The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) provided funding for our 2010 and 2012 workshops in Toronto, Canada.
We began the move into accessing development funding with a grant from the MasterCard Foundation (MCF) that provided support for a 2011 Workshop in Kampala, Uganda.
It was the knowledge gained from our research and the earlier international workshops, that led us to apply for funds to carry out a study on the feasibility of developing a pilot project in the Dadaab camps in Kenya. In 2012, MasterCard Foundation gave us one year of funding to accomplish several outcomes: A Feasibility Study Report, a video about our plans for the BHER Project that quickly became an excellent way of demonstrating our plan and the partnership workshop to validate the findings of the Feasibility Study
One of the key outcomes of the Feasibility Study was buy-in from university and NGO partners and the formation of a BHER “team” composed of university faculty researchers and administrators, graduate students, as well as people in the camps.
In 2012-13, Project Manager Aida Orgocka and Project Lead Wenona Giles, with administrative support from the Centre for Refugee Studies, led the application process for a five year University-CIDA Partnership Development project. Global Affairs Canada/GAC is the former Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) / Department of Foreign Affairs , Trade and Development (DFATD). The application process for this multimillion dollar project was complicated and lengthy and required the dedicated time of the two academics with administrative and budgetary support from the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University to research, network with all the BHER Partners, and write the application. A number of legal agreements were composed and we include templates of those agreements here.
