Explore the forward-thinking projects driving lasting positive change for people forced to flee
UNHCR's Innovation Funds encourage humanitarians and refugees to test innovative ideas that could make a real difference for forcibly displaced people and the communities that host them. Through a holistic support mechanism, we ensure colleagues and communities have what they need to develop cutting-edge projects.
To learn more, scroll down and follow the journey of one such project.
The ideas we support are tailored to places and communities.
With nearly 930,000 Rohingya refugees living around the coastal city of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, energy needs are high. Many or those needs are met by solar-powered systems and appliances provided by humanitarian organizations.These projects have a clear sense of needs and available resources.
Those appliances don't always last long, generating e-waste. So, UNHCR has developed a model for the collection of e-waste in local refugee camps to direct it for repair and recycling. Households have been incentivized to bring their e-waste to the newly established Green Innovation Hub.We build partnerships with others who understand and support these ideas.
UNHCR Bangladesh came together with partners including the NGO Forum for Public Health, Electriciens Sans Frotieres, UNITAR, and Schneider Electric to create a comprehensive system for e-waste collection, value chain analysis, recycling, and repurposing along with skill-building for refugees.Together, we develop new solutions to complex problems.
This initiative is not only cleaning up the camp environment and ensuring appliances last longer, it's also boosting the skills of community members with training on repair and refurbishment. 10 tonnes of e-waste have already been collected and sorted, with items unabled to be processed locally sent to Dhaka for responsible recycling.These innovations generate learnings and best practices to inform the future of humanitarian aid.
This e-waste project in Cox's Bazar has developed approaches that are informing wider work on e-waste and sustainable solarization, and has sparked another innovative project that is working with a cohort of young energy ambassadors in the camps to transform energy practices.The project described above is just one of many exciting initiatives supported by UNHCR's Innovation Service. Our Innovation Funds focus on ideas that are refugee-led, that explore the creative and responsible use of data and emerging technology, that test cutting edge uses of digital tools, and that deliver positive results for our climate and environment.
Find out more about the Innovation Service.
The Data Innovation Fund provides targeted financial and technical support to colleagues in UNHCR who are interested in exploring innovation methodologies in combination with data science and other non-traditional analysis techniques, or exploring emerging technologies to perform data analysis in more creative ways.
Read more about the Fund and our Data Innovation Programme.
The Digital Innovation Fund provides UNHCR teams with targeted financial support and technical guidance to deliver meaningful and innovative initiatives to ensure forcibly displaced, stateless and host communities are able to benefit from our increasingly connected world.
Read more about the Fund and our Digital Innovation Programme.
The Environment and Climate Action Innovation Fund provides a space for UNHCR colleagues to explore current and future impacts of the environmental and climate crises, and to devise innovative solutions to those impacts.
Read more about the Fund and our Environment and Climate Action Innovation Programme.
The Refugee-Led Innovation Fund champions the creativity of all displaced and stateless people. It aims to ensure that people forced to flee can take centre stage in the decisions affecting their lives, leading the identification of needs and the design of solutions. The Fund provides holistic support directly to refugee-led organizations, to enable them to deliver innovative interventions.
Read more about the Fund.
Explore the projects selected for implementation in 2024
You can also investigate the processes, impacts, and learnings of previous projects – some of which are still ongoing or have scaled beyond their initial pilot stage.
Are you working on innovation in contexts of forced displacement and would like to collaborate? Do you have questions or have perspectives to share with us? Get in touch.
Website Development: The Hive at USA for UNHCR / Illustrations: Violet Reed
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