The Panamanian Red Cross works as a partner of UNHCR in a Livelihoods and Local Integration Program for Refugees in Panama.
What services do they offer?
The Program is being developed together with UNHCR and offers assistance to cover the following basic needs and services:
- Food
- Health
- Accommodation / Housing
- Schooling
- Cash transfers for the purchase of essential items such as personal hygiene and cleaning kits, kitchen supplies, mats, stove and cooking surfaces, and baby items
Considering that independent assistance is not enough to achieve full integration, the Program promotes technical training for the strengthening of skills that allow the development of income-generating activities, by offering:
- Vocational courses, with the aim of developing and strengthening capacities for income generation
- Promotion of ventures through the Seed Capital Program
- Insertion in bazaars and flee markets
- Development of home gardens
- References to entrepreneurship programs such as Microserfin so that persons with international protection needs who have ventures of more than six months can promote their small businesses.
Psychosocial assistance is provided as an important part in the process of developing the resilience of persons of concern who go through grief situations when they lose their livelihoods, constant displacement, loss of family members, and everything they managed to build in their countries of origin. This work goes hand in hand with the monitoring of each of the cases attended in order to maintain support during the local integration processes and minimize vulnerabilities.
The Panamanian Red Cross also promotes activities on prevention of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), with the objective of responding to and empowering refugee women and asylum seekers.
Phone: (507) 315-0292
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.cruzroja.org.pa
Address: Jorge Bolivar Alemán Street, Albrook, Building 453, Panama City
Office hours: Monday -Friday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
How to get there: From the Terrestrial Transport terminal, board the Metrobus with the Albrook, UDELAS or City of Knowledge route.