Mask-making for protection against COVID-19 in Niger
Action for Migrants: Route-based Assistance programme (or AMiRA) was an initiative led by the British Red Cross which ran from April 2018 until March 2021. The programme was funded by the Safety, Support and Solution Phase II initiative of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). It provided support to vulnerable migrants across Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Sudan and Egypt. Throughout the programme, INTRAC acted as its learning partner, with support provided by then-staff member Rachel Hayman, and members of our network Anne Garbutt and Marlene Buchy.
The work of AMiRA was implemented by the National Societies of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. Through the programme housands of children, women and men were supported with basic services such as access to information about their rights, assistance in the form of food or cash, transport, emergency healthcare, help to reconnect with families, activities to integrate them into society, and psycho-social support (PSS) and safe spaces in which to face up to trauma.
AMiRA helped the National Societies to become key actors in the field of migration, and expanded their technical capacities in areas such as PSS, community engagement and accountability, protection and anti-trafficking, cash and voucher assistance, and monitoring, evaluation and learning.
As the learning partner within AMiRA, INTRAC undertook a number of key activities:
- Organising six-monthly regional learning events; initially in-person in Dakar, Senegal and later virtual
- Supporting the development of learning briefs produced by country teams
- Producing and distributing thematic learning notes on key topics
- Feeding learning into the development of the humanitarian service point model
As with the whole of the programme, INTRAC’s learning role had to be adapted to the pressures of of COVID-19, which included switching from in-person learning events to a series of webinars – interestingly, this method allowed us to unite a wider range of people from AMiRA and the RCRC Movement than would normally attend the face-to-face event.
More information about the AMiRA programme is available on the IFRC migration website, where it is expected that the final learning outputs will also be hosted. To discuss how INTRAC can provide learning support to your organisation or project, please contact us.