Safer Migration Project –SaMi
HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation Nepal with the support from Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is implementing a project in Nepal entitled “Safer Migration Project” (SaMi). The project supports potential migrants, both women and men from project districts by providing them with accurate and relevant information on safer migration so that they can make informed decision.
Referral system:
POURAKHI Nepal follows a referral mechanism to ensure continuity of care to returnee migrant women. POURAKHI has a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with a psychiatric doctor to support returnee women who need psychosocial treatment. When a woman comes to stay at the emergency shelter home and expresses a need for psychosocial support, POURAKHI makes referrals to the Psychiatric Doctor where she can be assessed. Similarly, if a woman comes in need of physical assessment due to poor health or pregnancy, POURAKHI makes the appropriate referrals such as to the maternity hospital. For women who require longer term residential care we refer them to other organizations, such as SAATHI, that have the adequate resources to provide long-term care.
Psychosocial Counseling:
Psychosocial counseling to the returnee migrant workers is another crucial focus of POURAKHI’s work. POURAKHI integrates psychosocial counseling across the majority of its projects. Recently, POURAKHI gave psychosocial counseling to 222 and family counseling 106 till End of May 2017 migrants to protect and promote the psychosocial wellbeing of migrant workers suffering from stress, trauma, or mental disorder while in their destination country or when they returned to Nepal.
The project focuses on the following broad areas of interventions:
- Access to Information
- Access to Justice (including shelter and other support to returnee women migrants)
- Access to vocational skills training.
- Reducing social costs of migration.
- Supporting civil society to pursue safe migration advocacy and lobbying.
- Strengthened service delivery and monitoring capacity of government.
The overall goal of the project is to make migration safer and more beneficial for men and women. The projects main target groups are migrant workers, potential migrant workers and their family. The project is being implemented directly in 19 districts of Nepal but its target group is to provide service to people from all 75 districts of Nepal. Pourakhi has been part of SaMi project since its initial phase in 2011. Under this project, Pourakhi supports women migrants who have suffered a variety of exploitative migration experiences to return and reintegrate. To that end Pourakhi helps them develop the confidence to return to their families and/or to re-build their life in a different but positive environment. In order to achieve these goals Pourakhi carries out the following activities under this project:
- Run Emergency Shelter House for housing of returnee women migrant workers (survivors).
- Provide returnee women migrant workers (survivors) with additional services like
- Medical treatment of women returnees who need hospital treatment
- Referral for psycho-social counseling
- Follow-up of for women in critical condition
- Providing service referrals
- Food, accommodation and psycho-social counseling for needy family members of returnee migrant workers
- Counseling and information to departing migrants from TIA information booth
- Advocacy and lobbying with government bodies through coordination of meetings.
