RefugePoint

RefugePoint is a non-profit organization that has worked to provide lasting solutions to the world's most at-risk refugees since it was founded in 2005. RefugePoint has referred over 54,000 refugees for resettlement.[1] RefugePoint's mission is finding lasting solutions for the world's most at-risk refugees and supporting the humanitarian community to do the same.

RefugePoint focuses on two main solutions for refugees: resettlement and self-reliance. RefugePoint's work to improve resettlement and self-reliance outcomes involves three tactics: direct services, field building, and systems change. Through direct services, RefugePoint provides services to meet the needs of individuals and households. Through field building, RefugePoint supports other organizations to accelerate and expand programs for reaching refugee populations. Through systems change, RefugePoint influences policy and decision-makers to drive large-scale change.

RefugePoint works to identify and protect refugees who have fallen through the cracks of humanitarian assistance, with an emphasis on serving women, children, and urban refugees. RefugePoint has three offices, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, Nairobi, Kenya, and Geneva, Switzerland.

The organization has worked primarily in Africa, in 28 countries, and over 48 locations, including: Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Djibouti, Chad, Côte d'Ivoire, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guinea, Iraq, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.[2]

RefugePoint is a member of Refugee Council USA (RCUSA), a coalition of U.S. non-governmental organizations focused on refugee protection.[3]

History

RefugePoint was founded in 2005 by Sasha Chanoff and Dr. John Wagacha Burton. While conducting refugee rescue operations with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Sasha became aware of the unseen and therefore unmet needs of the many refugees living in urban settings.[4]

On June 29, 2011 Mapendo announced that it changed its name to RefugePoint, "in order to better reflect its core mission of protecting the world's most vulnerable and forgotten refugees."

Sasha Chanoff, RefugePoint's executive director, explained that the organization's staff have been impressed for years by the many refugees who relate that contact with RefugePoint became the turning point in their lives. "Our effort," he says, "is to provide lasting solutions for people fleeing from persecution, war, and genocide. The new name, RefugePoint, reflects the moment when those most at risk see the possibility of deliverance from lives of fear and desperation and a path opening up toward new lives for themselves and their families."[5]

Programs

RefugePoint's mission is to provide lasting solutions for the world's most at-risk refugees. The organization addresses the critical and unmet needs of those who fall through the cracks of humanitarian assistance and have no other options for survival, with a focus on women, children, and urban refugees.

To accomplish its mission of finding lasting solutions for the world's most at-risk refugees, RefugePoint focuses on two main solutions for refugees: resettlement and self-reliance. In all of its programs, RefugePoint maintains a strong focus on protecting children and improving global refugee policy and practice through field building.

Resettlement

Resettlement involves permanently relocating refugees to a safe country where they can rebuild their lives. RefugePoint deploys Resettlement and Child Protection Experts across Africa to meet with refugees in remote and often dangerous locations. RefugePoint staff works to expand opportunities for resettlement to locations and populations that are chronically overlooked and underserved. Aiming to improve the whole field, RefugePoint also works to catalyze partnerships between the UNHCR, NGOs and governments to strengthen resettlement systems and policies. Since 2005, the RefugePoint team has helped over 54,000 refugees to access resettlement.[1]

Self-Reliance

Self-reliance involves stabilizing refugees in the countries to which they have fled and helping them regain the social and economic ability to meet their essential needs and transition off of assistance.[1]

Urban Refugee Protection Program

Most refugees won't have the opportunity to resettle or return to their homes. However, given the right supports, many refugees are able to rebuild their lives in the host country to which they have fled. RefugePoint works to achieve long-term stabilization of refugees through its Urban Refugee Protection Program (URPP) in Nairobi, Kenya. The program provides a range of holistic supports, including food and housing assistance, small business grants, access to health care, education, and counseling services. The URPP uses a case management approach to enhance coordination and match available services with the needs of each refugee household. The URPP helps refugee children to access education, and provides critical health and psychological services to many who have experienced trauma.[1]

Field Building

In addition to improving the lives of individual refugees, we work strategically to influence and improve refugee resettlement and protection systems, in order to assist more refugees. This includes influencing global policies and practices; developing new approaches and tools and training others to use them; promoting accountability and equity in refugee solutions; securing new financial resources for refugee solutions; and opening up space for more nongovernmental organizations to join the effort. We partner closely with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, governments, non-governmental organizations, and community-based organizations to build capacity and improve systems related to refugee resettlement and self-reliance.[1]

Awards

2013: The Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School named RefugePoint founder and executive director Sasha Chanoff the 2013 recipient of the Gleitsman International Activist Award. The award is given biennially to a leader who has "improved the quality of life abroad and inspired others to do the same."[6]

2010: RefugePoint's efforts were awarded with the Charles Bronfman Prize.[7]

2007: RefugePoint received a Draper Richards Fellowship in 2007.[8]

2006: RefugePoint won an Echoing Green Fellowship [9] and was named a Waldzell Institute "Architect of the Future."[10]

Media

Below are the most recent mentions of RefugePoint in the news in reverse chronological order.[11]

The New York Times: 2016, Refugees Need a Nation's Better Angels, by David Bornstein.[12]

The Boston Globe: 2014, A Lost Girl shares her story, by Bella English.[13]

ABC World News: In 2013, ABC World News revisited its 2010 resettlement story after RefugePoint helped facilitate a reunion between the Darfuri family and their missing fourteen-year-old daughter after nine years of separation.[14]

CBS's 60 Minutes: Founder and Executive Director Sasha Chanoff interviewed in 2002 and 2013 about the resettlement of the Lost Boys of Sudan to the United States both at the time of resettlement and in a retrospective piece following up on the Lost Boys 12 years later.[15][16]

WBUR's Here & Now: In March 2013, Founder and Executive Director Sasha Chanoff joined former Lost Girl Yar Ayuel as she reflects on her experiences as a refugee and the dangers refugee girls still face today.[17]

The Boston Globe: In 2013, Sasha Chanoff wrote an editorial about how the Lost Girls of Sudan were left out of humanitarian programming, and about the ongoing plight of refugee girls.[18]

The Huffington Post: On election day in Kenya in 2013, Communications Officer Cheryl Hamilton wrote about one refugee boy and his mother's hope for his future.[19]

The Huffington Post: 2012: Founder and Executive Director Sasha Chanoff blogged about one of RefugePoint's earliest clients finding his parents alive after 17 years.[20]

The New York Times Magazine: In 2011, the magazine followed a RefugePoint social worker on food distribution day, part of the organization's life-saving urban refugee protection program.[21]

ABC World News: In 2010, ABC World News covered the resettlement of one Darfuri refugee family that RefugePoint (then Mapendo International) helped.[22]

The Boston Globe featured an article on Mapendo International's (now RefugePoint) efforts on its front page on June 18, 2009.[23]

The New York Times cited Mapendo's (now RefugePoint) involvement in the effort to resettle survivors of the Gatumba camp massacre.[24]

The Skoll Foundation's Social Edge highlighted Sasha Chanoff and Mapendo (now RefugePoint) in a video on their website.[25]

Elle Magazine in France wrote an article on Mapendo's (now RefugePoint) efforts in the April 23rd, 2007 edition.[26]

Leadership

  • Sasha Chanoff, Founder & Executive Director
  • Jacob Bonyo, Kenya Country Director
  • Amy Slaughter, Chief Strategy Officer
  • Roger Swartz, Managing Director

Board of directors

  • Sasha Chanoff
  • Stephanie Dodson
  • Daniel A. Draper, Treasurer
  • Elizabeth Ferris
  • Laurie Franz
  • Jessica Houssian
  • G. Barrie Landry
  • George Lehner, JD
  • William P. Mayer, Chair

Kenyan Board of directors

  • Sasha Chanoff
  • Sheikha Ali
  • Dr. M'Imunya J. Machoki, MD
  • Dr. Samora Otieno, MD
  • Colleen Tighe

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "RefugePoint – What We Do". www.refugepoint.org.
  2. ↑ "RefugePoint – Where We Work". www.refugepoint.org.
  3. ↑ "Refugee Council USA - Home". rcusa.org.
  4. ↑ Lang, Marissa (7 June 2010). "Inspired by relatives, he's doing a world of good for refugees". The Boston Globe.
  5. ↑ "RefugePoint: News". refugepoint.org. Archived from the original on 17 August 2011. Retrieved 30 June 2011.
  6. ↑ "RefugePoint – Sasha Chanoff Wins 2013 Gleitsman International Activist Award". www.refugepoint.org.
  7. ↑ Administrator. "Sasha Chanoff - The Charles Bronfman Prize". www.thecharlesbronfmanprize.com.
  8. ↑ http://www.draperrichards.org/fellows/mapendo.html
  9. ↑ "Sasha Chanoff - Echoing Green". www.echoinggreen.org.
  10. ↑ http://www.waldzell.org/sasha_chanoff/
  11. ↑ "RefugePoint – RefugePoint in the News". www.refugepoint.org.
  12. ↑ "Opinion - Refugees Need a Nation's Better Angels". 18 October 2016 – via NYTimes.com.
  13. ↑ "A Lost Girl shares her story - The Boston Globe". bostonglobe.com.
  14. ↑ News, A. B. C. (13 August 2013). "A Refugee Family's Journey of Hope". ABC News.
  15. ↑ "The Lost Boys of Sudan: 12 years later". CBS News. 2 April 2013.
  16. ↑ RefugePoint (11 July 2011). "60 Minutes - The Lost Boys of Sudan" – via Vimeo.
  17. ↑ "Adolescent Girl Refugees Face Greatest Risks". wbur.org.
  18. ↑ "How the lost girls became the forgotten girls - The Boston Globe". bostonglobe.com.
  19. ↑ "I Hope One Day He Will Be President". Huffington Post. 4 March 2013.
  20. ↑ "Refugee Finds His Parents Alive After Seventeen Years". Huffington Post. 9 October 2012.
  21. ↑ Corbett, Sara (1 July 2011). "In Kenya, Needy Refugees Outpace Food Supplies". The New York Times.
  22. ↑ News, A. B. C. (8 July 2011). "From Darfur to Martha's Vineyard". ABC News.
  23. ↑ Smith, James F. (18 June 2009). "The rescuers". The Boston Globe.
  24. ↑ Bernstein, Nina (5 August 2007). "Safe From Persecution, Still Bearing Its Scars". The New York Times.
  25. ↑ "Sasha Chanoff - Mapendo - Skoll World Forum". socialedge.org.
  26. ↑ "Réfugiées en danger - Elle". elle.fr. 9 May 2007.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.