The Refugee Archive's Country Portfolios
Story to Action Lab
Portfolios dedicated to bridging narrative to policy & programming across multiple displacement contexts.
2026 - STAL Focus
From Stories to Better Programs:
A Core Model
Each Story-to-Action Lab is a country portfolio. It brings together all of our work in that country – oral histories, education, and research – under a single core model that we adapt to the local geography, law, culture, language, and resources.
Our staff and grassroots partners are organized by Lab, so every country has its own focused Story-to-Action Lab team and portfolio. Labs are co-run with grassroots partners and local leaders. Our work is grounded in relationships and day-to-day knowledge, not fly-in, fly-out projects.
Country Projects
Oral Histories
Preserving narratives of female heads of household living in current displacement settings in fragile places.
FHH Policy Tracker
A student-led policy tracker, examining how national laws shape the lives of displaced single mothers and female-headed households across conflict and displacement settings.
Gender & Displacement
Impact Lab
Not a generic MEL. It's gender-specific, displacement-specific, and evidence-rich. Country-level service focused on measuring how policies and programs actually affect female-headed households.
Impact Lab = applied analysis + recommendations
Histories Recorded
Since Sept. 2025
In-Country Partners
Listen & Read
From The Field
Preserving
History &
Fostering
Programming
Cohesion
Participatory Research &
Field Diagnostics
Country-level, short-cycle research projects that answer real operational questions:
- Why isn't this program reaching women?
- What barriers are actually blocking access?
- What changed after X policy shift?
This is closer to consulting research than MEL.
What lives inside
- Rapid assessments
- Gender diagnostics
- Protection risk mapping
- Access barrier studies
- Community-led research pilots
Annual Journal
State of the World for Female-Headed Households Vol.1 2026 Original research, rigorous reviews, and short commentary that help improve policy, programs, and accountability.