When Sonia Ben Ali, URBAN REFUGEES Co-Founder, began working with displaced people, their stories of uprooting reminded her of the stories she heard from her father, who left his home country and never returned. She knew then that she wanted to dedicate herself to working with forcibly displaced people. After witnessing the dire conditions in refugee camps, she decided to devote her work to supporting urban refugees.
David Delvallé is a creative, and had spent his professional life working as a designer for creative agencies; his job was to find solutions to a spectrum of challenges. With Sonia and David’s mutual inspiration to make a difference for this growing community of refugees around the world, URBAN REFUGEES was born.
Today, the organization is an international NGO, with branches in Paris and New York City, a growing network of over 80 organizations from over 40 countries around the world, and a series of successful projects supported by a dedicated global staff. Our approach is simple: we believe no one can see the path beyond a crisis better than those at the heart of it. We work directly with refugee leaders to enhance their capacity to serve their communities and achieve long-term sustainability.
The pilot project for the URBAN REFUGEES Incubator, the centerpiece of our work with refugee communities, was successfully launched and completed in 2017, followed by two additional collaborations with refugee communities in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Today, our team is gearing up for a series of partnerships with refugee communities in Uganda.
By advocating for increased international focus on urban refugees and reinforcing the support structure on the ground, our team operates from the truth that sustainable solutions to the global crisis are possible—and the seeds of these solutions are finding root in refugee communities around the world.
Solutions are possible. We work with refugees to realize them.
