The Council is implementing and evaluating a life skills and financial literacy training program for Rohingya and host-community youth in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
Why it Matters: For the past five years, Cox’s Bazar has hosted over one million Rohingya people who have been forcibly displaced. The Bangladesh government, with support from the United Nations and other humanitarian agencies, is working to meet their most immediate needs. However, the unfortunate reality is that Rohingya populations may be unable to return to Myanmar for the foreseeable future. The Council conducted a 2020-2021 livelihood needs assessment study, which indicated a clear need for training among Rohingya youth. Therefore, livelihood-generation is a vital issue.
The Approach: The two-year initiative will span from 2022 to 2023.
What we are doing:
- Developing a two-module package focused on life skills and financial literacy for Rohingya and host-community youth.
- Conducting training courses, consisting of 16 one-hour sessions, over the course of four weeks.
- Rolling out the program on a larger scale to meet increasing demands for training.
- Conducting a post-training survey among randomly selected Rohingya and host community youth to measure developmental changes resulting from the intervention and to understand the extent of skills building and income generation opportunities.
The Big Picture:
- During the project’s pilot phase, we trained 159 Rohingya and 80 host-community youth.
- These courses will empower youth to develop healthy livelihoods both during their interim stay in Bangladesh and upon their return to Myanmar.
Partners:
Funders:
- Jerry and Diane Cunningham
