Enhancing the capacities of return and reintegration practitioners: IOM launches new training curricula

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) launched today two training curricula to provide return and reintegration practitioners and stakeholders with ready-to-use materials to organize and deliver training sessions for actors in the field of migrant return and reintegration. 

The curricula made available in the framework of the EU-IOM Knowledge Management Hub (KMH), funded by the European Union, complement a series of capacity-building activities on reintegration processes and practices, and on monitoring and evaluating return and reintegration programmes, as an operationalization of the IOM Reintegration Handbook. These include blended training sessions facilitated by the KMH, regional and national level workshops delivered either online or face-to-face to return and reintegration practitioners, as well as self-paced e-courses on the IOM E-Campus learning platform. 

Since 2018, over 1,000 return and reintegration practitioners have been trained in more than 50 countries, using the reintegration and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) training curricula.  

“Thanks to the efforts in making these sets of materials publicly available, many more practitioners and stakeholders will now have the opportunity to train and be trained on migrant return and reintegration practices. This will allow for the implementation and efficient monitoring of programmes adopting a migrant-centred, evidence-based approach to further facilitate the sustainability of reintegration processes worldwide,” said Rosilyne Borland, Head of the Assisted Voluntary Return and Reintegration Unit at IOM. 

As an example of tangible results, these capacity-building activities led to the adoption of standardized reintegration practices by the Government of Bangladesh who is now using a locally adapted version of the reintegration training curriculum to train its reintegration case workers.  

"IOM's training on the Integrated Approach to Reintegration was a unique learning experience. We utilize what we learnt from the training in our daily work – including in reintegration project implementation and policy innovations. We received clear guidance on providing integrated reintegration services to returning migrants at individual, community, and structural levels. Most importantly, we are now familiar with the standardized monitoring tools and follow up mechanisms in providing reintegration assistance,” said Zahid Anwar, Deputy Director of the Wage Earners' Welfare Board in Bangladesh. 

Praising the M&E training curriculum, participants also highlighted that their “knowledge and expertise were sharpened and enhanced” and that the training supported their understanding of data analysis as well as other useful M&E indicators. 

The set of capacity-building activities ultimately aim to promote a standardization of tools and practices related to return and reintegration as well as monitoring and evaluation. Such standardization ensures comparability of data, while safeguarding a certain level of flexibility in adapting to different reintegration contexts. 

The reintegration training curriculum was developed with funding from the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, in the framework of the ORION project, while the M&E curriculum was developed in the framework of the KMH funded by the European Union. Both training curricula are available to the public on the KMH’s Return and Reintegration Platform.   

WATCH HOW TO ACCESS THE CURRICULA

For more information please contact Joy Paone at EU-IOM Knowledge Management Hub, jpaone@iom.int.