Arrival: Sunday, January 7, 2024
Departure: Friday, January 12, 2024
Jordan is home to millions of refugees from different conflicts. According to UNHCR’s 2022 Global Trends report, one in every 14 Jordanians is a refugee – Syrians, Palestinians, Iraqis, Sudanese, Somalis, Yemenis, and others. A leading responder in Jordan since 2007, the IRC helps both refugees and Jordanians survive, recover, and regain control of their future.
Since 2012, the IRC has reached over 670,000 clients at our community centers, clinics, and via mobile teams in Jordan. We provide an array of integrated services that improve the health, safety, and economic well-being of Syrian refugees and vulnerable Jordanians. While Jordan remains a place of stability in the region, it faces significant internal challenges. Foremost amongst them is high number of youth unemployment and one of the lowest labor marker participation rates for women in the region coupled with water shortage. Jordan is the second most water poor country in the world and the generous hosting of refugees has put strain on its infrastructure.
Entering its twelfth year of conflict, Syria remains a major, complex humanitarian crisis. The context in Syria is characterized by ongoing hostilities, widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and the largest number of internally displaced people in the world. Moreover, Syria is facing an increasing economic crisis. Growing food price inflation, a fluctuating exchange rate and widespread losses in employment have plunged additional segments of society into poverty. The IRC is responding to needs in the northwest and northeast of Syria. Our response is delivered both directly and through local partner organizations with a focus on health, protection, early childhood development and economic recovery. The IRC Syria office is based out of our regional headquarters in Amman, Jordan.
Heath
In Jordan, the IRC provides essential primary and sexual reproductive health care services, chronic disease management, vaccination services, family planning consultations, case referrals, and medication to patients in urban areas as well as two refugee camps, Za’atari & Azraq.
To address the needs of refugees related to non-communicable diseases and mental health, we are working on innovative projects to promote the integration of refugees in portfolios of the national inclusive health system. These innovations include cash for health, community health, health research and relevant health system support and strengthening in areas with high refugee populations. The IRC provides health and protection services in a comprehensive approach and safe referrals between the IRC’s clinics and Women’s Protection & Empowerment centers.
In Syria, attacking medical facilities has been a deliberate tactic in the ongoing conflict. The impact of the violence, combined with economic collapse, has meant inadequate and uneven provision of health care for Syrians, particularly for women and girls. The devastating earthquake of 2023 further limits the already precarious access to health care, as detailed in this report. To address this crisis, primary care consultations are offered at health facilities funded by IRC and managed directly or through partners in Idlib and Aleppo governorates. IRC also provides reproductive healthcare services at the health facilities as well as enables accessibility to a broader range of healthcare consultations to women and girls. Secondary health services are provided in both Idleb Surgical Hospital and Alatareb Hospital. IRC supports Idleb Surgical Hospital to deliver quality secondary health care services through the partnership with Syrian Medical Association for Syrian Expatriates (SEMA).
Women's Protection and Empowerment
The IRC delivers urgent care and referrals for survivors of gender-based violence and works with communities and institutions to challenge social norms that tolerate violence and abuse. By helping women gain greater economic independence and play a meaningful role in the decision-making that affects their lives, the IRC is fostering conditions in which women and girls survive the effects of conflict and thrive.
In late 2012, the IRC increased its capacity to ensure that women and girls in Syria and Jordan have access to life-saving case management, psychosocial services, social networks, and protection through the utilization of a complementary approach whereby women can access static Women and Girls’ Safe Spaces (WGSS) as well as mobile service delivery. Through these safe spaces, the IRC offers a platform in which survivors of violence can disclose abuse, receive confidential emotional and practical support as well as comprehensive case management services. The IRC also collaborates with community-based organizations (CBOs) to address gender-based violence (GBV) and enhance survivors' access to support services. Through male engagement and GBV awareness sessions, we target the root causes of domestic violence in homes and communities. We also provide response and prevention services including quality comprehensive case management integrated with cash-for-protection services and outreach activities to ensure that women and adolescents live free from violence.
In 2023, our centers in Irbid, Ramtha, Mafraw and East Amman, as well as Azraq camp connected more than 11,000 women and adolescents to counseling, psycho-social support, life skills training and most importantly, each other.
Economic Recovery and Development
Our Economic Recovery and Development (ERD) work in Jordan is designed to build the economic resilience of families so that they can support their basic needs, as well as increase their capacity to generate future income and live independent, dignified lives. We address both the economic impact of displacement and the impact of war on host communities. We focus on a client-centered approach and partnerships to deliver a bundle of services to promote economic wellbeing. We do this through business trainings and small business grants to support livelihoods, while the additional income helps families avoid low wage labor or having to send their children to work. Our support also helps businesses build resilience through trainings given at our livelihood centers and business support programs. While the ability to work in Jordan is still restrictive for refugees, the IRC helps refugee women and youth access fair opportunities in the job market and take advantage of future openings as the legal context evolves. The IRC provides employment services in Mafraq, Irbid, Ramtha and East Amman to boost the work experience of women and youth through on-the-job training while providing them with basic income through stipends.
In Jordan and Syria, Livelihoods Centers help vulnerable men and women build their resilience and short and long-term skills and income through vocational and life skills training, apprenticeship placements, on-the-job training, access to short-term income opportunities and microenterprise support. The IRC also runs a Village Savings and Loans Association in northeast Syria to provide simple savings, loan facilities and provide a form of self-insurance to communities that don’t have access to formal financial services.
Early Childhood and Development
The IRC’s vision for Early Childhood Development (ECD) includes the sustainable provision of ECD services for all children in Jordan including those in urban out-of-camp settings and other vulnerable children in the host community. To make this a reality, we engage partners from the public, private and civil society sectors to co-develop ECD program models and approaches for integration into national systems and structures, scaling ECD to sustain impact across the Kingdom for years to come. This work is grounded in a focus on the needs of the communities we serve at the local level as well as Jordan’s National Strategy for Human Resource Development which contains within it a laudable focus on ECD. Our scaling strategy includes engagement with partners across the sectors of education, health and social development, ensuring early childhood is addressed across multiple streams and meets children and families where they are.
- Ahlan Simsim and Play to Learn: Ahlan Simsim is an early childhood partnership between the IRC and Sesame Workshop providing children in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq with the support they need to learn, grow, and thrive. The groundbreaking project combines Sesame Workshop’s history of proven educational media content with the IRC’s decades of expertise in conflict zones to help children and their families cope with crisis and build a brighter future. The MacArthur Foundation selected the Ahlan Simsim project as the winner of its 100&Change competition in 2017, supporting the IRC and Sesame Workshop to create the largest early childhood intervention in the history of humanitarian response. Ahlan Simsim reaches children via the depth of IRC’s direct services for young children and their families, and the breadth of Sesame Workshop’s Arabic-language Ahlan Simsim TV show launched in February 2020, reinforcing key messages from all angles, and restoring hope and possibility to a generation of children.
- Ahlan SimsimFriends and Ahlan Simsim Families: These two programs pair together as complementary programming for both caregivers and their young children. The Ahlan Simsim Friends program provides children with playful learning opportunities to enhance their development, designed for flexible, modular delivery so it can be integrated into other existing programming or services such as delivery within health centers or connected with protection programming. The program activities that focus on social-emotional learning, as well as math skills and inclusion utilizing a wide variety of materials and resources including worksheets, flashcards, storybooks, and songs, among others.
- Reach Up and Learn: Decades of scientific research has shown that home visiting is a highly effective way to support parents who live in under-resourced settings. In Jordan, the IRC implements an evidence-based home visiting program called ‘Reach Up and Learn’, which was adapted in 2021 to be offered remotely via phone in addition to in-person home visiting. The program’s key messages on health and development are integrated into community health home visits and phone calls, delivered by community health volunteers (CHVs). In addition to delivering important community health messages tailored to the family, this program uses an evidence-based curriculum to guide caregivers and children (aged 0-3) in play-based activities to teach caregivers how they can best support their child’s development during and outside of the sessions.
- Reaching families through social media: Reaching parents and the community with messages is critical to shifting social norms toward nurturing responsive parenting practices. Social media has proven to be an effective channel due to its scale and reach among our target population. The IRC, in partnership with Sesame Workshop, has created a series of parenting videos that are being disseminated through WhatsApp groups, Facebook pages, and Instagram pages. Moreover, as part of our efforts to support parents and caregivers, we have introduced a revolutionary Chatbot service that offers invaluable information on childcare. Accessible through a simple QR code on the Smile Caravn, this innovative tool provides a wealth of knowledge and guidance to ensure the well-being and proper nurturing of children.
- Scaling programming through national partnership: A core commitment of the Ahlan Simsim project is to sustainability of investment in ECD beyond the lifetime of the project through scaling with national partners. Effective scaling begins with identifying core national needs and building upon existing infrastructure to adapt program models and content to local contexts, seeding the commitment to a brighter future for children and their caregivers. Our teams partner with local government ministries such as the Ministries of Education, Health and Social Development in Jordan, to strengthen national systems of provision of ECD services.
Innovation (Airbel)
The Airbel Impact Lab at the IRC is a team of researchers, strategists and innovators committed to the accelerated design, rigorous evaluation and cost-effective scaling of the most impactful solutions supporting people affected by crisis. Airbel combines on-the-ground expertise with disciplines like research, human-centered design, costing analysis, and behavioral insights. With the goal towards scale and cost-efficiency, this helps us create, test, and drive to scale solutions with the potential for life-changing impact.
In Jordan, the IRC Mahali Lab works with Syrian refugees and socially and economically vulnerable community members to identify and solve challenges posed by long-term displacement. People from within communities can acutely understand them from the inside, but many don’t have access to training, resources, and networks to translate them into solutions. Participants in Mahali Lab built up entrepreneurial teams while working to solve major challenges. They were able to access co-working spaces, financial support and access to experts, such as analysts and human-centered designers. The IRC works with teams with the most promising solutions in an effort to find funding and support their implementation, validation and scaling.
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD): IRC’s first innovative finance advisory model; IRC is providing an enhanced review of EBRD’s community engagement and stakeholder strategy for a EUR 65 M wastewater infrastructure project in west Irbid, Jordan. IRC Jordan is engaged on the ground in Irbid as well as Amman, providing feedback and guidance on the stakeholder engagement work being delivered by Jordanian technical consultant the Royal Scientific Society (RSS).
IRC is involved in all steps of the community engagement plan, including household surveys, focus group discussions, community awareness sessions and outreach to potential beneficiaries. Although the contract was only signed in late 2022 (MOU signed in Sept 2021), IRC has already contributed significantly by ensuring household surveys effectively include Syrian refugee views.
- This pilot has delivered proof of concept that humanitarians have unique skills and insight that can help investors reach their social impact goals.
- DG ECHO is funding an innovative finance advisory model research grant where the innovative finance practice has, using this pilot with EBRD as a model, developed an additional pipeline of 6 humanitarian–investor transaction partnerships.
- A Lessons Learned & Partnership Playbook are under review to be shared publicly with the sectors in the fall with the goal to catalyze further replication and scale of these innovative partnerships.
The IRC in Jordan (FY2022)
- The IRC reached more than 53,900 refugees and vulnerable Jordanians with over 178K emergency aid and essential services.
The IRC in Syria
The physical intensity level for this visit is easy: Light walking. Programs accessible by land with reasonable distances by road or rail. This itinerary is subject to changes due to circumstances out of our control.
DAY 1: Monday, January 8
- Dinner with Priyanka Utham, Regional Safety & Security Director MENA
Day 2: Tuesday, January 9
- Travel to Jerash
- Visit Jerash Ladies Society, an urban program focused on establishing safe spaces for vulnerable Jordanian adolescents and women
- Dinner with IRC Program leadership
DAY 3: Wednesday, January 10
- Visit the Za’atari Refugee Camp
- Tour of the IRC Clinic followed by discussions with clients
- Presentation and meeting with the Amman-based IRC Syria team
- Dinner with IRC Syria leadership and Airbel staff
DAY 4: Thursday, January 11
- Travel to Azraq
- Tour of the Women’s Center in Azraq followed by discussions with clients
- Farewell dinner and trip debrief with IRC Jordan leadership team
DAY 5: Friday, January 12 or Saturday, January 13
- Depart for home
Fee: $7,200 USD
The trip fee covers:
- Three meals per day, accommodations, road travel, permits, and entrance fees
- Pre-departure support
- A donation to IRC in Jordan & Syria Office
Please note air travel to and from Jordan is not included in the above fee.
A non-refundable deposit of USD is required to reserve a spot on this visit.
What is a delegation visit?
Donor Delegation Trips are quarterly pre-planned, fee-based group trips of 5 to 10 participants to destinations prioritized based on funding needs and accessibility.
What is IRC’s COVID-19 policy regarding the delegation visit?
IRC puts forth the greatest possible effort to provide a safe and secure operational environment. However, given the nature of our work, participants on the trip may be exposed to healthcare risks, including but not limited to the risk of communicable diseases such as COVID-19. While IRC communicates and expects all operating partners to comply with and encourage appropriate safeguarding measures, the risk of COVID-19 and other potentially infectious diseases still exists. Visitors are required to review the medical guidelines that are provided by IRC prior to participating in the trip and to carefully consider them as they relate to your own medical profile and medical risk tolerance levels.
Can I bring my spouse or child(ren) on the delegation visit?
Yes, a spouse or partner is welcome to join you for this visit. Please register separately so that required forms may be completed by each individual participant.
IRC cannot host children on our program visits because our Safety and Security measures are not designed with children in mind, and cannot reasonably be adapted to ensure children’s safety.
After the visit, a trip summary, as well as photos and videos from the visit will be shared with all trip participants, which can then be shared with family, friends, and stakeholders of foundations and partners who were unable to join.
What happens after I register?
Immediately after you register, you will receive an email from the IRC's Program Visits team. This will be your primary contact for trip-related questions or concerns in advance of the visit. Before the visit, you will receive many resources to support your preparation process (see the response to the question below “Are there resources to help me prepare for the upcoming visit?”)
I would like to see specific a program during the delegation visit — can you help coordinate that?
Trip registrants should assume that the itinerary shared with their invitation is the itinerary for their visit, for all intents and purposes. The itinerary is shared at this stage to help set expectations around the locations and program types to be seen, and the pace of the visit. Making changes to meet the interests of individual participants will make it impossible to set realistic expectations.
That said, the itinerary distributed with the invitation is tentative and subject to changes at any time due to circumstances out of our control, such as weather, politics or safety. The itinerary is designed by the hosting country and program teams based on accessibility of programs and priority of funding needs, with the objective of showing as many program highlights as possible.
We aim to avoid having idle time, ensure travel routes are safe and destinations are secure, and recommend flight arrival and departure windows to ensure the best experience.
Are there resources to help me prepare for the upcoming visit?
Immediately after you register for your trip, you will be contacted by the Program Visits team. This will be your primary contact and provide any support you will need in advance of the visit, such as visa invitation letters, flight recommendations, and itinerary updates. Several weeks before your trip, you will receive a Pre-departure Briefing containing history of the regional crisis and IRC’s response efforts, IRC emergency contact information, packing list, safety precautions and cultural norms to be aware of, IRC reports and information sheets, as well as additional recommended readings. Several days before your trip, you will participate in a mandatory Safety and Security briefing with the Program Visits team and the local Security officer from the region you will be visiting.
Can you accommodate dietary restrictions?
During the registration process, we ask about any dietary restrictions or preferences. Within reason, most dietary needs can be accommodated during delegation trips and if for some reason this is impossible, the registrant will be notified in advance of the trip. Because IRC operates in many remote locations, there will likely be limited options for meal alternatives at some points during the trip, and therefore it is important to be prepared for the likelihood of meal repetition.
What is your cancellation and refund policy?
If you would like to cancel your participation in the trip, contact Program.Visits@rescue.org. In your email, please indicate whether you would like a partial refund (see below for our refund policy) or prefer to donate the refundable portion of your trip fee. If you opt to donate the refundable portion of your trip fee, the donation will be allocated to the hosting IRC country office and a thank you letter and tax receipt will be emailed to the cancelled registrant.
Refund policy: In order to register for the trip, a non-refundable deposit is required. This amount is different for each trip and can be found on the trip invitation and registration page. The deposit cannot be refunded for any reason, other than IRC has cancelled or postponed the trip. The remaining balance of the trip fee may be refunded if the registrant cancels more than 45 days prior to the trip arrival date. Within 45 days of the trip, IRC may have already incurred expenses related to domestic air and land travel, accommodations, and other non-cancellable charges, which the registrant may be held responsible for. Any refunds will be applied back to the credit card used to pay for the trip fee.
When would IRC cancel a donor delegation program visit?
IRC will cancel a donor delegation program visit if the number of registrants does not meet the threshold for covering trip costs and allowing for a minimum donation size to the hosting country program. A visit may also be canceled due to unforeseen circumstances related to safety, or changes in the hosting country program staff capacity.
How many spots are available?
There are 8 spots available for this visit on a first come, first served basis. When the trip is full, a waitlist will open.
