Graduation Approach

Colombia. Milena and her sister are internally displaced in the province of Caquetá.

Many refugees are extremely poor, often having lost all their livelihoods assets when they fled or living among vulnerable groups.

The Graduation Approach is an ambitious effort to address the multiple constraints that affect them. It provides a structured, step-by-step process that is tailored to individuals' needs and enables them to move out of extreme poverty.

The approach was pioneered by BRAC in Bangladesh in 2002, and has been piloted and evaluated by CGAP and the Ford Foundation in eight countries. Over 15 country governments are now integrating the Graduation Approach into their social protection and poverty alleviation policies and programmes.

Since 2013, our field teams and partners, with the support of Trickle Up, have been piloting the Graduation Approach in five countries. It has become a powerful tool that enables vulnerable refugees to:

Meet basic needs
Develop skills
Adopt healthy savings habits
Determine a path of entrepreneurship or find employment opportunities in the local job market.

Under the Graduation Approach, each refugee participant has a personal mentor who actively works to link them to existing offerings. This makes existing programmes more personalised and responsive to individual protection needs. The mentor builds a relationship of trust and confidence with the participant, helping them to:

Access services and rights
Receive the right livelihoods support at the right time
Follow a clear road map towards graduation by a clear target date.

Protection safeguards

Graduation caseworkers are trained on response and referral mechanisms, including when it comes to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and are able to respond to many concerns through their close collaboration and consistent follow-up with the participants. Caseworkers are able to detect protection risks early and support refugees by ensuring they engage in safe and decent work.