Economic inclusion plays a vital role in helping displaced individuals rebuild their lives with dignity. For many refugees and immigrants, finding meaningful work is not just about survival but also about reclaiming identity and purpose. Jina Krause-Vilmar, CEO of Upwardly Global, emphasizes that when people are given the opportunity to apply their skills in a new country, they contribute significantly to both their communities and the broader economy.
One major barrier to employment is the delay in obtaining work authorization. In the United States, asylum seekers must wait months before receiving a work permit, a gap that creates financial strain and delays integration. Additionally, credential recognition remains a challenge—professionals trained abroad often face hurdles in having their qualifications acknowledged, even though they possess expertise that could fill critical labor shortages, especially in healthcare and technology.
Upwardly Global has been instrumental in addressing these issues by partnering with organizations and advocating for policy changes. For example, legislation in states like Illinois and Virginia now allows internationally trained doctors to work under supervision while completing licensing requirements, bypassing lengthy residency programs. This shift emerged during the pandemic, driven by urgent needs in overwhelmed hospitals and the untapped potential of skilled refugee medical professionals.
Retention rates among refugee employees are notably high, with studies showing around 90 percent remain with their employers year after year. Employers in sectors ranging from manufacturing in northern Mexico to tech firms across the U.S. report strong loyalty, rapid advancement, and deep appreciation for stable employment opportunities.
Beyond economics, work provides psychological stability. Losing one’s professional identity can lead to feelings of failure and disconnection. Supporting livelihoods means more than offering jobs—it means restoring agency, self-worth, and belonging. As global demographic trends show declining birth rates and aging populations in many countries, welcoming skilled newcomers becomes not only humane but essential for sustained economic vitality.
— news from unrefugees.org
— News Original —
Dignity in Livelihoods: The Power of Economic Inclusion with Jina Krause-Vilmar
Suzanne n nThanks for being a guest on a podcast that we’re calling Not Really Strangers. And we will explore the notion of strangers and belonging and home and inclusion and all of that. But I first want to say that you and I first met when I had just come into my role at USA for UNHCR. n nSomeone connected us or we reached out to each other and you were very generous with me on an early call in your role as president and CEO of Upwardly Global — and I think really quite frankly turned me on to this idea of economic inclusion and livelihoods, which I’ve seen then replicated and sort of at the core of some of UNHCR’s most impactful work in places where labor pathways are available. So we can go there a little bit later in our conversation, but thank you maybe two years later for being so generous with me in those early days. n nJina n nI’m thrilled to be on this podcast. n nSuzanne n nThank you. I’m going to start off with a personal question. Where do you live and where do you call home, if they’re the same or if they’re different? n nJina n nYeah, so I live in Brooklyn, New York, and I call Brooklyn, New York my home. Even though I was not born in Brooklyn — I was born in Jamaica, Queens — and even though I grew up in Houston, Texas — Brooklyn is my community. n nSuzanne n nHmm. I’m from San Antonio. Also did sort of a Northeast journey…all my adolescence and schooling in San Antonio, and then back up to the East Coast. So I too call Washington, D.C., where I am now, home. for that same reason of a shared community and values. And certainly the work that I’ve pursued has always been rooted in Washington. I also know from the work that you’ve done and the multiple bios and accolades and press interviews that you’ve done, I know that you come from an immigrant family. And I wonder if you can share with the audience a little bit about what it meant growing up in an immigrant family and notions that that taught you about home and belonging that might be interesting for us to learn from. n nJina n nYeah, so my family originally comes from Punjab, India, and my parents had an arranged marriage. And my mom specifically wanted to marry my dad because he was working in the United States. They got divorced when I was two years old. I’m the youngest of four. n nAnd my mom had a choice at that stage to either go back to India or to stay in the US. And she decided to stay in the United States because she wanted us to have choices that she didn’t have — choices around who we married, what we studied, what jobs we got, where we decided to live. And so even though she had a master’s degree from a prestigious university, she ended up working three low wage jobs to put food on the table for myself and my three sisters. And I think for me, what I learned from her is where you call home is a choice. And where you call home is based on the values of the community that you’re living in and how community shows up for each other. And so that’s partially why I call Brooklyn home. n nSuzanne n nYeah, that ‘home as a choice’ reminds me a bit of the kind of chosen family piece that we have as we — many of us live farther from our parents or places where we grew up and we’re surrounded by a community of friends who care for our kids and take care of us when we’re sick and walk our dogs when we’re out of town. All of that is this sort of notion of chosen family and I like connecting that to the idea of chosen community. n nWhen you think about your mom, do you — as you go through your adulthood and start a family or move apartments or get a new job — do you ever look back and wonder how she did that when she was the age that you are now? And kind of just have this sort of sense of awe about what the generation before us pulled off? n nJina n nMy God. First of all, my mom had kids younger than I had kids. And I had my first child and I completely fell apart because it was so hard. It was so hard breastfeeding. It was so hard juggling. It was so hard also keeping the job. And I can’t imagine how my mom did it with the four of us, honestly, and how she did it by herself, frankly. It’s not like she had an extended family that she could lean on and rely on. n nAnd I remember when I was maybe like 13 years old, I was in the car and I looked over to my mom who was driving and I said, “Mom, you are so strong.” And she looked at me and she’s like, “I’m not strong. I am just what I need to be in order to navigate and thrive in this moment.” n nAnd I just found it so interesting because oftentimes we look at people and we say, “Wow, they’re so resilient,” or “They’re so strong” — for them, themselves, that’s not how they’re experiencing it, because they’re just being what they need to be. n nAnd I think a lot about that for our refugee community because oftentimes they have to navigate all of these changes in these difficult environments where they have fewer access to resources and opportunities. And we often say, “They’re so resilient. They’re so adaptable.” And the reality is, they are what they need to be. n nSuzanne n nYeah, that’s a beautiful line. They are what they need to be. And I also appreciate that you were 13 and said that to your mom. I have a teenager and I think she does give me compliments, but I can’t think of all that many instances where they’re really taking a step back and kind of acknowledging all the things that I and my partner make possible in their lives. So kudos to Jina at age 13. n nYou started talking a little bit about the refugee experience. And I think you know that one of the goals of this podcast is to help more people see just how connected we all are and our lives are to the refugee experience. And of course, I would consider you one of the foremost experts on refugee and immigrant economic inclusion — other issues as well, but really this idea of economic inclusion, which you started to get at in talking about your mom a little bit. n nWhen did advocating for this sort of set of issues first become important to you? Like what was the introduction? n nJina n nI think I’ve had lots of introductions. I had a chance when I was young to travel to India. I saw the extreme poverty. I saw the power dynamics that exist between groups of people and how that shapes who gets access to resources or kindness. And I think that stuck with me. n nAlso: Growing up as an immigrant in 1980s Texas, which was not very friendly to people of color or to newcomers — understanding that I was always perceived as the other, regardless of the fact of speaking English fluently, speaking English with an American accent, having a nickname, which was Jina. And so no matter how hard you try to fit in, the reality is we were still perceived as the other. n nAnd so I think that dynamic of knowing what a society looks like when they see you as the other and what a society looks like when you belong… But there’s so many layers of power and privilege, is what I saw in India, that some people get a fair shot and some people don’t. And so I think that’s motivated me not only to work with refugees, but to work with refugee women. n nSuzanne n nYeah, refugee women…So we have sort of the picture of the experience of immigrants and of refugees and this sort of sense of belonging and when this first came on your radar screen professionally. And you’ve obviously had a lot of important and impactful roles before founding — I think founding, Upwardly Global? n nJina n nI am not a founder. I am CEO number three. So, yes, but I have been around for seven years, so I’ve earned my stripes. n nSuzanne n nOkay, yeah, yeah. Tell us a little bit about the economic inclusion agenda. And as we sort of said earlier, thinking about your mom and all of these jobs, and thinking about the importance, for me, of livelihood as a real sense of purpose and agency in someone’s lives. What is it about the economic inclusion agenda that would be, I think, sort of both easy but also enlightening for our audience to understand? n nJina n nYeah, so I first started my career in the refugee space at the Women’s Refugee Commission. And at the Women’s Refugee Commission, I spearheaded an effort to understand what are the trade-offs that refugee women make in order to earn an income and their safety. Because the reality is, whoever you are, if you’re crossing an international border to seek safety as a refugee, there’s two things you care about. Are you safe? And how are you going to survive? n nAnd how you survive is part of that economic livelihoods conversation. And oftentimes in refugee response, the first instinct, which is appropriate, is how do we stabilize people so people aren’t starving, people aren’t dying from wounds, people have a safe shelter to live in. n nAnd that conversation around how do we also help set people up for economic success is a harder conversation that doesn’t always start early. Sometimes it could start years and years later. And the reality is refugees, they need to eat, they need to get clothes and medicine and all these other things. And so they are going to work. n nNow, when we talk about refugee women, when they’re doing this, they’re oftentimes working in places where they don’t have the right to work. They’re changing their gender roles. You have women who are now primary breadwinners who may never have been a primary breadwinner or may not have been a breadwinner, but not the main one that the entire family relied on. n nAnd so that shift in their gender roles has implications of how the community there now that’s hosting them treats them, but also implications for how the men in their own communities, in their own homes treat them. n nBecause typically there’s a backlash. There’s a resentment that men can no longer withhold or uphold their traditional roles and that they have to rely on women to do it because oftentimes women can access low-wage jobs more easily. Women can navigate streets without being harassed or stopped by the police more easily. And so that just happens to be true across the board. n nJina (continued) n nAnd so for me, livelihoods is important because it not only gives people dignity, but it starts the conversation of when somebody is crossing an international border, they’re seeking safety and they’re seeking a way to survive and we need to acknowledge that early. n nSo we actually met during the Afghan response. So when Kabul fell and the United States government evacuated hundreds of thousands of Afghans and hosted them on seven US military bases, there was a huge effort by the humanitarian community to get people access to shelter and support and programming and help them orient themselves to where they are and mental health supports. n nAnd we knew that this community was our community. At Upwardly Global, we work with immigrants and refugees who are professionals in their home countries. Many of these Afghans worked for the US government or the US military, worked in business logistics and operations, worked in IT, and of course as translators. And of course, because they were working with the US, they spoke English. So we said, “We are gonna go on all of these bases and we’re gonna set up career services. We’re gonna allow people the opportunity to understand, ‘What are your skills and how do they fit into the US labor market?’” n nSuzanne n nRight? n nJina n nWhat jobs and titles should you be applying for? n nSuzanne n nRight. n nJina n nHow do you shift to applying to the US market, which is very different. In most other cultures, it’s more of a collectivist identity. In the United States, we’re very individualistic. It’s very much I-me, I-me. And so the concept of marketing yourself in a clear, concise way is new for a lot of people. So from that — helping them understand how to navigate those US norms and then helping people upskill or reskill if they needed to. n nAnd we knew that not everyone was going to be ready because the sheer trauma of arriving, I — we had people who were on buses from the airport to the base and they had no idea what country they were in. They had children who had been wearing the same diaper for the past four days. They were hungry. They were just so delirious with understanding what was going on. n nAnd so we knew not everybody was going to be ready, but we ended up serving 5,000 people within the span of eight months from those military bases. And that gave us a real message that, you know, this perception that refugees are a burden, refugees don’t come with skills, refugees aren’t able to contribute is not the case at all. It’s — people want to contribute. People definitely want to contribute. I’ve never met a refugee who’s looking for a handout. They’re not looking for a handout. They don’t want to survive on a handout. n nSuzanne n nRight, 100%. n nJina n nThey want to survive on their own two feet. And what we don’t always do in the response is provide them that hand up. And so that’s why economic inclusion is so important. That’s why we also feel it’s important for women because it gives them options. But we also know we have to do that as part of the family because everybody’s got to be bought in. n nSuzanne n nYeah, having worked on the rights of women and girls for so long… First of all, the response to Afghanistan: Let me just say that I was at Malala Fund during those years. And of course we had a sizable team working in Afghanistan on access to girls education and an Afghan activist, Freshta Karim, who I’ve stayed in very close contact with, she started a mobile library effort called Charmaghz. And I just remember those just such delicate months of waiting and watching for, first of all, safety, getting out of Afghanistan, but then also figuring out what the onward journey would look like for so many families. n nAnd I want to sort of put this anecdote in there, which is sort of, you know, I know everyone has had this experience if you’ve traveled to a big city like Washington, D.C. or New York. and you have a taxi driver, and you find out that your taxi driver is originally from Afghanistan, and eventually he might tell you, “I was trained as this, or trained as a lawyer, trained as a doctor”… and I’ll tell you that many people will come home and kind of share that story casually: “Can you believe it? My taxi driver has more credentials than I have in all of these professional spaces.” n nBut I feel the work that Upworthy Global is doing is sort of taking that story and actually trying to then turn it into something that we really understand how we are sitting on so much talent in this country. n nAnd so talk to us a little bit about, I mean you already addressed it a bit, this sort of misnomer, right, that refugees aren’t educated and trained and they can’t contribute in these really highly skilled and technical ways. Not just in the U.S. but in other places, like what’s the… barrier there around economic inclusion and labor pathways? Like we could use well-trained doctors in the middle of America, in rural parts of the United States. Like what is the block that policymakers can’t get past to sort of paving the way for these individuals to contribute economically and otherwise to countries like the US? n nI don’t want to say that it’s just us because you well know that there’s a lot of examples where barriers to sort of labor inclusion are frankly irrational and bad for a country’s economic productivity…What does, what could we do to get through that? n nJina n nI mean, the first and foremost is the right to work, which every person who works on refugee issues will tell you. And that’s also in this country, because people who seek asylum in the United States have to wait six months before they can get a work permit. And under the last Trump administration, it went up to a year. n nNumber one is the right to work, which includes this country. I would say number two is credential recognition. How do we understand the skills people are bringing? How do we understand the credentials if they’ve got it from a University of Kabul versus a University of Connecticut? n nAnd that of course is not just for refugees, it’s immigrants writ large. And part of that is why in the United States we have a movement called Skills First Hiring, which is how do we hire people based on the whole person? What are the skills that they bring? What are the competencies that they bring, and not, “What college do they go to? What was their last job? Was that job with a competitor?” And so that’s a shift in how we recruit and we think of talent and how we try to unpack and understand talent. n nSo I think that’s the second thing. And then I think that also includes legislation. So at Upwardly Global, we’ve worked with a coalition of partners to pass legislation in a number of states now, including Illinois and Virginia, in Massachusetts, which allows internationally trained doctors to work in the United States under a US licensed trained doctor for two years before they can then fully hit the floor on their own. But what that allows them to do is it allows them to skip — they still have to take their medical exams; they still have to take their boards. So the quality control is still there. But what it allows them to do is instead of going through residency, which takes three to four years, they can actually start working on the hospital floor immediately. And that push really came out of COVID. n nJina (continued) n nWe have…over 200,000 internationally trained doctors in the United States, including refugees. We have a lot of Ethiopian doctors who are refugees, for example, and they really wanted to serve. I was talking to a refugee Ethiopian doctor in California and she’s like, “I feel like such a fraud because I took an oath. I took an oath to help and protect and use my medical skills to save lives. And I cannot do that here while I’m watching my community suffer from COVID, while I’m watching hospitals overrun, while I’m watching doctors get burned out.” n nAnd so I think that’s also a process. And then it’s of course the mental bias that we all have, which is, you know, “Is that person really qualified?” And I think we have to understand that talent is global at this stage. You know, we are in a demographic collapse in this country. 83% of growth in our working age population today comes from immigrants and the children of immigrants. n nSuzanne n nSay the percentage again — 83%. n nJina n nBy 2045, that will be 100%. We are having fewer children. We have 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day. And we’re an aging population. And so we need newcomers, people who want to come to the United States and rebuild and call America home if we are going to continue to be able to be a global competitive economic force. n nAnd so that’s just the reality. And so I think we’re going to have to shift how we think of talent. n nSuzanne n nYeah, I really, I love that story, just sort of asking, you know, the audience to just take a minute and imagine being in a brand new place with language barriers, community barriers, trying to get your kids integrated in a school… and all the while, especially in the asylum example, six months to a year of waiting for this sort of, you know, obscure process around paperwork and you cannot work and provide for your family. n nAnd so imagine then being put on a hospital floor, partnered with a doctor, your skills that you worked hard wherever you came from, worked hard to achieve that skill, that training, that expertise, and to have that immediately employed. Like I just, almost get shivers just thinking about how concretely empowering that is. Like, “I have a place to go, I have something to do, and I’m making a contribution to this place that I want to call home and be included in.” n nProfessionally, I think so many of us just take it for granted because we’ve got jobs that we love and colleagues that we enjoy and a mission that we’re dedicated to. I mean, we’ve certainly seen so many federal workers in the Washington DC area have that taken away from them from one day to the next in a way that I think really strikes at this sort of story you’re telling around livelihoods and economic inclusion and what a tool it is for so much else in someone’s life and existence. n nJina n nAnd I think one of the things we hear a lot from our community is when you lose your professional identity, you lose your sense of the purpose that you have in your life to be able to contribute. And that makes most people feel like failures and a fraud. And it is debilitating. And it takes and it strips away your belief in yourself. n nAnd it’s sad to see these incredible people, especially the women — they have fought tooth and nail in their own home countries to be able to get the education, to be able to get the jobs. We had a woman who was from Saudi Arabia. She was a software engineer and she was the only female in her company in Saudi that worked there. And she became an asylum seeker because her father wanted to force her into an arranged marriage, which she refused. She has this incredible story where after a year of being locked in her room, she said yes, because he lived in the United States. She got on a plane and then she ran. She hid in a bathroom. And she restarted her life in Chicago. n nAnd she was working in a bar — which as you can imagine, a Saudi woman who has to wear all the head covering, can’t show any skin, alcohol is not allowed, and now she’s working in a bar. But she was not working as a software engineer. She was just hustling to get by. And she was grateful for the freedom. n nI think the other thing is, you know, the Fiscal Policy Institute has done research that shows that refugees, when they get employed, they have 90% retention year after year because they are so dedicated and committed to their employer. They’re grateful. n nSuzanne n nWe have seen that, yes, I mean, and we have seen that. I mean, of course, companies still have to treat their employees well and sort of cultivate that relationship. But you’ve got the sort of willing partner from the get-go in refugee employees in a way that we too have understood to be quite unique. n nThere’s sort of a factory belt in northern Mexico where UNHCR has run some labor inclusion work. And so as families are northward bound, maybe many of them with the US and their sights, most of them are really looking at, at the sort of core of it, they’re looking for safety, they’re looking for survival, they’re looking for education for their children, and so there is an effort among some states in northern Mexico to sort of capture those families, if you will, and say, what about these job opportunities? What about these communities for your home? What about your school, your healthcare? n nAnd the factory owners there, some of them Japanese tire companies, some of them American car upholstery companies, have said the exact same thing about those families — that once those workers get in, their loyalty, their retention, they stay where they are, they climb the ranks exponentially faster. They feel so dedicated and so grateful again for an opportunity of a good safe job. It’s kind of incredible. I feel like Mexico is one that really stands out for me, for a government that has said we will be a destination and we will harness the power of that software engineer from Saudi, not at a neighborhood bar, which is wonderful employment, but maybe isn’t taking full advantage of the technical skills and training that she’s gone through. That’s such a powerful story. n nI hope the audience sort of sits with a couple of these examples as you go about your life in your community at your grocery store or whatever it is and think about how we make choices for the work that we do and the contribution that we make back to our communities. n nI’m shifting gears just a little bit. I’m not going to keep you too, too long today, but back to the name of the podcast, we’re calling it Not Really Strangers. And I think this conversation in some ways has been exactly that, right? Like we are not really strangers to each other and there’s so much interconnectedness that quite frankly, we don’t leverage to the degree that we should in this country, much less in sort of the communities that we live in. n nWhat does the idea of being a stranger mean to you? When you hear that word, what do you, what’s your definition of it? n nJina n nYeah, it’s funny. I used to work for an organization called HIAS and their subtext is “Welcome the Stranger,” because it’s a Jewish organization and that’s such a strong part of the Jewish faith. So for me, in that context, stranger means somebody who is new to a place and who might look and feel and act differently than I do, but at the end of the day is no less entitled to dignity and respect. n nSuzanne n nYeah, as you described that, I was thinking I was actually at an event just last night with HIAS, and so remember well the work that they do. n nIt’s interesting when you’re growing up, you’re often told, you know, “Don’t talk to strangers.” And as I’ve helped my two girls navigate the world, at times, I’ve wondered whether or not there’s a reframing I can do to that. I want them always aware of their surroundings. I want them always vigilant about their own safety and sort of autonomy. But the truth is, is that sort of just not talking to strangers is not the point. It’s really figuring out how to engage in the world in a way that keeps you safe, but also allows you the opportunity to be exposed to new people and new ideas and to not discount them because they are not what you’re accustomed to or not what you’re expecting to see in a certain place. n nSo I appreciate the twist that you did there on “stranger” and taking it back to a place where you worked and contributed. n nWe didn’t talk about food at all, but I always love to end on a little bit of a breaking bread note. I’m a foodie and have grown up with such a strong food tradition and culture in my family and it’s a way of going from being strangers to feeling included at a table. So if you were hosting a dream dinner party, not so much the guests but the food, is there any particular dish you would serve and why? n nJina n nI love Indian food. Obviously my mom made it for me. I’m not capable of cooking like my mom. So I can only get that food when she comes around. My favorite dish is parathas, which is sort of like a whole wheat flour flatbread that has a potato spiced mix in the middle. And it’s not great for serving at parties, but that is definitely what I would be eating. n nSuzanne n nMmm. I love it. And if it’s your dream dinner party, you can have your mom come up and you know, sort of cook and prepare for us. I mean, that’s why the guest thing, I feel like that’s like, we have a whole planning session when we figure out who’s with us at that table. So today I’m just starting with the dish. n nThank you for that. And thank you for this conversation. Is there, I’d love to know — is there a question I didn’t ask or sort of an aspect of your professional work or kind of dedication to this cause that you would like the readers to, the listeners to understand? n nJina n nI think what I’d love for people to understand is that when you leave your home, it’s not a choice. n nAnd there is real loss. Each one of us is desperately trying to plan our future and in order to plan our future we need certainty and that goes for like, “Okay, my kids are going to go to middle school… which middle school should they go, which program is the best for them,” and so we have choice and options and we have certainty that allows us to plan. n nAnd for most refugees, that wasn’t a choice. And what they enter into is even more uncertainty because they don’t know what the next three or five years are going to look like. And they have to make impossible choices. At Upwardly Global, we started operations in Warsaw, Poland right after the war in Ukraine started. Again, because 86% of Ukrainians have a tertiary degree or higher. This was a highly educated professional group of people and we thought they shouldn’t be — and of course 95% of them are women and children, because men were not allowed to leave Ukraine, because they needed to stay and support the war effort. So you have a lot of women entering into Poland with their kids. They’re highly educated and we didn’t want them to be just waitresses or making pierogies and selling them on the side of the street. n nAnd so we started operations there. And the stories you hear from people about why they decided to leave, when they decided to leave — you know, like, “We left because there were sirens in Kiev and everybody was being evacuated and we had been bombed for the past three days.” n nWhat people decide to take with them is another big thing because most people don’t have time to grab a lot. Some people just come with the clothes that they have on. Some people are able to grab at least a bag. Then they leave. Some people make it, some people don’t. And then I met a woman, Daria, who traveled for 10 days to get to Poland. I’m thinking, “How far is Poland from Kiev?” But she went a circuitous route because she had to go through Romania. n nSuzanne n nSure. n nJina n nAnd then of course, there’s a mass exodus with hundreds of thousands or millions of other people. So you are all sleeping in your cars at the gas station waiting for it to be refueled so that you can potentially get gas so you can keep driving. And so I think we also forget the trauma of the journey. We see people once they’ve arrived, but we forget that they left something. n nSuzanne n nRight, right. n nJina n n…That there was trauma and a difficult journey to get where they are. And then, you know, once they arrive, I describe it as, you know, there’s so much confusion. You can’t make decisions. We had women, it was like, imagine if you’re jet lagged and you have to wake up early and you’re half delirious and disoriented and all you can hear is like this loud white noise of thrashing waves and it’s…it doesn’t stop. That is what it is like to live in those early days. n nAnd you cannot focus. You cannot plan. And you’re glued, in this case, to your device, because you’ve left a father, you’ve left a brother, you’ve left a husband, you’ve left a son. And you’re not hearing from them because they’re not allowed to communicate except once a week. And so you’re glued to the news. n nSuzanne n nRight. n nJina n nAnd so you’re paralyzed. And so I think for a lot of people, they think, they forget to imagine, like, those are impossible choices for anybody. We often forget how privileged we are to be able to plan our futures, to have options of where we work, where we decide to send our kids, what we want to eat. And so… n nAnd then of course, you know, months and months and months go by and people accept the reality. And I will say we have women, Ukrainian women in Poland — it took them two years before they decided to start looking for professional jobs because they did not want to commit. n nSuzanne n nYeah. Yeah, there’s some part of it that feels like an acknowledgement that the situation, you know, is sort of here to stay for at least the time being. You know that, of course, UNHCR has extensive operations in Poland and having visited there, I think it was just last November I was there for a bit. That sort of workforce piece, there’s actually a report about the contribution that Ukrainian refugees specifically have made to the Polish GDP and it’s an extraordinary commitment. n nJina n nIt’s 1%. They’ve increased the GDP by 1%. n n[Editor’s note: The actual figure is 2.7%; read the report.] n nSuzanne n nSo I mean that integration of workforce opportunities and the education and the sort of skill set coming in, for me it’s such an example of how you can in a moment in time make such opportunities for individuals and also for a nation. n nThat’s a great note to end on and I so appreciate your storytelling today. I so appreciate your just sort of weaving of so many different kinds of technical points, but also sort of the soft emotional side really of what a journey can be and making decisions without a sense of a certain future and how hard that is… again, helping the audience