Asylum Access is a leading refugee rights organization that provides legal empowerment services to over 28,000 refugees each year, helping refugees assert their rights and freedoms in areas of legal status, freedom of movement, safe and lawful employment, access to education, healthcare, financial services, and equal protection under the law. Asylum Access organizations advocate nationally, regionally, and globally to enact policies and practices that improve refugees’ access to rights. Over the past twelve years, Asylum Access has changed policies and practices that concretely impact nearly two million refugees in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In addition to direct work with refugees, Asylum Access Global Services (Asylum Access’ recently launched implementation, consulting, and training unit) is partnering with organizations around the world to promote long-term and sustainable refugee resiliency.

Scope

Asylum Access asked Oliver Wyman to evaluate a potential growth strategy for the organization. The idea was to grow the organization (in the Middle East in particular) by providing consulting services (branded as Asylum Access Global Services) to other nonprofits, governments and multilateral organizations by helping them develop the skills and resources so that they too can effectively advocate for refugees. Over a 10-week engagement, we helped Asylum Access: 1) Define global services they could offer, including: the goals of the service, assess which customers should be prioritized, and determine which services the organization should provide, 2) Create a detailed implementation plan: Assess the staffing and funding requirements against internal constraints to develop a five-year plan, 3) Develop marketing materials: Assist the organization in communicating the service offering both to potential consumers and potential donors

Impact

Helped the organization launch Asylum Access Global Services by defining goals, KPIs, cost, resource requirements, scope, and delivery model. Worked with Asylum Access to identify potential partners in the Middle East that work with Syrian Refugees – Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon are home over 4 million Syrian refugees. Since the end of our project in May 2017, Asylum Access has successfully launched one Global Services project in Lebanon and is pursuing other potential partnerships in Jordan and Turkey