The lack of a formal legal and administrative framework means that Rohingya and other refugees and asylum seekers cannot legally work and have limited access to public services. In remains a challenger to sustain themselves with sufficient economic resources to be able to pay for essential expenses. Refugee women and youth are among the most marginalized. Language barriers and cultural norms, often make it difficult for women to participate in activities outside of the home. As a result, they are disconnected and unable to become self-reliant. Refugee youth lack access to education and professional development opportunities resulting in participation in un-safe jobs and activities. Social capital is one of the coping mechanism developed. Refugees who do undergo skills-based training often lack a mechanism to track their skill development and are presented to employers as blank slates. Social capital plays important role such as in getting basic needs, informal employment/loans and information. With the protection risk, misperception about refugees and differences in culture and beliefs, building social capital or engaging in collective actions that will contribute to their wellbeing, remains a challenge. Refugees have developed a complex social system that allows them to adapt to these challenges. As difficult as such circumstances may be, they also offer fertile ground for creative and atypical projects that seek to fill in the gaps that exist in this informal system for refugees. The desire for penetrating this informal socio-economy with the hope of creating a new ecosystem is the impetus behind our latest project, called the R-Coin. The overall goal of the R-Coin is to tap into this unrecognized community service and skills of refugees through creating a digital reward system that can eventually form the basis for formalizing the informal.

The R-Wallet is a simple, usable mobile application that can store R-Coin – a non-monetary crypto token that serves as reward coin for volunteer work within the refugee communities such as teaching, counseling, assisting in soup kitchens and group cleanup. Refugees receive R-Coins for completed hours of community service. To ensure the viability of the Refugee Token network, we are collaborating with field partners. Field Partners (including UN agencies, schools, NGOs, etc.) are those who supervise community services by the refugee, and are responsible for dispersal of R-Coin upon completion of tasks and documentation of timing and duration of tasks. The designated of the community tasks is set upon in consultation with Field Partners.