Shared Principles

It is crucial to invest upfront in building awareness, trust, and common understanding among partners, service providers, refugees, and host communities. This is particularly significant in countries or sub-regions where the programme is new to working with displaced populations.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind

• Greater investment in outreach and sensitisation is necessary to reach refugees, who may be less aware of local services.
• Building trust takes longer when behavioural change is required or when refugees have had negative past experiences with their own national systems.
• Raise awareness among government counterparts, service providers and employers about the needs and realities of refugees. 

The programme should be built around interconnected interventions to achieve better coherence. Interventions should take account of wider systemic links and avoid the tendency to promote ‘stand-alone’ interventions.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Programming needs to better align with specific national and/or district government priorities from the outset and understand constraints introduced by institutional capacity and resource limitations.
• Multi-sectoral interventions should be coordinated to ensure that the various components are interlinked. Programme steering committees, with multi-sectoral representatives, have a role to play here.
• The programme has an essential role in developing stakeholder awareness, establishing common understanding, and facilitating the pooling of expertise.
• It is necessary to recognize that political will is a key determinant for the long terms inclusion of displaced populations in national systems. 

It is important to strike a balance between delivering short-term project results and contributing to long-term development objectives.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Starting small and scaling up gradually with experience can help build partnerships and better understand legislative and policy constraints undermining long-term sustainability.
• Operating within a defined sector, geographical area, and/or demographic can help test and demonstrate short-term results, build confidence, manage expectations, and limit losses.
• Use a combination of short-term interventions run in parallel to long-term, policy-based interventions that depend on external factors. 

It is important to scope out the complexity of operational contexts in advance to recognize how to adapt approaches and tools to be fit for purpose.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Project monitoring can highlight the need for potential adaptation of tools, particularly their relevance for displaced populations as contexts evolve.
• Project monitoring can also serve the purpose of quality control when tools are deployed at scale across countries.
• Adaptation includes making tools relevant for specific sectors and target groups, like refugee youth, and localising services.

Programme design strategies should take account of complex contexts, such as understanding and working with local capacity and local entities.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• It is important to be aware of the cultural norms, existing knowledge of markets, skill sets, and the stage of displacement groups of refugees find themselves in. These features all shape service design and delivery.   
• In light of the above, make sure the projects and initiatives are tailored to the realities of refugees and host communities.
• Identify opportunities to leverage existing local resources, institutional, and governance structures, ensure relevance, avoid duplications, and buttress projects for better coherence.

In contexts with weak labour markets, programme design must reflect measures to address or overcome constraints.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Ground the programme in up to date labour market information, such as primary surveys and secondary data collection.
• It is important to trial a pilot project as it can help to adapt and fine-tune project activities or, where necessary, halt activities if they fail to deliver against the intended objective.  
• Start small and scale up gradually when labour market demand-side constraints diminish, which likely requires a long-term programme horizon. 

When working in complex, volatile contexts, there is a need to develop methodologies for rigorous project risk, readiness, and preparedness analysis.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Learn from and adapt agile tracking and reporting mechanisms like those used by more humanitarian driven agencies in emergency response.
• Strengthen local communities and bring decision-making to a local level, and support monitoring when access to project sites is a challenge.
• Tap into and partner with other projects of other agencies to pivot and repurpose funds during unforeseen crises. 

It is crucial to promote social cohesion and dialogue to build trust and confidence among partners of the programme.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Leverage existing networks of employers through local associations, chambers, and cooperative groups.
• Engage in social dialogue and build trust with partners to support a transition into formal employment.
• A transparent analysis of the effectiveness of different processes and tools used in the programme can help keep local partners informed and engaged.

To promote formalisation of the programme, it is important to identify existing barriers and encourage governments to remove legislative, policy and procedural barriers to refugee’s participation in the formal sector.  

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Frame programmes within wider national development plans and strategies for formalisation.
• Build partnerships with government agencies, business federations, chambers, banks, and social protection institutions for better rollout of services in refugee areas. 

It is important to identify and build sustainability plans upfront in programme designs with relevant stakeholders.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind 

• Sustainability plans should factor in the capacity to withstand economic shocks, linking back to risk planning.
• Strengthen the physical, human, and institutional capital of national stakeholders responsible for the continuation of services.
• Collaborate and seek support from the public and private stakeholders at the national and local levels.