OUR APPROACH
Explained by Robert Hakiza, Executive Director
Everything we do
comes from the community.
In 2007, together with two other refugees living in Kampala, I founded YARID, Young African Refugees for Integral Development, to support urban refugees and to create a space where young people can discuss the problems that affect their lives and find solutions together. We used football to bring the youth together. This helped start the discussions and engage the community. Still today, everything we do comes from the community. We want the local population to understand that refugees have skills that can also benefit them, we want to show that we are resourceful and have great ideas and that we want to find ways to live better together. Ugandan locals face many of the same challenges as us, so we are working to jointly to address them.
The approach we are using involves both refugees and local host communities.
This is exactly in line with the principles of comprehensive responses for refugees. In Kampala, the majority of refugees live in slums – this is where accommodation and food are the cheapest. Refugees live with the local population and they face the same challenges: like refugees, many Ugandans who live in the slums cannot afford to send their children to school or to eat three meals per day. YARID provides a platform for us to find solutions together.
Refugees want empowerment,
not handouts | Robert Hakiza
