Refugee Sustainability & Economic Solutions
Kenya hosts one of the largest displaced populations in the region. YOCED's position is that displacement is an economic condition before it is a humanitarian one, and that the work worth doing is the work that still stands when a funding cycle ends.
Economic participation for displaced people, built to outlast the aid that brought them.
Humanitarian partners · Funders · Legal partners · Organisations
Community, Rights & Access
SDG 1 · SDG 8 · SDG 10 · SDG 16 · SDG 17
What this field is actually up against.
Displaced households are frequently supported through consumption — rations, cash transfers, shelter — while being restricted from the things that would let them earn: documentation, movement, licensing, land, banking and formal employment. Support arrives, capability does not accumulate.
The result is a population with skills, trade experience and business history that is structurally prevented from using any of it. That is a waste with a cost attached, and the cost falls on the host economy as much as on the household.
Host communities carry real pressure on land, water, casual work and prices. Programs that treat refugees and hosts as separate caseloads tend to intensify that pressure rather than relieve it.
How YOCED works here.
YOCED approaches this as enterprise work under harder constraints, not as relief. The same questions apply as anywhere else in the atlas: what can be produced, who will buy it, what does it cost to start, and what happens when the support stops.
Work is designed for refugee and host participants together, because a livelihood that raises tension in the surrounding community is not a durable livelihood.
Where the binding constraint is legal rather than commercial — documentation, work authorisation, business registration — that is treated as the problem to be worked on, with legal partners, rather than designed around.
What happens in practice.
- 01Enterprise under constraintBusiness models that function with limited movement, limited documentation and limited access to formal credit.
- 02Skills that transferCapability built so that it remains an asset whether someone stays, integrates or returns.
- 03Market linkageConnecting production by displaced producers to buyers beyond the immediate settlement economy.
- 04Refugee and host togetherShared enterprise and shared employment, so economic gain does not become a source of local tension.
- 05Legal and documentation accessWorking with legal partners on the registration, authorisation and identity barriers that block earning.
Who this field reaches.
- Refugees and asylum seekers
- Host communities carrying settlement pressure
- Displaced young people out of education and work
- Women heading displaced households
Ways to work with YOCED on this field.
- 01Humanitarian and development partnershipBring settlement access and mandate; YOCED brings the enterprise and market-linkage model.
- 02Legal partnershipWork on documentation, registration and work-authorisation barriers with YOCED's legal partners.
- 03Enterprise fundingFund start-up capital designed for households without collateral or credit history.
Sustainable Development Goals.
Only the goals this field genuinely works on are listed.
- 1No Poverty
- 8Decent Work and Economic Growth
- 10Reduced Inequalities
- 16Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
- 17Partnerships for the Goals
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https://yoced.com/programs/refugee-economic-solutions — share it with a colleague, a funder or a specialist partner without them having to understand the rest of YOCED first.