We Are Called to Rise: The Power of Refugee Women

We Are Called to Rise is a call-to-action to embrace the economic potential of refugee women and break the invisible barriers that constrain their power

Jina Krause-Vilmar has spent her career working closely with women in some of the most challenging moments of their lives. When women and their families are pushed from their home countries by war, famine, economic instability, or religious persecution, they land in new homes with no safety nets. Alongside poor communities in their host countries, they struggle to survive in informal work systems where resentment runs high and they are easily exploited. It doesn’t have to be this way.

We Are Called to Rise is about the economic power of refugee women―the power that policymakers overlook, governments fail to harness, and stereotypes erase. It is about the opportunities we miss when we reduce refugee women to victims instead of recognizing them as economic drivers, changemakers, and leaders. Krause-Vilmar, President and CEO of Upwardly Mobile, explores the invisible threads that constrain them and how, despite the barriers, they are reweaving those threads to create opportunity―not just for themselves, but for entire communities.

When the most vulnerable are supported, we all thrive.