World Refugee Day is an opportunity to honor refugees and to celebrate their strength, courage and resilience. Today also serves as a reminder that no matter who you are or where you come from, everyone deserves the right to seek safety. At BOMA, we are committed to building the resilience of refugees in Uganda, Chad, Cameroon and beyond alongside partners including Caritas Switzerland and Danish Refugee Council.

A recent Randomized Controlled Trial (#RCT) from the Feed the Future MRR Innovation Lab found that REAP participants had, on average, 324% more in business #assets, 32% more in total annual household cash #income and 509% more in cash #savings than non-participants in communities where no BOMA programming took place. Those benefits generated a total return-on-investment (#ROI) of 3.1, meaning that every $1 invested in REAP delivers about $3 in benefits to BOMA #entrepreneurs.

Women are more likely to experience extreme poverty than men, which often means they lack access to the resources and knowledge that would enable them to build resilience to shocks such as those caused by the climate crisis. Recent projections estimate up to 216 million people will be displaced by climate change by 2050. Over half of these will be women and girls.

Extreme poverty, gender, and climate change are inextricably and tragically linked, but there is a solution—which the global community can no longer afford to ignore. Building resilience among vulnerable populations, particularly women, who disproportionately bear the consequences of extreme poverty, can be accomplished by helping them establish diversified sources of income, learn new skills, and build up savings so they can withstand climate change-induced shocks.