Today, June 27th, 2022 at UNHCR Office in Kyaka II Refugee Settlement held a meeting chaired by Ms. Arata Otake, Mr. Teshome Yigezu and Mr. Hillary Agwe.
What was the meeting about?
UNHCR Staff were to meet Refugee-led organizations-RLOs in Kyaka, where around 27 RLOs where Represented, for briefing about the Refugee-led Innovation Funding opportunity.
The Refugee-Led Innovation Fund – “Nothing about us, without us!”
The Innovation Service, the Division of International Protection and the Division of External Relations are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative: the Refugee-Led Innovation Fund, which champions innovation by all people who have experienced forced displacement. The Fund provides support through a unique, holistic and flexible mechanism, combining financial resources, mentoring and other expertise to organizations led by refugees, forcibly displaced communities and stateless people.
Why a refugee-led innovation fund?
Most innovation grant programmes take a top-down approach by identifying which priorities, challenges and solutions are addressed and designed by organizations. In this model, refugees and displaced populations are the end users or “recipients of aid”. This needs to change!
The Refugee-Led Innovation Fund proposes a fundamental shift in programme architecture. It aims to ensure that refugees, stateless and other forcibly displaced communities are in a leadership role and can design and implement creative and innovative initiatives, with the support of UNHCR. This reflects UNHCR’s commitment to strengthening participation, localization and inclusion by honoring our policy on age, gender and diversity (AGD) and our commitment to advancing accountability to affected people (AAP).
The Fund was designed with refugees and UNHCR colleagues located in different country operations. The fund is currently accepting applications from organizations in the following pilot countries: Ecuador, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, France, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Malawi, Mali, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
The Innovation Service is working in close collaboration with these pilot countries to identify organizations led by forcibly displaced communities and support them in applying to the Fund. Once selected, these organizations will not only receive funding to design and test their projects, but will also benefit from innovation coaching, access to technical expertise, peer-to-peer learning and other tailored support to ensure successful implementation.
The Fund ultimately seeks to build evidence that highlights the power of initiatives developed by forcibly displaced communities and help them overcome barriers that prevent them from accessing resources.
After piloting the Fund, the Innovation Service hopes to expand it to other UNHCR country operations in 2023.
In the meeting, there were exchange of different ideas, questions and supplements from RLOs representatives, RLOs Umbrella Representative and UNHCR Staff as well.
KYAKA II RLOs’ Chairperson, Mr. Festo NDUWAYEZU, thanked the UNHCR Staff for the opportunity and close collaboration with RLOs aiming at uplifting the capacity of the RLOs in Kyaka. He also requested the long lasting cooperation including accepting invitations in some RLOs meeting where the problems can be discussed and solutions found in order to keep supporting the People of concern. He also encouraged the RLOs which are not included in The Umbrella to join because it is free, in order to unify as Unity is Strength.
The UNHCR Staff were happy to know that in Kyaka II Refugee Settlement, there is a KYAKA II RLO’s UMBRELLA, Which is a platform uniting all of the RLOs in Kyaka.
If you are leading an RLO in Kyaka II R/S, Please do not hesitate to join this umbrella. For more information about joining this umbrella, please click here.
