Global pool of multi-lingual trainers established to make finance work for refugees and host communities around the world
The capacity development of trainers in “Making Finance Work for Refugees and Host communities” aims to develop a pool of trainers to be deployed around the world to teach and technically support financial services providers in expanding their services to refugees’ market segments, which will in turn enable refugees and host communities to access more suitable financial services.
The ILO capacity development of trainers in “Making Finance Work for Refugees and Host communities” kick-started earlier this month with a series of online webinars, distributed over several weeks. During this first phase, candidate trainers have learned about the training materials’ content to familiarize with the recently developed programme.
The ILO “Making Finance Work for Refugees” training course is grounded in the second volume of the ILO Social Finance renowned “Making Microfinance Work” programme, which focuses on financial institutions’ product diversification. This training course was developed as part of the PROSPECTS partnership, following the identification of the need to generate innovative ideas leading to decent work opportunities in forced displacement settings.
The first phase of this capacity development of trainers gathered candidates from a wide range of financial institutions, commercial banks and microfinance institutions, from various and very diverse countries in Latin America, Africa and the Arab States. Candidates were selected by the ILO Social Finance Programme for their potential to expand the outreach of the training programme in all corners of the world.
With support from the International Training Centre of the ILO, participants were first introduced to the technical content through a series of interactive webinars over two weeks. Candidate trainers were invited to share their own experiences regarding the extension of financial services to refugees, which offered them the opportunity to learn from each other. An assortment of case studies and concrete exercises was also shared with the group in order to enrich this initial technical course.
Group picture of the new pool of trainers in Making Finance Work for Refugees and Host Communities during a webinar session of the first phase of their capacity development. The second phase of the capacity development of trainers took the form of an in-person training in Entebbe, Uganda, during the last week of May 2021. With the objective to dive deeper into the content, the new trainers were introduced to the participatory tools and approaches of the “Making Finance Work for Refugees and Host Communities” programme. Besides assimilating additional technical content, they learned about different training techniques, thus ensuring the experiential learning approach of the ILO Social Finance programme.
In the framework of PROSPECTS, some of the trainers who participated in the two phases of the capacity development also had the opportunity to deliver their very first retail course on “Making Finance Work for Refugees and Host communities” to financial services providers, during the first week of June 2021. Following this exercise, these four new trainers will be able to put their learnings into practice and start expanding the programme in Uganda.
Group work presentation during the second phase of the capacity development of trainers in Uganda. Ultimately, this global pool of multi-lingual trainers in “Making Finance Work for Refugees and Host communities” will enable the programme to flourish and expand its outreach to an increasing number of financial services providers globally, thus giving them the necessary tools to build strategies to extend their financial services to refugees worldwide.
