The Library
Listen to innovate: the need to hear the voices of women
How we can all make concrete changes to improve gender equality in humanitarian innovation. Effective innovation requires diversity of thinking. Diverse teams are more productive and creative, and collaborations that reflect the world outside are more likely to...
Bridging the gap between human experience
Rich Wiles’s intimate, evocative photography has been praised as art that gives voice to the voiceless. That’s a compliment Wiles couldn’t be less happy to receive. For the longtime “participatory photographer” whose current work documents the experiences of refugees...
A local, people-centered approach to experimentation
UNHCR continues to innovate in its work with refugees, asylum seekers and host communities, and in 2018 for the first time, it tested out a new way of engaging NGO partners who are doing the same. The first-of-its-kind Innovation Awards recognized two local...
Trust is still one of the biggest barriers for communicating with refugees
Anjali Katta was previously an intern at the Innovation Service and supported UNHCR's Malawi operation for a specific assessment around the information and communication needs of refugees in Dzaleka camp. This is her reflection around the experience and opportunities...
Grassroots organizations are just as important as seed money for innovation
Where’s Waldo would have a hard time laying low in any country these days. Wireless interconnectivity has largely become the norm, providing opportunities to connect seven billion people to resources and organizations. The luxury of quickly accessing information and...
The beginning and end of the Innovation Index
The Innovation Index Experiment UNHCR's Innovation Service has been undertaking an experiment. We created an Innovation Index; our first attempt at measuring how we’re doing when it comes to innovation in our field operations. We never released the product. This piece...
How to (re)build connection in displacement – Lessons from Uganda
The refugee and connectivity equation When hundreds of thousands of refugees started to flee South Sudan in the summer of 2016 and settle in West Nile, a remote rural region of Uganda, the roads were in poor condition, there was limited access to electricity, and...
How to Work With Mobile Network Operators – Lessons from Tanzania
Today, we are seeing an unprecedented number of people forced to flee, leaving their homes behind and moving towards an uncertain future. What we are not seeing, is adequate and coordinated responses to large-scale movements and appropriate solutions for refugees and...
How UNHCR used creativity to improve journalistic accuracy and collaboration, one step at a time.
How an innovative partnership with the media delivers mutual benefits in Angola. The night the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) was evacuated from its office building in Luanda, Angola, journalists helped Margarida Loureiro carry her boxes to her apartment. At the time,...
Busting a Myth: There’s very often not an app for that!
Peak ‘There’s an app for that’. During the Europe ‘crisis’ of 2015 we experienced a huge surge in volunteer resources, many people wanting to volunteer came with great software/app development skills. At this time, refugees faced significant communication gaps, and...
Audio-Based Communication: Radio, Listening Groups, and Beyond
The purpose of this blog series is to encourage people to begin their own grassroots humanitarian projects. By sharing my own experiences with Zaatari Radio I hope I can inspire as many other people as possible to take action and begin their own innovative projects....
How to catalyze sustainable action by cultivating innovation and collaboration
One good idea can change the world. Not to get too flowery about it, but gardening does make a good analogy: If you plant a seed, tend it, and nurture it so it can take root, you create an environment for it to bloom and perhaps even propagate far and wide. But how...
What doesn’t kill you: let’s talk about failure
Someone said to me recently, "deep down, everyone is winging it most of the time." I remembered this when at the WEDC WASH Conference in Nakuru last month, I was asked to be on a panel about failure in faecal sludge management. I’m no expert on this topic but, like...
At the Heart of the Community: How to work with community-based organizations
Defining it as one of the solutions to address the widening gap between humanitarian needs and available resources, the former UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing proposed the Grand Bargain. Essentially, the Grand Bargain is an agreement...
Innovative Fundraising: How to build a community around your grassroots project
In a previous blog post on creating a grassroots humanitarian project, I alluded to the idea that funding is not a barrier to innovation, but an opportunity to build a community around your project. Although raising the necessary funds to ensure your project is as...
Closing the Feedback Loop: The Quest for a Quick Fix
Spoiler alert: There isn’t one. Closing the feedback loop is notoriously challenging. To correct and adapt our programming, we need to understand what doesn’t work, who it doesn’t work for, and what improvements or alternatives are needed. Based on this information,...
Connectivity for Refugees: What have we learned?
Malaysia. Skyping with family members separated by boat crisis. Photo Credit: © UNHCR/Keane Shum Following on from last week’s post, today we’re going to unpack some of the lessons learned from the first pilots delivered through the Connectivity for Refugees...
Grassroots Humanitarian Projects: How to Get Started
Have you ever wanted to start a humanitarian project from the ground-up, but didn’t know how to start? Gaining experience in the humanitarian field can be a difficult task, particularly within large NGOs where employment spaces are not only extremely competitive but...
What does Innovation ≠ Technology mean?
In the humanitarian sector, knowing even a little bit about technology can take you a long way. Comparatively, with many other sectors public and private, we’ve been a little behind the times when it comes to adopting and adapting to new technologies and bringing in...
Innovation metrics for human development – what we have learned
Inspired by the recent frank reflection by UNCHR’s amazing Innovation Team on designing metrics for humanitarian innovation, we would like to share lessons we learned, challenges we are addressing and plans we have moving forward to measure the impact of innovation in...
A future-looking approach to energy and environment in Angola
Julie Gassien bats at an incessant onslaught of gnats attacking the moisture in her eyes. All around her is the green fernery of the Angolan bush, the sounds of burbling water soothing from the forested background. She stands on an intricately balanced web of...
The Measurement Problem
The need for building better data and monitoring mechanisms in humanitarian action. A challenge that education staff have always grappled with is getting real-time data collected (efficiently) from the field to inform the direction of programming. This is a challenge...
Shame! You went to another humanitarian conference.
For a long time, it seemed that the bandwagon of people who wanted to work on interesting social issues relating to technology, digital technology and design etc. essentially all falling under the general rubric of ‘humanitarian innovation’ were literally moving en...
How connecting neuroscience, storytelling, and psychology can create measurable impact for refugee youth
Today, science shows us how stress and trauma impact our physical bodies and even genetics. But there is a layer that science still needs to penetrate when it comes to understanding how narrative therapy and storytelling can support a person’s mental health and inner...
How we can better support innovation in emergencies
Looking back: how did we do in Uganda? At the beginning of this year, we wanted to take a critical look at our engagement with the Uganda operation. The Uganda operation was one we invested in heavily as a team, having supported through four missions and on-going...
Can we look into the future? Using demographic models to project displaced populations.
UNHCR provides crucial support to forcibly displaced populations around the world, including access to shelter and basic services. Coordinating these activities requires data about the individuals under UNHCR’s mandate. The number of persons of concern to UNHCR (PoC)...
We need to fix the gender imbalance in our stories on innovation
Here’s how we’re going to do it. Have you ever felt like a hypocrite? Or worse: an imposter? Both emotions have the effect of surprising you when you least expect it. We don’t actively reflect on things we don’t believe to be true – we think with our gut more than our...
Innovation is about diversity and inclusion. Stop with the gimmicks, catch up.
The title says it all. You either get this, or you’re pushing tech and getting your bosses to be excited about products with little success in sustainability, and missing opportunities to innovate processes and approaches. Our version of the truth is, that if you’re...
Can social science accelerate innovation on behalf of the world’s displaced people?
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Innovation Service has launched a yearlong partnership with the newly established Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The partnership will...
Jetson: insights into building a predictive analytics platform for displacement
Project Jetson is a platform aimed to provide UNHCR operations predictions about population movement (arrivals/departures) for specific regions or countries. Jetson - a machine-learning based application - measures multiple variables to see how changes over time that...
Overcoming hate: an activist’s journey from Syria to San Francisco
Maybe Subhi Nahas was always meant to wind up in San Francisco. What better city for a young, gay activist with a penchant for new technology to put down roots, claim a sense of history and purpose and find a like-minded community of friends and supporters? But Nahas...
How to control the ‘CTRL+P’ urge: Embracing Audio
In a recent blog, I commented about the reliance on text-based communication in humanitarian settings. Leaflets, banners, notice-boards and signs often proliferate in emergencies. I’m not anti printed materials, and there is often real value in quality signage, but...
Using data to make your humanitarian organisation more client-focused
Communicating with communities. Data. Information Management. Accountability to affected populations. To me, saying these terms in a row highlights how disassociated these different terms are for many, and how acutely humanitarian-centric, i.e. jargonistic they sound....
Linking innovation management, circadian rhythms, inclusion, and giphys.
I’ve never been trained in management. And I’ve never been trained in innovation. This week I realised that I really don’t know what I’m doing. It was a gut-wrenching moment that literally took my breath away. My eyes went wide, and I’m pretty sure the team heard me...
Teaching a ‘robot’ to detect xenophobia online
A robot? Not exactly. Machine learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are two buzzwords, particularly when talking about the realm of data innovation. Artificial Intelligence is the ability that machines have to mimic the cognitive processes of humans. The word...
Planning a Mobile Phone Distribution? 10 things to consider, okay… there’s a few more.
When I’ve recommended a mobile phone distribution, to strengthen our communication with communities, I’ve seen a lot of colleagues recoil in horror. Not because they don’t want to communicate with refugees and host communities by phone - many already do - but that the...
Communication by refugees, for refugees, in Angola
I’ve always wanted to visit Angola and remember reading about the end of years of bloody civil war when I was at school. This year, I had the opportunity to travel to Angola for the first time, recently joining the UNHCR operation there for a few weeks. Since early...
Q&A with Jeff Wilkinson from UNHCR Aleppo on designing solar street lighting with the Syrian community
Jeff Wilkinson has been based in UNHCR’s Aleppo office since October 2016. Prior to moving to Syria, he worked with UNHCR as Head of Field Office and in additional protection roles in Colombia, Ecuador, eastern Ukraine, as well as emergency missions to South Sudan and...
Ligne Verte – how a free phone number is providing information to refugees in Niger
The UNHCR Representation in Niger was established in 2012 to respond to the influx of refugees from Mali, following the outbreak of conflict. Since then, the operation has grown in size to respond to additional situations, including the arrival of Nigerian refugees...
Beyond numbers: Why cultural change has to accompany our renewed investment in data.
Data is important. Obviously. UNHCR sits on a data goldmine. Data is gathered, circulated, cleaned, analysed, continuously visualised, every second of every day, in emergencies, through to durable solutions. From registration, to financial verifications of partnership...
From big data to humanitarian-in-the-loop algorithms
The Data Revolution is no longer a new topic but a reality trying to catch up with the expectations it has generated. The private sector is investing billions in new start-ups and technology companies that can ingest the vast amounts of data generated by citizens and...
How to do workshops better (if you have to do them)
The Regional INS Workshop: A workshop we ‘did’ even though we ‘don’t’ As a rule, we don’t go to workshops. Well, some of us do, but only in moderation and definitely not as a priority. In fact, I have a personal fear of becoming another serial panel member who...
The promise of boring innovation
Administration is probably the first contact point anyone has in the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). In reality, everything we do has a sort of administration process linked to it. When one of us joined UNHCR in November 2007, an era that was already embracing Facebook and...
Why UNHCR is taking action on climate change displacement
From her office at UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva, Erica Bower keeps track of the wildfires ravaging Santa Rosa, California. For weeks it has destroyed homes and consumed possessions, forcing thousands to flee and taking the lives of dozens of people. Most scientists...
Integrating storytelling as a tool for healing and community building
It started like this: a small, white video camera; two Syrian youth facilitators; and twenty-five Syrian youth in the Zaatari refugee camp in 2014. Now, three years later, #MeWeSyria is a team of more than 50 trained Syrian changemakers who have successfully localized...
Education is key for refugees to build their futures. Here’s how we can help them do that.
Access to higher education scholarships, training, and professional opportunities for refugees is essential. Yet, just one percent of refugees attend university compared to 34 percent of people globally.[1] Of the more than 4 million Syrian refugees in the world...
Why we need to position UNHCR for the future
This essay was originally posted in the recently released report: UNHCR Innovation Service: Year in Review 2016. This report highlights and showcases some of the innovative approaches the organization is taking to address complex refugee challenges and discover new...
Set up a system to manage two-way SMS in two minutes
Only a few years ago, what was considered 'innovative' was using phones - in any way possible - to engage with communities. Time moves quickly, eh? With the advent of chatbots and messaging apps, using 'plain old' SMS seems relatively stone-age. Yet, in many...
10 things to consider before rolling out two-way SMS
While we describe how to get started with two-way SMS in our recent blog, there are a number of things to consider before embarking on that journey. We’ve put together our top ten list of considerations below. Let us know whether these resonate with you or whether...
Refugees are not the crisis. It’s the narratives we tell about them.
Don’t start with a boat. Don’t show it lurching on the waves, a crush of terrified people packed elbow to ribcage, a baby crying. Don’t focus on their past: the homes they left, the loved ones lost, the bribes paid, the calculations made and agonized over. Instead,...