance measurement, programming and advocacy by presenting their work and tools at the Solutions Alliance Roundtable in Brussels in February 2016. Encouraged by the enthusiastic response they received and realizing that there were no existing coordination efforts around refugee self-reliance, RefugePoint and WRC created the Self-Reliance Community of Practice in May 2016.
2017: The Community of Practice gathered for their first in-person convening of 15 institutional participants to agree upon a definition, principles, and measurement parameters for refugee self-reliance. RefugePoint and WRC took this collective input and began creating a new tool to measure progress toward self-reliance in refugee support programming.
2018: The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI) was formally launched during the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York in September 2018.
2019: The RSRI hired its first staff member dedicated to SRI training and feedback, launched a resource database dedicated to self-reliance topics, and was invited to lead a half-day session at the annual UNHCR-NGO Global Consultations in Geneva focused on building momentum around self-reliance programming and research.
2022: The RSRI hired its first full-time executive director, expanded its staff, and appointed its first Steering Committee.
