TBB’s story began in a country that has faced and continues to face extraordinary instability and turmoil.

When we first arrived in the region, most saw only a crisis of displacement. But we saw a vast, untapped pool of professionals who were ready to contribute. Healthcare professionals, engineers, technicians, educators, and countless others whose careers had been put on pause, but whose skills remained.

Lebanon was where we first met the individuals who would prove our outside-the-box idea could work. It was also where the Talent Catalog first started to take shape.

Today, the Talent Catalog has more than 155,000 registered displaced professionals seeking the opportunity to rebuild their careers and futures.

What began in Lebanon later became the blueprint for expansion within the region — including Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey — and eventually to other parts of the world where displaced talent remained overlooked.

Jordan has been part of the TBB story from the very beginning.

As displaced professionals across the region searched for opportunities to rebuild their careers, Jordan became a critical hub for connection, coordination, and pathway development. It was one of the first places where TBB established a local team and began working directly alongside displaced talent navigating life in limbo.

Years later, in 2023, Jordan also became home to the first-ever Global Refugee Labour Mobility Summit in Amman — bringing together governments, employers, NGOs, and international organizations from around the world to expand employment pathways for displaced professionals.

Jordan continues to serve as a key hub for expanding displaced talent mobility across the region, supporting employer partnerships, training collaborations, and broader ecosystem coordination aimed at opening pathways worldwide.

Australia is where the initial idea of refugee labor mobility first became a reality. It was the destination for our very first candidate relocation, marking a global milestone that proved the model was not just theoretical, but practical and repeatable.

Since that first breakthrough, Australia has become a world leader in this space. Through the Skilled Refugee Labour Agreement Pilot, the Australian government has created a dedicated pathway that removes the barriers that often keep displaced talent sidelined. This programme has paved the way for hundreds of professionals to bring their expertise to Australian industries.

Thanks to the continued advocacy of TBB and our partners, we are hoping that this programme will become permanent in the near future with the support of the Australian government, ensuring these pathways remain open for the long term.

Canada has become one of the most ambitious and successful chapters in the TBB story. By moving from small-scale pilots to a national strategy, Canada has proven that refugee labour mobility can be a mainstream solution for a country's economic and social growth.

Central to this success is the Economic Mobility Pathways Pilot (EMPP), an innovative programme that allowed Canada to welcome hundreds of displaced professionals, with a significant number of candidates successfully relocating with their families to rebuild their lives and careers. As a result, in 2025 alone, Canada secured the highest number of job offers of any destination country in our network.

Alongside pathways like the Provincial Nominee Program and Francophone Mobility, skilled refugees are increasingly able to move to Canada for meaningful employment on the basis of their skills.

From healthcare and engineering to information technology and the skilled trades, displaced professionals are filling vital roles in communities from coast to coast to coast. 

Our hope is that this programme continues to move toward permanency within the Canadian immigration system. By making pathways more accessible to skilled refugees a standard part of the migration landscape, Canada is setting a global example of how to combine economic needs with humanitarian innovation.

The UK is currently at a pivotal moment for refugee labour mobility. After years of evidence building, the UK government formally committed to establishing a capped route for skilled refugees to relocate for work. This is a direct result of the Displaced Talent Mobility Pilot that TBB has implemented since 2021.

This progress has been driven by pioneering employers and powerful partnerships with government, including the devolved governments of Scotland and Wales, who have championed this model as a way to welcome new talent into their communities. Key to our success has been our collaboration with the NHS, where displaced healthcare professionals are now filling critical roles and providing vital care to patients across the country.

To date, almost 600 candidates with their families have successfully relocated to the UK — the first arriving in 2019 — bringing expertise in sectors ranging from healthcare to engineering to animation. This growing community of professionals share their lived experience of displacement and labour pathways to become mentors, leaders, and advocates, supporting the next generation of displaced talent to navigate their own journeys to the UK.

As we look ahead, we are focused on continued advocacy to ensure these pathways become a permanent and sustainable feature of the UK’s immigration landscape, proving that when the right doors are opened, displaced talent can thrive.

In 2021, TBB began laying the foundations for refugee labour mobility pathways in Latin America.

As displacement across the region continued to rise, Colombia became a key entry point to building partnerships. Home to one of the largest displaced populations in the world, the country highlighted both the urgency of the challenge and the enormous talent and expertise of displaced professionals across the region.

Working alongside partners TBB began expanding awareness of labour mobility pathways for displaced people across Latin America and the Caribbean.

We quickly learned that the region was filled with skilled professionals ready to contribute: healthcare professionals, construction workers, engineers, educators, technology specialists, and entrepreneurs, all seeking the opportunity to rebuild their futures with stability and dignity.

To date, displaced candidates from across Latin America have relocated through labour mobility pathways to countries including Canada, Australia, and Italy, where they are rebuilding their careers, supporting their families, and contributing their skills to communities in need.

As the region continues to face displacement driven by political instability, violence, and economic uncertainty, TBB is focused on scaling partnerships and building long-term pathways that create lasting opportunities for displaced talent across the Americas.

The US holds a unique place in the TBB story. It is the place where our organization was first established and where the vision for a world without boundaries for talent began to take shape.

While we operated a successful pilot programme in the US from 2023-25, changes in government policy brought our pilot to an early stop. Despite this, we remained focused on advocacy, innovation, and building the bedrock for our global operations.

The US is home to a powerful network of partners, visionaries, and funders who believed in our mission before the first candidate relocated. From the beginning, American collaborators helped us develop the technology and frameworks needed to identify displaced talent and connect them with the global market.This includes pioneering initiatives like our dedicated STEM Professionals project in partnership with the Talent Mobility Fund.

Today, the US remains a vital hub for the advocacy that fuels our global work. Without the commitment of our American supporters, the pathways we have built across four continents would not exist.

Belgium is where displaced talent mobility first proved it could work in mainland Europe. Since 2021, TBB and our partners have been building and expanding the model here, navigating existing skilled migration channels to prove that refugees can move for work.

To date, 21 displaced professionals with their families have relocated to Belgium through the EU-funded and IOM-led Displaced Talent for Europe project, bringing displaced talent across sectors including IT, engineering, and healthcare. Candidates have settled across the country, becoming part of local communities and contributing to the employers and industries that needed them most.

Belgium was one of the first European countries that showed that structured, legal pathways for displaced talent are possible in Europe. That evidence now underpins what is being built across the region.

In 2022, TBB began building the foundations for refugee labour mobility across Asia — a region home to millions of displaced professionals whose skills and ambitions had long remained overlooked by the global labour market.

Over the years, TBB's work in Asia expanded across countries including Pakistan, Indonesia, India, and Malaysia through partnerships with local organizations deeply rooted in the communities they serve and committed to the same mission.

Pakistan became an important component of this work. Together with a growing network of partners across Asia, TBB began connecting displaced professionals with employers around the world,  expanding pathways that support skilled refugees in rebuilding their careers through labour mobility opportunities abroad..

Today, Asia is one of the fastest-growing regions in TBB's global network. Across the region, displaced professionals continue to demonstrate extraordinary resilience, ambition, and expertise, while the pathways being built are gradually creating more opportunities to match those skills with global workforce needs.

Candidates from across Asia have now relocated through labour mobility pathways to countries including Australia and Canada, where they are rebuilding their lives, supporting their families, and contributing their skills to communities in need.

As TBB expanded beyond the Middle East, Uganda became a critical gateway to East Africa, home to one of the largest refugee-hosting populations in the world and an extraordinary pool of displaced talent.

Across settlements and cities, we met educators, healthcare professionals, software developers, engineers, and entrepreneurs whose ambitions had never disappeared, despite years of displacement.

Uganda also reinforced a core belief at the heart of TBB’s work:  displaced talent did not lack potential, only access.

Working alongside refugee-led organizations, local partners, and international agencies, TBB began building pathways that connected skilled displaced professionals to global opportunities while supporting the tools needed to succeed: CV support, language learning, interview preparation, and skills training.

Over time, Uganda also became an example of the power of partnership – with organizations like Finn Church Aid (FCA) playing a critical role in helping expand labour mobility initiatives and support displaced professionals across the region.

These collaborations have helped position Uganda as a growing hub for train-to-hire models, connecting employers with high-potential candidates and targeted training pathways that prepare displaced professionals for international employment opportunities.

Today, East Africa represents one of the fastest-growing regions across TBB’s global network, with thousands of displaced professionals ready to contribute their skills to industries facing workforce shortages around the world.

Our work inIreland started in 2023, and in just three years has become an active and purposeful chapter in our European story.

To date, six candidates and their families have relocated to Ireland, bringing skills across sectors including healthcare, construction, and technology. Each of them is evidence that the model works,  and evidence that matters when you are making the case to governments and employers that displaced talent mobility deserves a permanent place in the immigration landscape.

From the beginning, the work here has been as much about building the right foundations as it has been about supporting individual candidates to find new lives in Ireland.

Through contributions to government consultations, partnerships with industry bodies and state agencies, and sustained policy engagement, TBB Ireland has been working to remove the systemic barriers that prevent displaced talent from accessing the opportunities that already exist.

Ireland has shown that when a country is willing to engage,  not just with individual hires, but with the policy infrastructure that makes hiring possible, real and lasting change follows.

TBB's work in Italy began in 2023. In a short space of time, it has grown into a multi-sector programme connecting displaced professionals with employers facing skills shortages across industries including IT, craftsmanship, shipbuilding, healthcare, transport, and others.

55 displaced professionals have already relocated to Italy through these pathways, bringing their skills to communities and workplaces from north to south of the country.

Each placement is part of a growing case for what labour mobility can achieve here, and Italy's potential is significant, with employers across multiple sectors facing the kind of skills shortages these pathways are designed to address.

As the programme grows, so does the opportunity to connect more displaced professionals with the employers who need them, and to show what's possible when the right doors are opened.

Germany has long been a country built by people who arrived from somewhere else, bringing skills, ambition, and a determination to contribute. That story is still being written, and TBB is helping write the next chapter.

With one of the largest skilled labour shortfalls in Europe, Germany faces a challenge that traditional recruitment alone cannot solve. The talent exists. It is sitting in displacement, in countries far from where it is needed, waiting for a country with the vision to reach across that distance.

In 2025, TBB began building that bridge through the International Talent Gateway, a programme designed not just to fill vacancies, but to create lasting, structured pathways that connect displaced professionals with German employers in sectors where the need is most acute.

What makes Germany distinctive is the scale of ambition behind it. Federal ministries, municipalities, and leading international organizations are already at the table, working toward a system where displaced talent mobility becomes a permanent part of how Germany solves its workforce challenge. Employers are beginning to see what other countries have already proved, hiring displaced talent is not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do.

France is a country with enormous potential for displaced talent mobility, and 2025 marked the year we began turning that potential into reality.

With close to 300,000 unfilled roles across sectors including hospitality, construction, and renewable energy, France faces a significant and growing need for skilled talent. Displaced professionals from around the world are ready to help fill that gap.

This year marked important milestones for our French programme. We delivered our first successful employer pitches, convened new stakeholders, and moved a number of engineering candidates into active recruitment processes. The foundations are being laid, and the momentum is building.

France now joins a growing group of countries committed to opening legal, structured pathways for displaced talent. With the right partnerships in place across government, employers, and civil society, France has every opportunity to become a leading destination for skilled professionals who are ready to contribute and rebuild.

Slovakia is one of the newest chapters in the TBB story. With one of the highest talent shortage rates in Europe, Slovakia faces a pressing need for skilled international workers across sectors from manufacturing and construction to healthcare and technology. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of displaced professionals around the world are ready, qualified, and waiting for a country willing to open a door.

In 2025, we began building that bridge. Working alongside the Slovak government and through the guidance of IOM, we are laying the groundwork for a structured, legal pathway that connects displaced talent with Slovak employers who need them.

Government engagement has been strong, and we have seen an appetite from employers to find sustainable, skills-based recruitment solutions. Slovakia has the opportunity to become a pioneer in Central Europe, proving that managed, ethical labour mobility can meet economic needs while giving displaced professionals a path to safety and stability.

Our Slovakia Displaced Talent for Europe 2.0 (DT4E 2.0) programme is led by IOM and funded by the European Commission.

Spain is one of the most dynamic chapters in TBB's growing European story. Across the Basque Country, Galicia, Madrid, Navarra, and Asturias, TBB has been working with regional governments and employer ecosystems to build displaced talent mobility pathways that respond to real and pressing workforce needs.

From construction and transport to agrifood, healthcare, and industrial sectors, Spanish employers are facing skills shortages that skilled displaced professionals are ready to help address. Through regional partnerships and sector-led approaches, TBB has been generating growing employer awareness and moving candidates into active recruitment processes across the country.

What makes Spain's model distinctive is its regional depth. Spain is building from the ground up, in partnership with regional governments and sector associations who understand their own workforce needs and are willing to act on them.

As engagement grows and more regions explore labour mobility as a sustainable workforce solution, Spain has every opportunity to become one of Europe's leading destinations for displaced talent.