Global Communities to Present on Colombia Displacement at InterAction Forum

Come listen to Director of Program Operations Randy Lyness speak at the 2019 InterAction Annual Forum where he will represent Global Communities on a panel, Collaborative Lessons Learned from Colombia Displacement Response Applicable to a Venezuela Response. Multiple organizations have decades of experience responding to the internal displacement in Colombia, working toward collective impacts in the lives of IDPs and host communities.  In recent years, the Venezuelan crisis has resulted in thousands of refugees fleeing to Colombia. Lyness and practitioners from Bluemont and Mercy Corps will discuss how their collective impacts and lessons in IDP programming are shaping their Venezuela response programs, and Portfolio Growth Manager Sarah Henshaw will moderate the panel.

While there are many challenges to explore solutions for a return to Venezuela, panelists will discuss their years of programming, the evolution of their programs that supported local response to IDP emergencies, what lessons they learned and best practices applicable to response programming for Venezuela migrants. Participants will be able to list critical factors contributing to successful displaced person responses in Colombia, identify linkages between Colombian IDP response programs and Venezuela crisis response programs, identify aspects of the Colombian IDP response that are not similar to the Venezuelan crisis response, and begin to find collective ways to cover programming gaps.

The panel will take place Wednesday, June 12 from 11:30am-12:30pm.