FAO Safe Access to Fuel and Energy (SAFE) initiative addresses energy needs during emergencies and protracted crises, and builds resilient livelihoods in a sustainable manner. The work of the SAFE project in this area can have important multiplier effects – from better food security, nutrition and health, to the sustainable management of natural resources, greater resilience to climate change and natural hazards, and increased livelihood opportunities.
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.
Supporting refugee farming initiatives in rural and regional Australia: This initiative evolved spontaneously from research led by University of Wollongong and University of Melbourne academics in partnership with a community-based food cooperative Food Next Door. The researchers were able to connect Burundi refugees and former refugees, who are ‘landless farmers’, with donated farmland and with Food Next Door and the Sunraysia Burundian Garden to grow culturally important crops.
Deepening financial inclusion and enhancing rural people’s resilience by providing low-cost, cross-border mobile money transfers across the Kenya-Uganda corridor, linked with savings, loans and other financial services, and by promoting entrepreneurship for migrant family investment.
FAO is supporting the channeling of remittances (using the “1+1” matching approach) for agricultural development, nutrition and social protection in national food systems, including by assisting migrants and their families and communities in formulating small- and medium-scale enterprises in fruit, vegetable and livestock production and agribusiness.
The government of Nepal is revising the minimum wage set for workers in the country. According to a source at the Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security, a worker shall get paid at least Rs 13,450 a month from 17 July 2019 (revised up from the previous minimum of Rs 9,700).
The Ministry of Labour, Employment and Social Security Minimum made this decision following a recommendation of the Wage Fixation Committee. The Ministry says the workers benefit from Rs 2,500 in addition to their wage as part of their ‘social security’ under the Social Security Act.