How to Make Things Much Better for Refugees Without a Massive Grant, New Elected Officials, or Enduring Decades of Burnout

Stephanie Acker and Dr. Devora Neumark

The Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative (RSRI)

July 23, 2025

Owner-driven reconstruction initiatives in Sindh, Pakistan helped residents regain dignity and supported cultural continuity. Residents in front of their painted homes, Sindh, Pakistan.

Photo: Catholic Relief Services (CRS), 2025

Summary

Presented at the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative on July 23, 2025, this co-presentation by Stephanie Acker and Dr. Devora Neumark argued that beauty in the built environment is a transformative yet underutilised tool in humanitarian response. Drawing on neuroscience, including the observation that the built environment affects us within two seconds of entering a space, and on global case studies, the presentation proposes three interconnected shifts for practitioners: beauty increases hope and healing; beauty restores dignity, memory, and cultural identity; and beauty builds collective power and bridges divides. Case studies included balcony gardening in West Bank refugee camps, where residents such as Basim describe flowers as generating peace and stability for entire neighbourhoods, and owner-driven reconstruction in flood-affected Sindh, Pakistan, where participants including Qadir Bux and Raza Muhammad describe regaining not just shelter but dignity and cultural continuity. The presentation reframed beauty not as decoration but as infrastructure, and called for modest, flexible, community-led investment under the banner of “beautiful resistance.”

Key Takeaways

The built environment affects us within two seconds of entering a space, yet in humanitarian contexts beauty remains systematically undervalued. The presentation challenges this, arguing that beauty need not be costly: personalisation, creativity, and care are its core ingredients, all of which displaced communities are already practising.

Rather than citing neuroaesthetics as background evidence, this presentation makes the neurological process itself the argument, walking audiences through a two-step sequence: we first sense beauty through right brain function, then interpret and make meaning of it through left brain function. This pedagogical move reframes beauty not as subjective preference but as a predictable, universal neurological event, one that occurs within two seconds of entering a space and that humanitarian design can either support or obstruct.

Aesthetic acts function as forms of creative resistance. When displaced people garden in plastic containers on balconies and at entrances, as Basim from a West Bank refugee camp describes, or hang patterned fabric over tent frames and paint murals on shared walls, they are not merely beautifying but asserting hope, agency, and refusal to be defined solely by displacement. The presentation frames this as “the beautiful resistance,” a collective stance with both personal and political dimensions.

Beauty restores dignity, memory, and cultural identity in ways that standardised shelter cannot. In flood-affected Sindh, Pakistan, owner-driven reconstruction trained local craftspeople to rebuild homes that were structurally resilient and visually rooted in local tradition. Participants described the outcome in terms of dignity regained: as Qadir Bux put it, the floods had taken not just their homes but their hope, while Raza Muhammad noted that the training gave them not just walls but their dignity back.

The presentation closes with a concrete campaign agenda it calls “the Beautiful Resistance” intended to fund refugee-led beautification pilots in camps, shelters, and crisis areas; elevating global storytelling that centres beauty, dignity, and belonging; and building the tools, evidence, and momentum needed to redefine beauty as a basic need. This moves beyond general calls for attitudinal change to specify a programme of action, positioning the humanitarian sector not as a gatekeeper of beauty but as an amplifier of what displaced communities are already creating.

Implications for Practitioners

Centre beauty as infrastructure, not decoration: Humanitarian actors should fundamentally reframe how beauty is classified within response frameworks, treating it not as an aesthetic preference or supplementary add-on but as infrastructure with measurable neurological, psychosocial, and community-level effects. This shift requires revising the language of needs assessments, programme design documents, and evaluation frameworks to reflect that beauty operates within two seconds of entering a space and shapes mood, cognition, and recovery trajectories from the outset.
Enable owner-driven and community-led reconstruction: Architects, shelter coordinators, and reconstruction actors should adopt owner-driven models that train and employ local craftspeople to rebuild homes that are both structurally sound and culturally expressive, following the Sindh, Pakistan example where reconstruction restored not just shelter but dignity and cultural continuity. This approach simultaneously builds local capacity, preserves cultural identity, and produces environments that residents experience as genuinely their own.
Fund and resource the Beautiful Resistance: Donors and institutional funders should invest in refugee-led beautification pilots in camps, shelters, and crisis areas, providing modest, flexible funding for paint, plants, personalisation materials, and community-led mural and garden projects. The barrier to impact is not scale of investment but willingness to recognise community-driven beautification as a legitimate and fundable humanitarian intervention.
Elevate storytelling that centres beauty and dignity: Communications professionals, advocacy teams, and humanitarian organisations should actively shift the narratives surrounding displacement away from deficit and victimhood framing towards stories that foreground the creativity, agency, and aesthetic practices of displaced communities. Global storytelling that centres beauty, dignity, and belonging builds the public and institutional will needed to redefine what counts as a basic need.
Build the evidence base to redefine basic needs: Researchers, evaluators, and institutional leaders should commission and disseminate studies that document the impact of aesthetic interventions on wellbeing, recovery, and self-reliance outcomes in displacement contexts, building the tools, evidence, and momentum needed to make the case that beauty belongs within the definition of basic needs. Without this evidence base, calls for attitudinal change in humanitarian practice will remain aspirational rather than actionable.