The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) launched an exploratory study to assess how remittances from diaspora communities could be leveraged to support the growth of Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in Venezuela. The study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of engaging diaspora actors in economic empowerment initiatives, while acknowledging the politically sensitive context of such engagement in the country.
The primary goal was to lay the groundwork for a future model that enables individual diaspora members to channel remittances toward livelihood support and resilience-building among vulnerable communities.
To this end, the study pursued three main objectives:
- identify potential vetted diaspora partners to collaborate with DRC and local actors on the pilot project, drawing on an existing mapping of 800 diaspora organisations;
- examine the role of remittances in starting and sustaining small businesses, and assess the viability of implementing remittance-based economic recovery programming in Venezuela; and
- identify recommendations for expanding this framework to foster cooperative initiatives among DRC, diaspora agencies, and local entities, targeting the underlying factors of displacement and migration in the border regions of Venezuela.
These objectives translated into three concrete deliverables including: (1) a draft of Pilot project plan; (2) a Monitoring Evaluation Accountability and Learning (MEAL) framework for the pilot including a full-fledged impact evaluation; and (3) a set of recommendations for policy and practice improvements.
