An Interview with Sasha Chanoff (MAHA '04)

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, RefugePoint

RefugePoint has been working to help refugees across the globe for more than 15 years. In a recent interview, the organization’s founder talked about his goals to significantly transform humanitarian response systems to better address the needs of refugees around the world. Learn more about RefugePoint here.

What is the mission, and work, of RefugePoint?
RefugePoint’s mission is to find long-term solutions for refugees in perilous situations so they can lead dignified lives. Today, war and persecution have forced more than 100 million people from their homes. Among these people, over 30 million have fled across a border and are refugees. The others are displaced within their own country. Refugees don't go home for an average of anywhere from 10 to 20 years. Some can never return home. Increasingly, children are born into refugee situations.

The world is facing a unique moment of forced displacement right now. The old ways of humanitarian response system -- the traditional solutions and mechanisms for responding to forced displacement -- aren't set up for the magnitude of displacement today and the length of time people are displaced.

Most humanitarian aid is focused on necessities like tents and food and basic assistance to help keep people alive. This kind of support is essential at the outset of a crisis, but it doesn't make sense for refugees stuck for years. They want to stand on their own two feet, support themselves and their communities, and be self-reliant.

Focusing on those in life-threatening jeopardy, RefugePoint helps refugees find solutions to these long-term problems and advocates for changes in the humanitarian response system so it can be more effective in addressing needs and challenges.

Why did you start RefugePoint?
I had worked for a decade with refugees before coming to Fletcher to pursue my Master of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance (MAHA), and already had insights into how the system around refugee resettlement was broken. MAHA was the platform that helped me to conceptualize a way to fix a broken system and build an organization.

Some professors were really key -- John Hammack, Karen Jacobson, Angela Raven Roberts, and Sue Lautze among others – and all were mentors who gave me the insights, knowledge and intellectual guidance to explore what I wanted to do. I founded RefugePoint in 2005 soon after graduating.

What are other aspects of RefugePoint’s work?
The U.S. and other countries make resettlement slots available for refugees, who have a pathway to citizenship when they arrive. As a result, these countries and others have long traditions of bringing people in successfully and helping them integrate. RefugePoint has staff in dozens of countries across Africa, the Middle East, and the world to identify refugees for these resettlement programs.

Our leadership role in resettlement has led to new opportunities too. We’ve recently built a family reunion program to help unaccompanied children reunite with their parents. We’ve also built a labor mobility program for refugees to go to Canada. And in the past year we helped to build the Sponsor Circle Program for Afghans.

But only a small minority of refugees will ever have access to resettlement or to relocate to another country. The vast majority are stuck indefinitely in the countries to which they have fled.

The Self-Reliance Runway Program, our flagship program in Nairobi, helps refugee families stabilize and earn an income and become self-reliant – important steps toward independence and a more normal life. The success of this program inspired us to create, along with partners, the Refugee Self Reliance Initiative, a global multi-stakeholder effort to reach 5 million people in five years with programming that puts them on a path to self-reliance.

While we are relatively small compared with larger organizations, I like to think that we have an outsized impact. Our model is to build new programs that lead to solutions for refugees, demonstrate that they work, and figure out ways to scale them globally through partnerships. RefugePoint depend entirely on private funding – that’s been a key to our success. We’ve gotten a lot of positive recognition for our innovative work including from the Charles Bronfman Prize, the World Economic Forum, Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, and from other places.

What’s your vision for RefugePoint?
The vision for RefugePoint is really more like a vision for the future of humanitarian response. I wrote a blog about that called RefugePoint’s Vision for the Future of Humanitarian Response. The anchor point for a better and more equitable and just future is for refugees themselves to be the leaders building the programs that impact their lives. That’s really important and simply has never been the focus on humanitarian response.

We also want to see a transformation toward self-reliance opportunities for refugees everywhere so they can lead dignified lives. For those who can’t stay safely in the countries to which they’ve fled, we want to ensure that there are opportunities to resettle to a safe new country. Overall, I imagine a world where communities compete to bring refugees in, and where refugees themselves are recognized as human beings with unique and important contributions.

How are climate change and displacement linked?
Drought and famine are often the triggers to conflict. It’s likely that climate change will trigger increasing refugee displacement as conflict arises over scarcer resources, and as people move in search of better lives. Some predictions estimate that up to one billion people could be forcibly displaced by 2050. Courses I took at Fletcher about the history of humanitarian action pointed to some of these future trends. These trends and challenges can no longer be ignored.

On World Humanitarian Day, what advice do you have for people who want to make a difference?
I hope that on World Humanitarian Day, people might think about doing something that connects with and supports refugees. Volunteer to support Ukrainians or Afghans and other refugees here in the US. Make a donation to an organization they know and feel confident about. Use social media to highlight a story that relates to refugees. If I had to suggest to people to make donations, the three suggestions I would make (all founded by Fletcher alums) are RefugePoint, The Fuller Project and Fletcher Afghan Evacuation and Resettlement Working Group.

The important thing is to do something, to take some kind of tangible action.