Stichting Vluchteling
oudere vrouw en man staan voor hun witte tent in vluchtelingenkamp in noord-irak

ASPIRE:

Advancing Sustainable Partnerships to Improve Resilience & Empowerment

In 2024 The Netherlands Refugee Foundation launched the 5 year ASPIRE program in Iraq, Lebanon and Türkiye. ASPIRE is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is part of the overarching grant framework Migration and Displacement 2023-2028.

foto van een vluchtelingenkamp met een stormachtige lucht
© Milene van Arendonk

Reach, support and strengthen

Our program aims to reach, support, and strengthen organizations working to protect and improve services for refugees, displaced persons and host communities. Through equitable, multi-annual partnerships focused on capacity strengthening and direct funding, we aim to advance the leadership of local and national organizations. Our goal is to reach organizations that are often excluded from international funding streams or overlooked by donors.

Download our localization strategy

You are in the lead

ASPIRE prioritizes working with community-based, refugee-led, women-led, and small NGOs or initiatives. We will step back from a leading role, and instead play a facilitating and supporting one; centering the priorities and needs expressed by our partners.

Een groep kinderen staat voor een aantal tenten in een verregend vluchtelingenkamp in Irak.
© Milene van Arendonk

Our common focus

  1. Protection of refugees and internally displaced persons by in-country partners;
  2. Access to improved services, facilities, and information systems for displaced persons and host communities.

Empowering local actors

Capacity strengthening and direct funding are not only deeply complementary but also mutually reinforcing. They are essential for empowering local actors to identify and address their own priorities within the humanitarian sector, thereby shifting power to where it belongs. That’s why ASPIRE’s partners are leading in designing the different projects’ capacity strengthening and direct funding strategies, in which the Netherlands Refugee Foundation plays a supporting role. A condition is that the aid projects fall within one of the two objectives:

  • Een oudere man en vrouw staan bij hun bed in hun huis in Irak

    Protection:

    Sustainably improving the living conditions of refugees and internally displaced persons in host countries by providing access to basic human rights. This may include freedom of movement, access to justice, civil documents, and basic socioeconomic rights, improving access to legal documentation, and countering violence, exploitation, and discrimination.

  • kinderen op de vlucht in libanon staan voor een witte tent in een opvangkamp

    Improved access:

    Sustainably improving the living conditions of refugees, host communities and internally displaced persons in host countries by providing access to improved services, facilities, and information systems. This may include access to improved safe drinking water systems, sanitation, waste management facilities, housing and digital information facilities/systems. 

Our partners

Frequently Asked Questions

ASIPRE is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is part of the overarching grant framework “Migration and Displacement 2023-2028″. More information, including the original call, can be found here. 

The program is being implemented in the three countries simultaneously during a period of five years with two cohorts of partners to be selected. The Netherlands Refugee Foundation successfully passed the first year of the program.

The first cohort selection took place in the second quarter of 2024. A total of 13 partners started a partnership with the Netherlands Refugee Foundation and have begun with project implementation in the beginning of 2025.

The application process for the second cohort has just started and the partners will be selected mid-2025.

More information?

een groep kinderen in rode kleding staan bij een watertank in een vluchtelingenkamp in Irak
© Stichting Vluchteling

Contact us

  • Ester van den Berg
    ASPIRE Program manager
    + 31 70 346 89 46
    aspire@vluchteling.nl 
  • Stichting Vluchteling
    Laan van NOI 131-M
    2593 BM Den Haag
Stichting Vluchteling
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