Building a Community Sponsorship Program: Checklist
OVERARCHING CONSIDERATIONS
1. Overarching Principles and Policies
Have you considered…
- Whether your community sponsorship program promotes the principle of refugee protection?
- Whether your community sponsorship program provides durable solutions?
- Whether your community sponsorship advances international responsibility sharing?
- Whether your community sponsorship program promotes the principle of additionality?
- How to respond to the need for family reunification in your resettlement program?
- How your program will encourage volunteerism and build communities?
- How you will ensure your community sponsorship program will remain accountable?
2. Legal Framework
Have you considered…
- What laws, regulations, policies, and procedures will be enacted to enable community sponsorship in your country?
OPERATIONAL DETAILS
A. Refugees: from eligibility to arrival
Have you considered…
- Who is eligible to be sponsored?
- The resources and partnerships needed to process refugees for private sponsorship?
- What information and resources you will provide refugees before they arrive in their resettlement country?
- How you will identify sponsorship-eligible refugees?
- How sponsors and refugees should communicate prior to refugees’ arrival?
- How you will work with UNHCR as part of overseas processing?
- How you will transport refugees to your country and how you will choose their destinations?
B. Sponsors: from mobilization to engagement
Have you considered…
- How you will mobilize private actors to support refugee resettlement?
- If there are options other than sponsorship for communities to support refugees?
- Who will be eligible to sponsor and what their relationship to the government will be?
- How you will screen sponsors?
- How to ensure sponsors are aware of their responsibilities?
- The steps sponsors will need to take to prepare for the refugees’ arrival?
- What training and resources will be needed for sponsors prior to and after refugees’ arrival?
C. Refugee Settlement and Integration
Have you considered…
- What legal status will the sponsored refugee have upon arrival?
- What arrangements need to be made for housing?
- What supports need to be put in place for job search and training?
- What types of post-arrival supports will be needed beyond those provided by sponsors?
- How refugees will access physical, mental, and dental health services?
- The educational needs of refugees?
- How refugees will be oriented to their new communities?
- How refugees will access language training?
- Who will cover the varying costs of settlement and integration?
D. The Refugee-Sponsorship Relationship
Have you considered…
- What happens if sponsors want to withdraw their application before refugees arrive?
- How to manage expectations and resolve disputes between sponsors and refugees if they arise?
- What happens if a sponsorship breaks down after refugees arrive?
- What happens at the end of the sponsorship period?
- What special considerations may apply if relatives are among the sponsors?