• The success story of a refugee with a disability who joined the ILO’s welding apprenticeship programme and envisioned himself as an entrepreneur making assistive devices for others with disabilities.
• PROSPECTS worked with JPTC to make their training spaced more accessible for all. 

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender & disability inclusion. 

When developing and supporting market systems in the PROSPECTS programmes, cultural norms played a part in determining who participated in which type of labour activities and how. For instance, in Uganda, Kenya, Sudan and Egypt, a gender dimension in the selection of value chains was apparent: in Kenya and other East African countries, women were traditionally more involved in caring for and milking small livestock or camels and in selling the associated products, while men were more involved in decision-making regarding the sale or purchase of large livestock. Moreover, men were still largely in control of household budgets and profits generated from sales. In Egypt, the assessment of the care and food-services value chains highlighted a substantial representation of women, especially in the most informal and microenterprises. Therefore, gender differences need to be taken into consideration when engaging with local communities in creating suitable interventions that are inclusive. For example, the Kenyan PROSPECTS team adopted a market systems approach to strengthen the camel-milk value chain. The establishment of the Kasha Camel Milk Collection Centre empowered women through entrepreneurship, raising hygiene standards and expanding market access. 

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender and disability inclusion. 

• The programme team partnered with the Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association Limited (UWEAL) to roll out the Start and Improve your Business (SIYB) and GET Ahead training in the Rhino and Nakivale settlements. UWEAL is a membership-based organization, representing some 80,000 female-owned small, medium and large businesses in Uganda. The refugee and host community female entrepreneurs who were supported by UWEAL under PROSPECTS were also registered as members of the association, so they were able to avail of a support structure and network in the long term.
• Based on the ILO’s training material, a refugee youth-led organization in Uganda, Unleashed, developed a module specifically designed as a stand-alone programme for women, called U-Leadies, as part of its enhanced BDS offerings. The organization was ultimately contracted by the ILO to implement BDS training in Nakivale, which provided it with practical experience in project design, implementation and administration. Find out more in the case study.

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender and disability inclusion.

• In Sudan, PROSPECTS specifically focused on supporting female groundnut growers in areas hosting refugees. There was a higher proportion of women participating as growers in groundnut production. The most relevant pathway was to support refugees and host communities to organize into cooperatives to provide services for themselves. The intervention organized female groundnut growers into cooperatives to address their otherwise limited access to markets. It also supported them with regard to value-added production and finance matters. A long period of awareness-raising, training and learning-by-doing was required before female groundnut producers from the refugee and host communities felt comfortable shifting from individual production to a cooperative structure. The added value of collective production was particularly relevant for female growers from the refugee community, who generally had lower levels of social and financial capital compared with their counterparts in the host community. It was important in this case for the programme to accompany cooperatives to the point where they saw the added value.
• In Ethiopia, the interventions were targeted at the dairy sector, which was replete with dairy cooperatives and showed considerable productivity and job-creation potential. A partnership was established with Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Suisse to provide technical assistance and support entrepreneurship and cooperative development for women and young people in host and refugee communities. Read about a Somali refugee’s journey towards forming a women’s cooperative.
• In Jordan, the approved amendments to the cooperative law mandated that at least three of the six representatives from the cooperative movement on the Jordanian Cooperative Corporation (JCC) Board of Directors be women. Strengthening the cooperative movement in Jordan has also helped many women-led cooperatives in the area. Learn more about their stories. 

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender and disability inclusion. 

• An Employment-Intensive Investment Programmes (EIIP) approach was used to ensure specific attention was paid to increasing the participation of women in areas traditionally dominated by men, such as construction work. In Iraq, the ILO collaborated with the Women Empowerment Unit at the Directorate of Youth and Sports in Nineveh to rehabilitate the Zaha Hadid Youth Centre. The design and facilities of the centre were developed in consultation with the Unit to help ensure  they met the needs of young women and persons with disabilities in the area.

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender and disability inclusion.

• Female banking agents were hired in Ethiopia by Shabelle Bank to support outreach to female clients in more conservative areas. Find out more in the case study.
• Women in the Mina region of Iraq face significant socio-economic challenges, including systemic barriers to entering the labour market, with only one in ten participating – one of the lowest rates globally. To address this, the ILO partnered with the Lutheran World Federation in northern Iraq, providing more than 1,200 young women with skills in finance, business management and social cohesion to support enterprise development in more inclusive communities. In addition, the ILO, in collaboration with the Central Bank of Iraq, introduced a tailored financial product used by more than 300 female entrepreneurs, addressing challenges such as training, Sharia compliance and seasonal repayment. These efforts have enabled women to become role models in their communities, with some of them training and employing younger women, creating opportunities and driving long-term social change. Find out more in the case study. 

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender & disability inclusion. 

• PROSPECTS built on the approach developed through the ILO-UNHCR Memorandum of Understanding and Joint Action Plan rolled out over the decade preceding PROSPECTS. Initially, it focused on refugee inclusion in social health protection schemes, around which political will regarding inclusion was generally higher (for public health reasons, as well as perceived need), but then also turned its attention to additional types of benefits throughout PROSPECTS. The case of the National Disability Allowance (NDA) in Lebanon is a good example of how a universal approach can provide an entry point for the extension of the NDA to refugee people with disabilities (PWDs).
• In the case of Kenya, the Kenyan National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) approached the ILO to develop and cost a universal maternity benefit for the country. PROSPECTS joined forces with an EU-financed social protection and public financial management project to design and cost a maternity income benefit for women in the informal economy, which would mean female refugees enrolled in the NHIF would also receive a new maternity cash benefit. Several workshops were conducted with key stakeholders to agree on the design.
• In Jordan, a two-way chatbot was developed and piloted with Jordan’s Social Security Corporation (SSC), and the analysis of the data revealed higher attrition rates among women and self-employed workers. This highlighted structural barriers that these particular groups faced, such as short-term contracts in the female-dominated education sector and irregular monthly incomes of self-employed individuals. This prompted a refinement of the subsidy design and introduction of a child benefit. By November 2024, 92 per cent of those who had registered for social security through the Estidama++ programme had transitioned into regular social security and continued to make contributions independently of the programme’s subsidy.

Find out more about the PROSPECTS programme’s wider learning on gender & disability inclusion.