Ockenden International believes that all refugees and displaced people have a right to live with dignity and to be supported in seeking to achieve self-reliance. We recognise that self-reliance can be promoted in many different ways and we seek to make our support similarly flexible. Ockenden’s resources are deployed in two key ways:
- The Ockenden Prizes Ockenden seeks to support locally-based and/or refugee-led organisations that work directly with refugees and displaced people to advance self-reliance. Small-scale local organisations have the ability to be agile, well-targeted and highly cost-efficient. However, external funding can be hard to access, and is often tied to a particular project. Refugee experiences are varied and complex, so Ockenden seeks to allow prize-winners to direct the award according to their own priorities rather than ours. The prizes are unrestricted grants and will be awarded on the basis of initiatives that promote self-reliance among refugees and/or displaced people, with measurable evidence of outcomes that have led to real improvement in the lives of refugees or displaced people. Sound financial governance will also be a factor.
- The Joyce Pearce Junior Research Fellowship Ockenden sponsors the Fellowship in partnership with the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre and Lady Margaret Hall. The aim is to support research, expand expertise in refugee studies and enhance the international understanding of refugee self-reliance. In this way Ockenden can, in a small way, act locally and think globally.
The deadline for entering the 2022 Ockenden International Prizes, to be launched on September 1, 2021, is midnight (GMT) on Tuesday the 30th of November 2021. The winners will be announced by the 31st of March 2022.
The four winning organisations will each receive GBP25,000.
Ockenden International is looking for projects, activities and/or programmes (each ‘a project’) which promote self-reliance among refugees and/or displaced people. You can enter a project run by your organisation or you can nominate a project managed by a non-profit partner or affiliated organisation. In these Entry Rules, ‘the organisation’ refers to the organisation which manages the project.
