Humanitarian and development actors working in conflict-affected and protracted crisis settings recognize that “graduation” interventions and longer-term Market Systems Development (MSD) approaches share common objectives: sustainable livelihoods, resilience, and reduced vulnerability. Yet in practice, these approaches often remain siloed. This disconnect can limit impact, create inefficiencies, and risk unsustainable outcomes when graduation models are not aligned with real market systems, or when MSD fails to meaningfully include the most vulnerable. A growing number of organizations are now beginning to endorse, pilot, or adapt integrated GA/MSD models as a way to bridge humanitarian stabilization with longer-term economic inclusion due to many contexts falling back and forth between development and humanitarian needs.
Join Caritas Switzerland and MiC at HNPW (March 10th, 10am UCT) to discuss Caritas’ recent white paper, “Integrating the Market Systems Development and Graduation Approaches to Advance Household Resilience and Systemic Change in Conflict and Protracted Crisis Contexts” and:
- Raise awareness about rationale, benefits and challenges of harmonizing Graduation and MSD approaches.
- Facilitate peer learning: bring together practitioners, researchers, donors and policymakers to discuss existing experiences, lessons learned, gaps, and how to operationalize harmonized programming.
- Co-create actionable recommendations / guidelines for integrating Graduation + MSD in humanitarian and development programming.