Boosting Livelihoods in East Africa

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) helps people affected by humanitarian crises—including the climate crisis—to survive, recover and rebuild their lives. Founded at the call of Albert Einstein in 1933, the IRC is now at work in over 50 crisis-affected countries as well as communities throughout Europe and the Americas. We deliver lasting impact by providing health care, helping children learn, and empowering individuals and communities to become self-reliant, always seeking to address the inequalities facing women and girls.

The IRC and the IKEA Foundation have partnered since 2016, when we embarked on a youth livelihoods project called Building Incomes and Leveraging Livelihoods for Youth(BILLY). By offering business-skills training, start-up grants, apprenticeships, and connections to local employers, the IRC supported over 3,000 young refugees and local community members in Nairobi, Kenya.

To address the persistent challenges that face displaced people in urban areas in East Africa, in 2021, the IRC launched the Re:Build program with the IKEA Foundation’s generous support. This initiative aims to transform livelihoods opportunities for 20,000 people in Nairobi, Kenya and Kampala, Uganda. Re:Build is working to build and share evidence for innovative, sustainable solutions that can be adopted to support refugees and host residents in other cities in East Africa and beyond.

The Re:Build Approach

1. Livelihoods Services
   Supporting 20,000 refugees and other residents to find employment by attaining the skills most sought out by employers, or by starting/growing their own small businesses.
2. Evidence & Learning
   Gathering evidence and learning through testing with randomized control trials, pilots, monitoring data, etc., to illustrate what works to improve urban livelihoods.
3. Influence & Adoption
   Establishing a bold influencing agenda aimed at changing policies, practices and investments at nation, regional, and global levels.

Reach

Across our 20,000 refugee and host community clients that will be reached by this program, we aim to reach a diverse range of refugee and host community members – including women, girls, young people and the LGTBQIA+ community. Central to this work is our client-centered approach, ensuring that we design programs that are bespoke to the unique needs and voices of the communities where we operate.