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Sustainability

Accenture’s commitment to helping refugees

June 20, 2023 5-MINUTE READ

Accenture is helping welcome refugees in the communities where we work and live around the world, and we recognize how they enrich our communities through their courage, strength and talent.

We partner with local and global organizations to help refugees, both individuals and families, who need to leave their home countries and establish new lives, gain meaningful employment and start businesses. The following is a selection of partnerships Accenture supports.

Uniting efforts through Welcome.US

Accenture is partnering with Welcome.US to help lead the movement of mobilizing private sector and community support for refugee resettlement and welcoming newcomers in the United States. Accenture Chair and CEO Julie Sweet co-chairs the Welcome.US CEO Council along with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai. A network of 38 CEOs, the CEO Council, works to accelerate and scale private sector support for people seeking refuge to meet immediate needs for resettlement including housing and home goods, job and training opportunities, and accessible legal assistance for newcomers. Together the group has contributed more than $179 million in pro-bono, in-kind and financial support.

Our Welcome.US activities and impacts include:

  • Hiring 39 Afghan refugees and creating referral pathways to further connect promising candidates with meaningful employment, referring more than 100 candidates to other companies.
  • Co-hosting a refugee hiring fair in Atlanta with other companies and almost 300 newcomers in attendance.
  • Supporting the Welcome Legal Alliance—a Welcome.US initiative that has already helped more than 600 applicants with asylum applications—by providing pro bono legal and consulting support.
  • Creating the Welcome Employment Exchange, in coordination with Welcome.US and Manpower, where companies have posted nearly 50,000 jobs (as of November 2022) available for newcomer job applicants.
  • Volunteering in excess of 3,000 hours by more than 700 Accenture people to donate and assemble goods for refugees, set up homes for newcomers, support asylum seekers, and more.

Learn more about how Accenture is helping Welcome.US mobilize new approaches to aid refugees.

Ukraine relief

We are helping to meet the medium and longer-term needs of Ukrainian refugees and Internally Displaced People, including provision of learning, skills development, and supporting transition into employment. Examples include: 

 

We are supporting the development of the BecomingX Ukraine online learning platform, designed to help Ukrainians realize their potential by building digital skills, confidence and resilience to succeed. It also will equip educators – teachers and parents of homeschoolers – with personalized learning experiences, including ready-to-use lesson plans, activities and resources for their Ukrainian students.

Accenture and Junior Achievement Europe joined forces with UNICEF* and the UPLIFT Youth partnership in a digital educational campaign with the objective of inspiring 300,000 Ukrainian refugees and local youth via social media and direct them to Junior Achievement's learning platform to further deepen their learning.

*UNICEF does not endorse any company, brand, product, or service.

 

We are an anchor partner in the Sunflower Project—a Tent Partnership for Refugees initiative to accelerate economic inclusion of Ukrainian refugee women across Europe through direct hiring, training and upskilling programs, mentoring and additional support.

We are helping YMCA Europe establish community hubs in Ukraine, Romania, Moldova and Slovakia to help internally displaced people and refugees connect with local communities and resources, including access to safe and secure skill development and support. The program is expected to provide more than 10,000 participants with holistic support and to be a replicable offering that will encourage other organizations to co-fund and repeat this approach across Europe.

We are partnering with Junior Achievement Europe to create a pan-European program to build entrepreneurial skills and mindsets for success for refugee youth. Country-specific programs across five European nations aim to impact the lives of more than 1,000 Ukrainian young refugees.

In Poland, we ran the fourth edition of our Starter Academy, a reskilling program for people wanting to start IT careers, dedicated to female Ukrainian refugees in the Silesia region. We are also helping Upwardly Global to support the economic resilience of 1,000 displaced Ukrainian women with job coaching, job readiness, language and technical skills training. Over the course of the program, Upwardly Global will empower local partners to help place 500 Ukrainian refugees into skill-aligned jobs. Accenture people support refugee job seekers as mentors in the job search process.

Select other programs supporting refugees

This interactive map provides an overview of select programs Accenture supports.

We support people around the world by applying human ingenuity and technology expertise to help provide solutions to societal challenges. Many of these projects are part of our Skills to Succeed initiative, which equips people worldwide with the skills to make substantive improvements to their lives.

For example, we have created a variety of online learning platforms to help people—including refugees and displaced groups—enhance employability and develop beneficial skills to progress in their careers and excel in the digital economy.

Led by Accenture and Eidos Global, Código Pa'Lante is a learning initiative devoted to offer migrant and refugee communities in six countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia and México) the opportunity to learn front-end design and basic programming. With a learning path especially customized to the target audience and the support of 80+ organizations, including UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and the International Organization for Migration, Código Pa'Lante aims to train more than 800 people and help 290 people benefit from reinsertion in the job market, specifically in the tech industry, after six months.

We are helping PeaceGeeks to serve newcomers to Canada who have been forcibly displaced around the world. Using human-centered technology and digital tools, PeaceGeeks provides settlement and job skills for refugees and newcomers, helping them reach personal and economic success in their new homeland. Over the past year, we helped scale the Welcome to Canada app to support more than 9,000 refugees, newcomers, and international students.

Founded by Accenture people in the Netherlands—many of whom have a refugee background—Refugee Talent Hub empowers refugees to grow their network, advance skills and find employment. By 2025, the Refugee Talent Hub aims to impact the lives of 5,000 refugees per year in the Netherlands. In 2022, it has grown to a network of 50+ corporate partners. With the support of the Accenture Netherlands Foundation, Refugee Talent Hub skilled more than 900 refugees which led to more than 280 employment opportunities.

Accenture is a member of the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a network of 300+ companies committed to connect refugees to work. Accenture takes part in hiring, training and mentorships programs for refugees across countries in Europe, North America and Latin America. Building on prior hiring commitments elsewhere, in 2023 Accenture committed to hiring 100 refugees over the next three years in Europe. This will include Ukrainian women. In 2023, Accenture also committed to partnering with organizations to help skill and support an estimated 16,000 refugee and migrant job seekers in Europe, including Ukrainian refugee women, over the next three years.

In the United States, Upwardly Global works with immigrant and refugee newcomers with international credentials to restart their careers in the United States. In 2023, Accenture supported Upwardly Global’s US employment program that serves over 1,500 refugees and immigrant job seekers annually. Accenture people support refugee job seekers as mentors in the job search process.

Through our partnerships and innovation, Accenture is helping to strengthen communities, rewire the global economy for shared success and create a more inclusive and equitable future. Together with governments, nonprofit organizations, the private sector and the generous outpouring of support of people in communities around the world, we can all make a difference in supporting refugees.

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