What we learnt at the Humanitarian Innovation Conference

The 4th Annual Humanitarian Innovation Conference for the Red Cross/Red Crescent National Societies was held in Qatar between the 6th-8th October 2019. A place for innovation teams and those interested in innovation, the three-day conference brought to life the work we are doing, and the work we are striving to do, to support people in crisis across the world.

While previous trips have been hosted in the Global North, Qatar was chosen this year to enable a more diverse range of national societies to join the conversation.

These are just a few thoughts from what we learnt over the trip.

Firstly, the Qatari Red Crescent are wonderful hosts. The insight, experience and courtesy they provided exceeded all expectations, including a huge box of dates to bring back to the team. Find out why dates are important in Qatari Culture here.

Secondly, there is such a huge range of interesting innovations happening across the Red Cross/Red Crescent Network. I’ve detailed some of them below and the national societies that were presenting on them.

Innovative Financing

‘Innovative financing’ (IF) is a term used to describe financing models addressing development challenges that remain unsolved by traditional aid flows. It tries to leverage additional financing — often from the private sector — and/or attempts to provide financing more quickly, efficiently and with more reliable and greater impact. In the session, we were introduced to the concept of IF and discussed some of the success stories (for example, Development Impact Bonds — investment from private sources, with the promise of a return on the investment if the intervention achieves pre-agreed outcomes). We then discussed some of the challenges of the RC/RC’s approach to IF; these really boiled down to low awareness and knowledge of the many available models, and a lack of a holistic strategy available for IF. The attendees decided that the actions they would take forwards were the creation of a critical mass for awareness and participation and a co-working group to design a more defined strategy for IF.

What is best practice for scaling?

We were then hosted by the Norwegian Red Cross who spoke to us about their latest innovations; a partnership with Google to update those at the epicentre of a disaster with the latest and most relevant information. They discussed several key considerations for scaling your innovation.

• Create ownership and awareness across stakeholders from the start

• Develop an approach that is flexible and that considers different timelines

• Scaling takes time and requires persistence but also needs to start at the outset

• Recognise that scaling is a task that requires a dedicated mandate

• Work with others, inside and outside the movement, to leverage different expertise

Local Innovation

The Netherlands Red Cross ran a workshop to consider how to best understand, engage with and support innovation at a local level.

The group discussed that those in the local communities, and on the ground, are the experts and it is these people who are best placed to have solutions as well as a deep understanding of the problems. The RC/RC need to understand and have an approach to unlock these insights and support some of the already incredible work that is happening from the ground-up.

If I had $10 to spend, I’d spend $9 on culture

The Danish Red Cross Youth attended the conference to talk about how to create an innovative culture. We spoke about how the very nature of change is changing, due to the exponential pace and complexity of the world around us. We learnt that innovation must be part of the organisational DNA, and not just siloed into distinct teams, and we need to encourage the imagination to challenge the intentional design of the work we do. Learning is not just about new insight, but it’s a mind-set that seeks to consistently challenge the status quo and ask, ‘are we doing enough?’.

Partnering for Change

From the Global Disaster Preparedness Centre, we heard about the importance of partnering to create sustainable change:

• Partnerships offer an opportunity to expand capacity and capabilities of your organisation, but a good partnership requires investment of time and resources from both parties who have reviewed and shared expectations.

• There are internal and external obstacles to partnerships that can easily derail an effort to partner these can include our own bias, concerns for our principles, management priorities, and lack of strategy.

There is more than one path to a successful partnership and each organisation needs to work through these challenges. We can share our experiences and even partner with each other but the roadmap for partnerships is not clearly defined.

Innovation in Volunteering

The Spanish Red Cross held a wonderful event about the importance and successes that they have seen in innovating the volunteer process. Volunteers are at the core of everything we do, and we need to strive to consistently provide them the best experience.

We spoke about adapting a person-oriented approach, taking into consideration what individuals and communities expect from us in terms of giving time. It is integral to remove useless obstacles that make difficult to individuals to give their time for the Red Cross/Red Crescent, and we need to understand that people do not always want to commit all of their time to us — and allow volunteering on a more ad-hoc basis. We also spoke about ensuring we have a way of mobilising our youth volunteers who are often more cause-led and ensuring we both teach and learn from them — partnering with the youth for the future.

While the three-day event was wonderfully insightful, it was just as important to take the time to learn from the other societies and connect with our counterparts from across the globe. Innovation never works in silos, not nationally or internationally. We made a range of connections that will hopefully ensure that our work continues to grow, iterate and scale to deliver the most important work to people in crisis.

A big thank you to the IFRC for all their work in creating, designing and facilitating the conference too, we’re excited to continue our conversations into the future.