National

The Government of the Philippines created a communication platform BaLinkBayan for Filipino returnees, which functions as a one-stop online portal for diaspora engagement. BaLinkBayan is a means to connect Filipino individuals and communities to the Philippines through the Diaspora to Development (D2D) program of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) BaLinkBayan focuses on the five of the D2D: diaspora investment and entrepreneurship, diaspora philanthropy, brain gain program, educational exchange, and medical mission coordination. 

The PARE 1+1 Programme for Attracting  Remittances into the Economy, launched in 2010, offers funding to complement migrants’ financial resources and provides entrepreneurial training to migrants and their relatives for business development. The Programme also provides beneficiaries with information on the existing business opportunities. For this purpose, diaspora networks act as important information dissemination channels thus raising awareness on available investment opportunities in Moldova.

Results:

Jamaica Diaspora Agriculture Taskforce (JDAT) Investor Circle provides microfinance funding for local farmers. The Circle provides an opportunity for persons and organizations within diaspora and Jamaica, to pool their resources in an effort to assist the country’s agricultural sector. The JDAT has been engaging Jamaican farmers in a number of initiatives aimed at promoting sustainable organic farming.

Loan Programme for Returned Nepalese Migrants provides loans of 1 million Nepalese rupees ($8,908) to people who had returned to Nepal in the three years preceeding the beginning of the programme (November, 2018). The loans are meant to be used to build businesses and should be repaid within five years.

The Migrant Support Fund is a federal fund administered to states according to the size of their repatriated migrant populations, which provides migrants one-time seed grants of up to USD 1,500 to start a new business.

Because the Mexican labor market is saturated and often unfamiliar to returning migrants, especially those who have been abroad for an extended period, these entrepreneurial and self-employment opportunities offer a key path to their economic reintegration.

FAO is supporting the sustainable reintegration of returnees through livelihoods support and a large-scale project with the Green Climate Fund aimed at increasing climate resilience of smallholder farmers and food systems in El Salvador. The project seeks to boost resilience of family farmers by transforming food systems and improving rural infrastructure, thus addressing an adverse driver of migration.

Programs of employment creation for migrants, and economic and psychosocial integration projects for returnees offer returned migrants in El Salvador access to local job-search databases, vocational training, skills accreditation, and seed grants up to USD 3,500 for entrepreneurial projects.

The National Network of Returned Entrepreneurs (RENACERES) offers counseling and seed capital to migrants who demonstrate potential to establish new businesses or projects.

The ILO project “Development of capacities to promote union affiliation and coverage of collective bargaining in Colombia” (COL/13/05/ NOR) sought to develop the internal capacities of trade unions, complementing the projects that had been developed before in the field of strengthening of tripartite spaces. According to the final evaluation of the project, the context also played an important role in its success, through the approval of Decrees 160 and 017, which have facilitated social dialogue between public authorities and trade unions.

FAO is working towards building the capacity of poor and vulnerable youth in migration prone areas, including cash transfers beneficiaries, and engaging them in productive activities along agro-food value chains; and support youth entrepreneurs to scale-up their businesses along selected value chains.

FAO supports rural youthwith alternatives to migration in a number of countries through fostering decent rural employment in sustainable agriculture and agribusiness along value chains.