Charity Helps Refugees in Dangerous Slums Become Self-Sufficient

Desperate people fleeing war, famine, and genocide increasingly bypass traditional refugee camps and instead travel to cities, where they typically end up in often-dangerous slums. That’s why RefugePoint, a Boston charity that helps refugees around the world, puts much of its energy into helping those who end up in cities escape that way of life.

A decade ago, perhaps 5 to 10 percent of refugees would end up in urban areas, says Sasha Chanoff, the nonprofit’s founder. Now, he says, that figure is 50 percent.

“These are people who have been through trauma and brought extremely low in life,” says Mr. Chanoff. “But when given counseling and job training, we have seen some amazing turnarounds.”

Such aid often helps refugees start small businesses and soon become self-supporting without the need to relocate yet again.

Mr. Chanoff founded RefugePoint after more than a decade in Africa aiding refugees from conflicts in impoverished countries. During that time, he noticed a distressing disconnect. Although the number of refugees was growing, they didn’t take nearly all the spots the United States and other countries had agreed to provide to people escaping horrible circumstances.

Mr. Chanoff says he realized that situation occurred because government and aid charities had to devote so much attention to helping people handle immediate struggles that nobody was looking at ways of aiding refugees so they would be ready to settle in another country.

“We were working hard to keep them alive, but the piece of helping them not be refugees any more, that was missing,“ says Mr. Chanoff, noting that “the average time someone is a refugee these days is 17 years.”

RefugePoint has worked to reduce that time, helping more than 19,000 refugees resettle since its founding in 2005.

The group’s innovative work has made Mr. Chanoff the winner of two major honors. In 2010 he received the Charles Bronfman prize, a $100,000 award that honors young humanitarians whose work is inspired by their Jewish values. Last year he won the 2013 Gleitsman International Activist Award, a $125,000 prize created by the philanthropist Alan Gleitsman.

The group operates on a budget of $2.8-million, half of which comes from individuals and private foundations. Grants from social-entrepreneur groups, which include organizations such as Ashoka and Echoing Green, provide an additional quarter, and the remaining quarter comes from the UN Refugee Agency.