Community organisation refugee sponsorship category pilot

Community Organisation Refugee Sponsorship Category Pilot In June 2016, Cabinet approved the piloting of the Community Organisation Refugee Sponsorship Category (CORS) Category as an alternative form of admission for up to 25 refugees in 2017/18.

The aims of the CORS Pilot were to:

• provide an opportunity for community organisations to more actively engage in supporting successful refugee settlement
• enable sponsored refugees, with the support of community organisations, to quickly become independent and self-sufficient
• provide an alternative form of admission for refugees to complement New Zealand’s Refugee Quota Programme.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) undertook a process evaluation of the Pilot, based on interviews and administrative data, to inform decisions on any future intakes under the CORS Category. Forty-six people were interviewed for the evaluation: sponsored refugees (11), sponsors (16 across the four approved community organisations), other community organisations that had shown interest but either did not apply or were not selected (4), MBIE (12) and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) staff (3). Interviews were undertaken when sponsored refugees had been in New Zealand for about three months.

The evaluation was undertaken about three months after the sponsored refugees arrived in New Zealand and assesses how well the Pilot has been implemented, what early outputs have been achieved and what improvements could be made if it were rolled out further.

The evaluation does not make any conclusions about the success of the Pilot in terms of the outcomes sought around settlement and labour market integration.

The Pilot was implemented within a relatively short timeframe. A Cabinet decision was made on the design of the Pilot in August 2017, sponsors were selected in November–December 2017 and sponsored refugees arrived in New Zealand in May and July 2018.