Indonesian and Refugee Youth Entrepreneurship Training: Participants' Meeting with Local Entrepreneurs

Objective

The entrepreneurship training has been running for a month, with refugees and local Indonesian youth coming to entrepreneurship class two times in a week, organized by Atma Jaya University and Dompet Dhuafa. By the time this ToR is written, each participant has already his/her own rough business idea.

The objective of the meeting to hold further discussions with the participants on the Community Based Enterprise Development (C-BED) training approach; and to inspire, motivate participants and facilitate linkages between the participants and local entrepreneurs for preparation to start the second module on developing business ideas. The meeting aims further:

• To widen the knowledge of the training participants on social entrepreneur and how it could be applied in their business idea.
• To explore possibilities of collaboration between successful local entrepreneurs and the refugees/ Indonesian youth.

Background

Currently, there are around 13,800 refugees registered with the UNHCR office in Indonesia. For the three-year period between 2014 and 2017, the number of refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia increased from approximately 11,000 to almost 14,000 people.

Indonesia is not a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or its 1967 Protocol, nor does it have a national refugee status determination system. As a non-signatory to the 1951 convention, the country does not offer opportunities for refugees to attain permanent residency.

Instead, Indonesia has traditionally been a transit country, to which many refugees and asylum seekers go to stay temporarily before being resettled to a destination country such as Australia or the US. Due to recent policy changes of some typical destination countries, the chances of refugees being resettled from Indonesia, has been drastically reduced.

The limited ability of self-reliance for refugees puts them in a very vulnerable situation. Many refugees are forced to live on remittances from already impoverished families abroad, and struggle to support their own basic needs. The dependence often creates a sense of shame and guilt, as many have been sent away by their families, often forced to pay a high fee, to apply for resettlement in a third country to work and send support to their families still remaining in the origin country. However, the remittances provided by family and friends is in many cases are only temporary and eventually refugees will need to find own ways of supporting themselves.

In their current situation, many refugees experience that they have a lot of time available, and seek to find activities to fill their days as their mental health is negatively affected by stress caused by them having nothing to do and limited ability to change their current situation.

ILO and UNHCR embarked on a valuable and strong partnership to pilot a livelihood training in 2018, with a potential, depending on the outcome and the evaluation, the pilot project to be turned in to a regular program for the next years ahead.

The main aim of the pilot project is to support some 100 Indonesians and 100 refugees with livelihood skills, which will improve their self-reliance and livelihood. The target beneficiaries are to be of the age group of 17-30 years old. The pilot project will also target Indonesian local community organizations whose capacity will be built in order to take over the implementation of the project in the future. The pilot project will be implemented in Jakarta from 3 September 2018 until 28 February 2019.

ILO and UNHCR believe that this approach will create positive impacts for Indonesia, and that the activities outlined below would provide bases for economic empowerment to local residents and refugees alike and would help to strengthen the mutual understanding between refugees and the communities hosting them.

The pilot project is supported and implemented by two institutions: Atma Jaya University and Dompet Dhuafa. Atma Jaya University is running an entrepreneurship training for 3 groups (60 refugees and 60 Indonesian youth) and Dompet Dhuafa is taking 2 groups (40 refugees and 40 indonesian youth). The pilot training is using the ILO Module “Community-Based Enterprise Development”, tailor made for the refugees.