The workshop will explore the particular challenges and opportunities that participants face when working with refugees from Syria and local host communities, and what measures you have put in place – or believe are still necessary – to overcome these challenges. It offers both an opportunity to develop a better understanding of these challenges and opportunities, and to ensure the research project (www.refugeehosts.org) is asking the right questions in the right ways to provide evidence that can help different actors (including UN agencies, INGOs, donor governments, and diverse national and local actors) better support the development of sustainable local community responses to refugees from Syria.

The aim is for this workshop to contribute to the development of a multilingual Policy Note on this topic that will be published in Arabic, Turkish and English. This Policy Note will capture the extent of the discussions (which will take place under Chatham House rules), and will prioritize a set of recommendations for researchers, policy-makers, practitioners, and diverse members of local communities and civil society organisations, including refugee-led initiatives. We will further build upon these discussions and recommendations throughout our research project’s data collection, analysis and dissemination phases.