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Watch a five-minute mini documentary about PS4R's work in Jordan, driving business growth and employment for forcibly displaced people and for people from their host community, with a particular focus on women.


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STUDY

Refugee Employment: Why and How

There are both economic and humanitarian reasons for companies to employ refugees—and employment is critically important for moving them off humanitarian assistance and on to both self-sufficiency and better lives. This study looks at the reasons and offers guidance for businesses, policymakers, and intermediaries on how to support refugee employment.

ONLINE TRAINING PACKAGE

Learn About the Private Sector-Refugees Link

This free online course will guide company executives and employees, investors, representatives of commercial financial institutions, development practitioners, and government officials on possible approaches to integrate refugees with the private sector in a way that benefits the refugees and local companies, ultimately benefitting local economies and societies. The course is introductory in nature but provides substantial reference to external material depending on the learners’ specific interests.

STUDY

Advancing Refugee Entrepreneurship

Refugee entrepreneurs create jobs that are badly needed in their communities. An enabling environment is critical to unleash new-business creation. This paper examines the state of refugee entrepreneurship in various world regions and suggests steps the private sector, governments, and the development community can take to support business creation and growth.

STUDY

Refugee-Related Investment: Myth or Reality?

Investing in refugee-related enterprises creates jobs for refugees and expands host-community private sectors. This paper looks at obstacles and opportunities in this still-emerging field.

REPORT / ANALYSIS

Integrating Ukrainian Refugees into the Polish Private Sector

Poland has done an exceptional job welcoming refugees. Now our attention turns to the longer-term well-being of the forcibly displaced and their host communities.

CHARTER

Guidance for Companies & Governments

How business and governments can take steps to integrate refugees economically.

BLOG

Refugees mean business: the role of the private sector in creating economic ...

Business has much to give and much to gain from refugees.

BLOG

Deploying the private sector in Europe will be key to the successful economic ...

The private sector is key to improving Ukrainian refugees’ self-reliance.



Beyond Humanitarian Assistance: Building Bridges Between the Private Sector and Refugees

There are over 100 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including refugees, internally displaced people, asylum seekers, and returnees.

While humanitarian assistance is vital, so is the need to look beyond and focus on solutions that support economic empowerment. The private sector enables the communities that host forcibly displaced people to become more resilient and the forcibly displaced themselves to become economically empowered, able to rebuild their lives and become self-sufficient.  

If forcibly displaced people have opportunities to put their often-overlooked skills, talents, experience, and drive to work, they can participate in the economy instead of depending on public assistance. In fact, the forcibly displaced population includes everything from entrepreneurs and former CEOs to skilled craftspeople and factory-floor workers. They can help boost sectors as employees, but also create businesses, help expand their host-community economies and employ themselves and others, including people from the local population.

Businesses and investors can benefit. Not only do forcibly displaced people often make for exceptional employees, but companies that are run by, employ, or service the forcibly displaced can be excellent investment targets or business-to-business suppliers in regional or global supply chains. And if businesses pivot to address the needs of incoming populations, they can find new customers for products and services geared to needs and tastes of those who have been forcibly displaced.

But the forcibly displaced are too often disconnected from economic opportunity, and too often viewed as a burden. Their pathway to self-sufficiency can be blocked. It can be difficult for them to find work, access credit, start a business, or get needed goods and services. An enabling environment, along with awareness of the mutual benefits between the private sector and the forcibly displaced, is required.

Homepage image: Refugees working for a mango supplier in Peru. Photo by Felipe Flórez Ramos for UNSTUCK.

 


About PS4R

PS4R builds bridges between the private sector and forcibly displaced people (FDPs) for mutual benefit while generating economic growth for the communities that host forcibly displaced people.

The PS4R approach fuels the growth of strategically targeted micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in host communities, yielding jobs and entrepreneurship opportunities for the forcibly displaced. We include women and other vulnerable people in our programming.

PS4R supports this growth of host economies in two ways. First, we coordinate in-country action that builds local MSMEs. Second, we facilitate knowledge and good-practice exchange to support similar efforts by partners. Partners for both include NGOs, businesses, and philanthropies.

We scale up by building on existing World Bank development projects in countries where there are concentrations of forcibly displaced people, helping to add an element focused on the forcibly displaced to those initiatives.

Launched in 2018, PS4R was previously known as the Refugee Investment and Matchmaking Platform (RIMP). The work expanded from a pilot in Jordan to projects in many other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and beyond.