Program · Empowerment & Leadership

Meaningful Refugee Participation (MRP) Training & Index

Helping stakeholders understand what meaningful refugee participation means, measure their current capability, and put it into practice.

Shifting power, deliberately

From awareness to practical change

Meaningful refugee participation is well-established as the most effective way to respond to the refugee crisis — yet shifting toward it is genuinely difficult, because it requires shifting power dynamics and transferring decision-making power to refugees.

The MRP Training and Index build stronger capability among non-refugee stakeholders: deeper understanding of what MRP means and where power lies in decision-making, sustainable systems and processes for MRP, and ongoing support to put it into practice — including through the Refugee Participation Training and Analysis published in our reports.

Read the training analysis

Stakeholders discussing meaningful refugee participation

What the index measures

Three dimensions of meaningful participation

MRP isn't a checkbox — a consultation and a co-decision aren't the same thing. The Index gives stakeholders a way to locate their own organisation honestly on that spectrum.

Where power sits

Does a refugee representative sit in the room where budgets and strategy are actually decided — or are they briefed after the decision is made?

How systems are built

Are participation processes ad hoc and event-based, or written into standing policy, governance structures and budgets?

What happens after

Is refugee input followed by visible change and reported back — or does it disappear into a report no one revisits?

How the training runs

From assessment to action plan

1 · Baseline the index

An organisation completes the MRP Index for itself — an honest self-assessment against the three dimensions above.

2 · Training session

A facilitated session unpacks the results, grounded in real case studies from APNOR's Refugee Participation Training and Analysis.

3 · Practical action plan

The organisation leaves with concrete, sequenced steps to shift practice — not just awareness of the problem.

Bring MRP Training to your organisation

Non-refugee stakeholders can request the training and index for their team.

Request the training Interagency Collaboration Forum