Gathering evidence and learning through an alternative process of testing with pilots, randomized control trials (RCTs) that help illustrate what works to improve urban refugee livelihoods. 

There is limited research about what livelihoods services work for urban refugees, and how to improve social cohesion in the cities that refugees and hosts share. Our research aims to build evidence in four (4) areas that have promising, but limited evidence:

What we learn is shared widely and used to adjust the services as we deliver. 

Randomized Control Trials (RCTs)

A key foundation of Re:BUiLD’s Evidence and Learning strategy is rigorous impact evaluations that seek to establish the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of specific interventions and delivery approaches to address the barriers urban refugees experience as they pursue economic self-reliance. Re:BUiLD  has undertaken two waves of impact level research with three specific RCTs, one in Nairobi, one in Kampala and one in both Kampala and Nairobi.   

The RCTs seek to find:

• The most cost-effective package for micro-enterprise services to improve self-employment outcomes for urban refugees and vulnerable host community members.
• The cost- effective ways to promote interpersonal contact between urban refugees and host community members to reduce discrimination, build trust, social cohesion and improve economic outcomes.

Wave 1 RCT

Re:BUiLD concluded the implementation of the two large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in Kampala, Uganda and Nairobi, Kenya. Both looked at one common dimension of livelihood programs supporting microentrepreneurs: mentorship services where the mentors were microentrepreneurs themselves. Administered from the IRC’s Livelihood Centers in each capital, the studies have the potential to inform IRC’s programming around the world as well as other many policy organizations looking to improve microentrepreneurs' livelihoods in urban settings.

Study Design                         
The studies targeted microentrepreneurs who would be eligible for IRC’s typical microenterprise programming.

Both studies had four major treatment arms: 

• Control, which was in fact a delayed (by about 12-18 months) treatment group.
• Cash Only, which consisted only of a business grant.
• Basic Mentorship, which included a business grant plus a traditional mentorship program, where mentors were other micro-entrepreneurs specifically trained by the IRC on key business practices and incentivized to meet weekly with their mentee(s) for the first few weeks of the program at least, to provide for support and insights about business.
• Mentorship « Plus », which was designed differently in each study, and in both cases aimed at answering a more specific set of hypotheses around how exactly the mentorship works, and looked into what features of mentorship could make it more or less likely to succeed.                         
  - In Uganda , the extra feature of this mentorship arm was a "shared fate" element, where mentors got stakes into the business success of their mentees’ businesses, through a lottery they are eligible for if their mentees’ businesses remained open.                         
    - In Kenya, the extra feature of this mentorship arm was a "perspective sharing" element, where mentors were trained to conduct a specific type of conversation and interaction with their mentees that was meant to increase trust and bonding.

Additionally, both studies also had a subsequent randomization which made the demographic match between mentors and mentees vary on nationality and gender dimensions. This allowed for the study of the effect of exposure to diverse peers on social cohesion, attitudes, and perceptions, but also on network building and economic success.       

In Uganda, each mentor was assigned to three mentees, with whom they formed a mentorship group, which could be either homogeneous (everybody has the same gender, same nationality), mixed gender (everybody has the same nationality, genders vary) or mixed nationality (everybody has the same gender, nationalities vary). In Kenya, a mentor was assigned to one mentee; and while all mentors were Kenyans, they were randomly assigned to a fellow Kenyan (same nationality) mentee or to a refugee (other nationality) mentee.                       
 

Research Questions   

Both studies looked at the same broad set of research questions:         

• Does mentorship help the economic success of microentrepreneurs? And if yes, what features of mentorship could drive this relationship?                         
   - Both studies looked at whether mentorship improves economic success, like hours of labor, business profits, and business capital.                         
   - Both studies looked at how mentorship affected individual and household well-being.                         
   - Both studies looked at whether mentorship improves business networks.                         
   - Both studies looked at whether mismatched demographics mentorship is more or less effective for economic success.                         
   - The Ugandan study looked at whether having stakes attached to the mentorship through the shared fate lottery improves economic outcomes.                         
   - The Kenyan study looked at whether having perspective-taking approaches  in mentorship improves economic outcomes.                        
   
• Does exposure to individuals from different groups and nationalities improve social cohesion and can it change attitudes towards others?                         
   - Both studies looked at stated and revealed preferences to measure social cohesion, through survey questions and behavioral games.                          
   - The Ugandan study looked at how mismatches on gender and nationality exposure respectively change attitudes on these dimensions.                         
   - The Kenyan study looked at how mismatches in nationality exposure only change attitudes on this dimension.                         
   - The Kenyan study looked at whether having perspective-taking approaches in mentorship improves social cohesion outcomes, especially in mismatched pairs.                         
   - The Kenyan study also added a survey experiment orthogonal to the main study experiment, which helped inform more proximate mechanisms for how attitude and perception can be affected by exposure to different stories.

Common sets of outcomes                           

While the exact formulation of survey questions differed slightly to match the context of the country and the study in question, the data collected allowed for the construction of parallel pictures on the economic, psychological and sociological situation of vulnerable youths in both cities.

The studies also shared some primary outcomes defined and measured in the exact same way. This included:           

• Having a business open      
• Self-reported business profits      
• Household well-being      
• Psychological well-being      
• Social cohesion, such as interactions with refugees and hosts      
• Attitudes towards refugee policies      

Results  

Uganda

Economic outcomes: The Uganda study finds that all treatment arms substantially improve business and psychological outcomes, with small additional impacts of mentorship on average. Cash grants bundled with the lottery show strong effects on individual, firm, and household well-being, persisting for at least 9 months for all subgroups. While men and women both benefit from the cash grant, the marginal impact of mentorship is greater for men than for women. The study shows few significant differences across mentorship configurations. The study finds suggestive evidence that the shared fate addition improves business outcomes in heterogeneous groups, but worsens them in aligned groups, especially early in the program.

Social cohesion: Overall, the study observes few and generally small treatment impacts on the index measure of social cohesion, which displays treatment impacts on average and within the four non-overlapping demographic subgroups (host men, host women, refugee men, refugee women) as well as within hosts and refugees overall.

Kenya

Economic outcomes:                           
The results from the Kenya study show that the interventions produce large and statistically significant results for business ownership and profits, hours spent working on the business, and the value of mentees’ productive assets relative to the control condition. These results appear in month three after the cash is first disbursed and persist for up to nine months from the start of the program. These favorable results, however, are not evenly distributed across participants according to their refugee status and gender. Among Kenyan nationals, the study observes evidence for the importance of mentoring. The study does not see economic returns for women, suggesting that refugee women may face additional barriers that capital and mentorship are unable to address. On the measures of general well-being, the study finds that there is no effect on the general well-being of refugees because of the interventions.

Social cohesion:  The study measured feelings, attitudes, policy opinions and behavior that all relate to topics of ‘social cohesion’ that is people’s orientations towards outgroup members in their communities, specifically Kenyan mentor’s orientations towards refugees and refugee mentee’s orientations towards Kenya and Kenyan nationals, as well as participants attitudes towards women when paired with a woman mentor or mentee. For the mentor sample, the study did not find a consistent pattern of results for the effect of mentoring on attitudes toward or policy support for refugees . Subgroup analysis did not find that mentors who are paired with refugee mentees have a more positive or clearer pattern of results. However, subgroup analysis by gender suggests that Kenyan women mentors significantly improve their attitudes toward and policy support for refugees for the entire intervention and long-term measurement.  

Wave 2 RCT

RCT Wave 2 that tests the impact of business grants and activities that build business and social networks on business success and social cohesion.

Why networks?

• Remove information constraints (on market gaps, business locations, suppliers/customers/lenders, administrative burdens, broader learning, etc.)
• Facilitate cooperation and collaboration, including:
  • Resource-sharing (stalls, supplies, capital inputs)
  • Risk-pooling (e.g., savings and credit)
  • Provide word-of-mouth marketing
  • Increase social solidarity, etc.
• Improve psychological wellbeing        
   

What do we want to learn from the Wave 2 RCT?

• How can we support the development of business networks and social capital of urban refugees and hosts?
• Are these interventions effective (and cost-effective) at improving economic self-reliance, self-employment, and social cohesion between refugees and hosts?
• What kinds of networks are more or less impactful?
• For whom are these interventions most impactful?      
   

Progress to date

Research Partners 

Re:BUiLD work research partners support in designing and implementation of the studies, and lead the analysis. The research partners Georgetown University (GU), Center for Global Development (CGD), Rochester University (RU), Princeton University (PU), Makerere University, Immigration Policy Lab (IPL) and the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC).