Context

Across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and North America, millions of displaced women, children, and youth face persistent barriers to safety, health, and opportunity. Too often, their specific needs are overlooked in humanitarian responses, leaving them vulnerable and underserved. With expertise spanning economic empowerment, social inclusion, justice, sexual and reproductive health, and protection from gender-based violence, this project develops and scales approaches that transform humanitarian systems, ensuring that displaced women and girls are not only visible but central to shaping a more just and effective humanitarian response. 

Goals

• Implement the I’m Here Operational Approach in targeted contexts to improve the safety, health, and socioeconomic well-being of displaced adolescents. 

• Expand the use of the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative and Self-Reliance Index to improve displaced women’s household resilience, empowerment, and mental health. 

• Conduct rigorous research on the gendered impacts of displacement and migration, strengthening humanitarian actors’ knowledge and accountability to women and girls. 

Activities

Myriad Canada's project with the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) will implement a combination of operational programming, self-reliance initiatives, and research to achieve project goals.  

• Through the I’m Here Operational Approach, tools will be contextualized and translated, data will be collected directly with displaced adolescents, and targeted programming will be delivered to strengthen their safety, health, and socioeconomic well-being, with findings shared widely among humanitarian actors. 

• The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI) will be advanced by evaluating entrepreneurship programs for displaced women-led households, examining the relationship between psychosocial well-being and self-reliance, and testing the feasibility of the Self-Reliance Index as a measurement tool across diverse contexts. 

• Research on the gendered impact of displacement and migration will be conducted, beginning with desk reviews and field studies, leading to a comprehensive report with actionable recommendations. Findings will be disseminated to service providers, donors, and policymakers, and stakeholders will be engaged to translate evidence into improved policies and practices that strengthen accountability to women and girls.