Faith-Based Organizations and On-the-ground Networks

What role do faith-based organizations (FBOs) have to play when working with the displaced? What are some of the risks and pitfalls they face? How are networks involved? A recent article in Forced Migration Review by the regional director of the Southern Africa region for Jesuit Refugee Service, Fr. David Holdcroft SJ, addresses these questions, highlighting some of the vital contributions that FBOs offer from their religious traditions when working with the displaced.
Holdcroft argues that one of the greatest contributions of faith-based organizations is their capacity to build on-the-ground networks and connections so that people who are on the move can establish relationships and encounter a warm, hospitable, and welcoming environment rather than a hostile one. FBOs like Jesuit Refugee Service work to defend the rights and attend to the needs of refugees and migrants while also seeking to recognize each individual as a “being-in-relation-to-others…in many ways dependent upon those others for the realization of selfhood.”[1] This means that each person is understood in the context of a variety of cultural, economic, social, and political interactions, and each has a right to contribute actively and participate meaningfully in a community of people.
The comprehensive local networks that FBOs tend to manage are crucial in situations of emergency and, as mentioned, enable migrants to forge links with the local communities where they find themselves. Holdcroft closes by encouraging transnational organizations and civil authorities offering services in similar contexts to recognize this important contribution of FBOs. He also motivates FBOs to get over their fear of working with transnational and civil authorities and work together to nurture the type of “broad-based cooperation” that the sector needs, building on the strengths of the different entities involved.
This post is a brief summary of an article found in the Forced Migration Review series on “Faith and responses to displacement” entitled “The contribution of FBOs working with the displaced.”
Photo: Peter Ballais SJ, Jesuit Refugee Service
[1] Holdcroft, David. “The contribution of FBOs working with the displaced”. Forced Migration Review. November 2014.