All displaced and stateless persons are encouraged to express their ideas through the Refugee-led Innovation Fund. By making sure people are at the forefront of choices that impact their lives and are in charge of identifying needs and coming up with creative solutions, it seeks to transform their involvement in the execution of humanitarian work. The Fund offers refugee-led groups comprehensive support, including financial resources, mentorship, and other skills, so they may create and implement innovative solutions that benefit their communities long-term.
Eligibility:
- The Fund supports innovation by all organizations led by people with lived experience of forced displacement, including refugees, asylum-seekers, the internally displaced, returnees, and stateless people that are recognized within their communities due to their past significant contributions.
- Applicants are asked to apply as a team, usually as part of an existing organization.
- The Fund accepts applications from both registered and unregistered organizations that are well known in their communities due to their past significant contributions and initiatives.
- Additional attention will be given to ensuring organizations led by LGBTIQ+ persons, women, people with disabilities, Indigenous populations and other underrepresented groups receive support and encouragement to apply to the Fund.
Benefits:
Selected organizations can expect the following:
- Financial support: Organizations can apply for up to 45,000 USD in funding to test and implement ideas with strong community-approaches that generate value for community members, not specifically linked to any thematic area or technology.
- Programme and project management support: Grantees will receive assistance from UNHCR and experts to help build their capacity to design and implement programmes effectively.
- Technical support, expertise, and coaching: Needs-based specialist advice will be offered, on topics ranging from technology to legal support and innovation methodologies.
- Peer-to-peer networking: Supported organizations will be encouraged to engage with each other, share experiences, learn from each other, and explore partnerships.
Other support, based on project needs: This could include organizational support, help with project sustainability and scale, training on specific topics, business model advice, and media and communications support. - An emphasis on learning: Support will be provided to enable grantees to measure outcomes, assess their impact, and gather information to support growth. They will be encouraged to document, share, and make use of relevant learnings. Discussion and reflection with their communities will enable them to incorporate and respond to feedback.
Application:
Applications go through a two-stage selection process.
- In the first stage, organizations are invited to submit a brief expression of interest by 31 May 2024 at 23:59 EST (Panama time; UTC-5) in the language of their preference. This expression of interest (EOI) will provide a short overview of the identified challenge and proposed solution. The Innovation Service will review these applications and identify a shortlist of applications.
- In the second stage, shortlisted organizations will have a further three weeks to submit a full application. They will receive support from the Innovation Service and UNHCR country offices to develop and submit these detailed applications.
