In late 2015, UNHCR – in collaboration with local partner AMIDEAST – established Tawasul, a humanitarian call centre in Yemen. Tawasul, meaning dialogue in Arabic, was the first of its kind in Yemen and shared humanitarian information through a toll-free number five...
“Never assume you know the communications eco-system – never think you know how people share information and which sources they trust better than community members themselves”. These were the words I found myself repeating in South Sudan, whilst supporting the recent...
At the World Humanitarian Summit in May, Google, Mercy Corps, UNHCR Innovation and ThoughtWorks were lucky enough to win an award for having one of the Top 5 Innovations of the World Humanitarian Summit for our collaborative project Translation Cards. While...
Technical Top Trumps Having never worked with an innovation unit -let alone been in an innovation ‘Lab’ before-it’s fair to say I had an ‘innovation complex’ when starting as the Emergency Lab Manager. For many, innovation is synonymous with the use of technology....
What is the Emergency Lab? Some of the greatest opportunities can also be quite daunting, can’t they? This is certainly the feeling I had when I realised that I was to be part of a new Emergency Lab that was being set up inside UNHCR. The Innovation Unit, along with...
