Kamwenge District: Organisations working in Refugee settlements say mobility among refugees remains a big challenge to some of them to fully benefit in programs that are being implemented in settlements.
Remarks were made by John Makoha, Country Representative, AVSI Foundation at the three day graduating to resilience market Place held in Kampala where refugees from Rwamanja settlement in Kamwenge district showcasing their skills that they have acquired in a seven year program which is closing this year.
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According to him, the program dubbed Graduating to resilience funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance has touched on lives of over 13,680 both refugees and those in communities that are hosting refugees.
‘’The three-day event marks the gradual closure of a seven-year program that has reduced poverty of refugees and Uganda communities. The program generated solid evidence about its effectiveness and should be replicated around the country and the region’’. Mr Makoha added.
Over the next three days, AVSI Foundation and the associated GRAD partners will share the intricacies of the Graduation Approach. They will highlight the results, outcomes and challenges of transitioning refugee and host communities away from chronic food insecurity and fragile livelihoods to self-reliance and resilience. He added.
The Graduation Approach is a sequenced, time-bound intervention that aims to help people around the world living in extreme poverty build resilience and engage in sustainable livelihoods.
He said, In Uganda, GRAD registered several positive outcomes including graduating 80% of the 13,680 households from poverty in addition to achieving a 96% self-efficacy rate, and 96.4% business diversification.
Over the past seven years, these partners have done some impressive work. I understand that 80 percent of the 13,200 households who went through the program successfully graduated from poverty to a more self-reliant situation, 96 percent of the children had enough food to eat, and 99 percent of the households ate a balanced diet
‘’The U.S. government remains committed to supporting the Graduation Approach. Globally, USAID is using the impressive results from GRAD to replicate graduation programs in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. In Uganda, plans are being developed with various donors, implementing partners and the government to scale the program to different communities’’. Said Ambassador William Popp, the ambassador of USA in Uganda who was the guest of honor at the Graduating to Resilience Marketplace event.
I am pleased to join this marketplace event – a special closing for the seven-year USAID Graduating to Resilience Activity, also known as GRAD. Today, we explore and celebrate the achievements, best practices and experiences of the Graduation Approach in a refugee settlement setting. We are here to appreciate the impact of the GRAD Activity, and the hard work of its implementers, AVSI, Trickle Up, and American Institutes for Research. He noted
‘’The GRAD activity also went far beyond participants’ basic needs. Ninety-six percent of the women participants felt they were more confident in achieving the future they wanted for themselves and their families. Eighty-seven percent of businesses were diversified, generating over 1.8 million USD in cumulative savings. I hope you will appreciate the processes, the adaptive programming, the tools and all the intricacies involved in making this work! We are excited to also share recommendations on how to use this approach in other refugee settlements and communities both here in Uganda and across the region – now in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia – so that people in different areas and different circumstances can become more self-reliant over time’’. The ambassador stated.
As the humanitarian landscape continues to evolve, and as budgets stretch to cover ever-expanding needs, we must remain agile and responsive.
The U.S. Government remains committed to creatively solving these challenges through activities like Graduating to Resilience. We are eager to share the evidence and guidance to program designers, policy makers and advocacy specialists at different levels of society to scale this approach.
He concluded his remarks by stating that ‘’As we celebrate the above achievements in tackling food insecurity and build better futures, we hope that development partners implementers will use this experience to scale programming in refugee settlements and host communities to tackle poverty and food insecurity with the right set of tools, mentality and approach’’.
