Join us to celebrate refugee-led innovation
Our Refugee-led Innovation Fund proposes a fundamental shift in programme architecture, recognizing that displaced communities are best placed to identify the challenges they face and design innovative solutions. Now, we’d like you to meet our first awardees.
The Innovation Service is thrilled to invite you to an online event with the inspiring refugee-led organizations supported in the inaugural round of the Refugee-led Innovation Fund.
Date: 28 February
Time: 3pm CET
Location: Online
Languages: English, French, Arabic
UNHCR’s Refugee-led Innovation Fund, which launched in 2022, champions the creativity of all displaced and stateless people. Co-created alongside refugees, it ensures that refugee-led organizations have the resources, mentorship, and technical support they need to boost their impact and create lasting, positive change.
“In Italy, there were no organizations that were created by stateless persons. There was no point of representation for all those fragmented communities of quote-unquote ‘ghosts’. … We hope that through this project, data and research on the phenomenon of statelessness can contribute to improve future social policies and raise more awareness on this often overlooked topic.”
— Unione Italiana Apolidi
Following its first call for expressions of interest, the Fund received nearly 2,000 applications, demonstrating the ingenuity and drive of displaced and stateless communities around the world. The Fund’s steering committee — which, itself, includes people with lived experience of forced displacement — endorsed 17 of these projects.
“The project will create social cohesion in [Nakivale refugee settlement] through the establishment of farmer-led committees consisting of different nationalities. … It is also an inclusive project that appreciates all the community members, organizes community building activities, as well as [ensuring] access to resources regardless of people’s status.”
— Kyete Biingi Tai Nyeme (KBTN)
From an initiative equipping stateless people in Italy with the advocacy skills they need to change the narrative on this important issue, to a seed bank and community garden system supporting sustainable food security and livelihoods in Uganda, to a project facilitating market-driven skills acquisition, entrepreneurial development, and innovative partnerships for refugee-led startups in Lithuania — and many more — these ideas will deliver manifold benefits to displaced people and host communities.
“We want to create active business networks between refugees and business incubators. Over 50% of our management and staff are refugees from different countries. We create active platforms for refugees to meet, share challenges, or to implement sustainable solutions.”
— Pabėgėlių Taryba (Refugee Council of Lithuania)
The 17 refugee-led organization running these diverse, generative projects are committed, courageous, and deeply rooted in their communities. We’re excited to be able to ensure they have what they need to develop innovative ideas and shape their own futures. We look forward to bringing them together, so they can introduce themselves to each other — and to you.
This event will be facilitated in English, Arabic, and French. Whether you’re a UNHCR colleague, a humanitarian/development practitioner, a person with lived experience of displacement, or simply interested in ensuring displaced communities have the tools they need to be agents of change, we’d love to see you there, at 3pm CET on Tuesday, February 28.
Register for the event here. You can find out more about UNHCR’s Refugee-led Innovation Fund and all of our supported projects on our website.
