Defining and driving innovative finance innovative-finance

Designing new financing solutions for people affected by conflict

Global humanitarian budgets are not keeping pace with our clients’ needs and aspirations. Airbel is designing and testing new approaches to raising finance, and impactful new ways to use funds before, during and after conflict episodes.
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Defining and driving innovative finance is at the Generate Solutions stage

education

EdTech Global Landscape Analysis

The research identified six EdTech innovation trends that represent patterns of approach we observed across many individual global projects. Accompanying each innovation trend are 2-3 case studies that illustrate how...

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economic-wellbeing

Local Manufacturing of Medical Supplies in Northwest Syria

Northwest Syria

Open source designs, local manufacturing, and business support can enable a localized supply chain of critical medical equipment while also supporting the market and providing income to families in economic...

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empowerment

Service Delivery for Mobile Populations

Jordan

As people displaced by the Syria crisis begin returning to their homes, new approaches will be needed to deal with the unprecedented scale of returns.

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empowerment

Urban Housing

Jordan

Rapid urbanization in many parts of the world has led to a great deal of challenges ensuring the availability of adequate housing. In the Middle East, this is coupled by...

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This project became inactive following the Design Research phase

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innovative-finance

Crisis Risk Finance

Global

IRC’s work on crisis risk finance seeks to develop a blueprint for how organizations can reorient more of their resources and processes to be better prepared for, and how the...

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innovative-finance

Defining and driving innovative finance

Global humanitarian budgets are not keeping pace with our clients’ needs and aspirations. Airbel is designing and testing new approaches to raising finance, and impactful new ways to use funds...

Find out more

innovative-finance

Financing Refugee Crisis Response

Together with the Centre for Global Disaster Protection, Airbel is working to assess the potential to use risk-based financing approaches to respond to refugee influxes.

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This project graduated following the Generate Solutions phase

education

Humanitarian EdTech Innovation Toolkit

The toolkit is developed for organizations in the humanitarian sector seeking to improve the education access and quality for crisis-affected communities via technology-enhanced solutions.

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empowerment

Information Flows

Jordan

Displaced people live in challenging circumstances where accurate information can become difficult to obtain. Strengthening information flows can aid in decision-making and make their circumstances easier to manage.

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This project graduated following the Generate Solutions phase

empowerment

Placement Algorithm

United States

Airbel is piloting and scaling an innovative machine learning algorithm developed by the Stanford University Immigration Policy Lab that matches refugees in areas where they are likely to thrive when...

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This project became inactive following the Generate Solutions phase

economic-wellbeing

Trade Accelerator

Focused support for Jordanian businesses to foster rapid growth and help them tap into the European market and hire refugees to do so.

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This project became inactive following the Generate Solutions phase

health

Virtual Baby

This portable game would let children earn points for raising a happy baby, teaching them about sexual health and nutrition.

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This project became inactive following the Generate Solutions phase

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empowerment

Ask Laila

A hotline, SMS, and web-based service to help resettled refugees get quick answers from a trusted local source - in their own language.

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This project became inactive following the Prototype phase

education

Audio-Class System

Colombia

The Colombian education system is struggling to support an unprecedented influx of students in the midst of a global pandemic. To respond to the crisis, the IRC created an innovative...

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health

Dela

Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo

Dela aims to be an open-source mobile application that connects community health workers and their supervisors with a consistent channel of communication, to improve the quality of services delivered through...

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empowerment

Games for Diversity and Inclusion

Airbel worked closely with colleagues in the Asia Region to prototype approaches to increasing diversity and inclusivity in our workplaces through mechanisms with wide appeal, that can be easily integrated...

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This project graduated following the Prototype phase

health

Medicine Bank

Jordan

People with low income in Jordan often struggle to access the medicine they need. This solution is aimed at making supply chains more efficient to reduce the cost of pharmaceuticals....

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health

InforMH

Jordan

Leveraging people’s existing practices to bridge the information and stigma gaps that prevent people from seeking mental health and psychosocial support.

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health

Sprout

Niger

Over 16 million children under the age of 3 are afflicted by severe acute malnutrition. To pinpoint the most impactful prevention methods, Sprout is experimenting with 3 distinct approaches.

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This project graduated following the Prototype phase

education

Spark

Tanzania

Spark creates alternative learning spaces outside of refugee camp schools to practice play-based learning and social-emotional skills with primary school children.

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This project became inactive following the Prototype phase

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empowerment

IRC Connect

United States

In partnership with Twilio.org, Airbel is developing an SMS-based system to streamline communication between caseworkers and newly-settled refugees as they adapt to their new lives in the United States.

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This project graduated following the Pilot phase

education

Coach Erevu

Tanzania

Coach Erevu is a virtual teacher coaching program designed to empower teachers to learn and practice social-emotional learning activities that they can use in their classrooms.

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This project graduated following the Pilot phase

health

Low-Literacy Malnutrition Tools

South Sudan

In hard-to-reach areas local community health workers are key to treating malnourished children. Commonly used tools for diagnosing and treating malnutrition have been adapted to meet the needs of workers...

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This project graduated following the Pilot phase

economic-wellbeing

Impacts of anticipatory cash to small-holder farmers and livestock owners in Northeast Nigeria

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health

Micronutrient Condiment

Kenya

Two billion people are affected by micronutrient deficiencies worldwide. One third of them are children. We aim to introduce an affordable product inspired by existing porridge preparation practices for sale...

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education

PlayMatters

Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda

PlayMatters is an IRC-led consortium funded by the LEGO Foundation that cultivates holistic learning and wellbeing outcomes for refugee and host-community children aged 3-12+ in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda through...

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education

Pop-Up Class Tanzania

Tanzania

Pop-Up Class Tanzania is an after-school digital learning program where children learn on personalized game-based learning software called onecourse and Kitkit School.

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education

Pop-Up Learning Tanzania

Tanzania

With more students out of school around the world due to COVID-19 than ever before, we need solutions that ensure the hardest-to-reach children receive quality education. The IRC is delivering...

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innovative-finance

Resettlement Revolving Fund

In this new model for refugee resettlement finance, a self-sustaining fund provides countries with finance for refugee resettlement, and is replenished as refugees fuel economic growth.

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This project graduated following the Pilot phase

economic-wellbeing

Seed Security Solution Package

Syria, South Sudan, Pakistan, Niger

This package of three solutions leverages contests, prizes, field experiments, and peer-learning to identify and multiply high-yielding and climate-adapted seed varieties, increase seed quality and availability, and ultimately enhance the...

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education

Tunakujenga

Tanzania

Tunakujenga is a family learning program designed to empower caregivers to engage in nurturing and playful parenting to support their children’s social and emotional development.

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This project graduated following the Pilot phase

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education

EmpaTeach

Tanzania

EmpaTeach is a project that aims to reduce corporal punishment in low resource settings by helping teachers learn positive discipline methods, change destructive thought patterns, and plan ahead for positive...

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This project graduated following the Rigorous Evaluation phase

safety

Real Man Challenge

Liberia, Uganda, Peru

The Real Man Challenge is a mobile messaging campaign that engages men with an aspirational and positive masculine identity to prevent intimate partner violence. It sends WhatsApp messages to men...

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education

Pop-Up Learning Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Pop-Up Learning is a tablet-based computer-assisted learning program, aimed to mobilize quickly and efficiently on the onset of crisis.

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safety

Becoming One

Uganda

Becoming One is a counseling program designed to bring couples closer and prevent intimate partner violence. The program is delivered in partnership with local faith leaders, who guide couples through...

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health

ComPAS: Combined Protocol for Acute Malnutrition Study

South Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Mali, Chad

The current malnutrition treatment is inaccessible for 4 out of 5 acutely malnourished children globally. A new combined approach is simpler, less expensive, & offers more comprehensive treatment, with the...

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other

Dioptra

Dioptra simplifies the process of conducting cost analyses, helping humanitarian and development actors make use of limited resources in a transparent and effective way.

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economic-wellbeing

Match

Jordan

Working to counter the high rates of unemployment that follow mass displacement, the Match project in Jordan is testing a set of new innovations for placing vulnerable populations and refugees...

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education

Ahlan Simsim

In this historic effort, IRC and Sesame Workshop have partnered to help children whose lives have been uprooted by the war in Syria to build brighter futures.

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More than 500 million people live in a setting of fragility, conflict or violence; and by 2030, almost 350 million people will live in extreme poverty in these settings, constituting two-thirds of the extreme poor worldwide. Yet the financing deficit for people affected by violent conflict is growing, and what humanitarian finance is available tends to be short-term, fragmented, and slow to react when conflict erupts. Despite years of hype, the potential of new financing approaches for people affected by violent conflict remains largely unfulfilled.

The Defining and Driving Innovative Finance project, funded by USAID and implemented by IRC’s Airbel Impact Lab, aims to (i) map the fragmented innovative finance landscape; (ii) design pilot-ready financing innovations for people affected by violent conflict; and (iii) contribute to the emerging community of practice in this field.

This is the first project that aims to design new financing solutions for people affected by violent conflict, building on recent advances in financing for natural disasters. Airbel will develop innovative finance pilots in three areas. First, we will identify opportunities to use well-established financial instruments – like insurance – to save lives and livelihoods that would otherwise have been lost to violent conflict, shrinking the need for aid. Second, we will build a pipeline of investment opportunities that both improve lives and generate financial returns for investors, increasing the total amount and quality of finance available. Third, we will design new ways to make traditional humanitarian grants more efficient, effective, and catalytic, increasing the impact of every dollar available.

June 2021 | Final report

This report is the final output from the Defining and Driving Innovative Finance for Humanitarian Response project. The project was funded by USAID and delivered by the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Airbel Impact Lab, and sought to contribute to more efficient and effective financing systems for humanitarian response by (i) mapping the innovative finance landscape, (ii) designing new innovative finance instruments and approaches, and (iii) contributing to the emerging community of practice. Building on recent progress in financing for natural disasters, we focused in this project on innovative finance for people affected by violent conflict.

Resource

May 2020 | Innovative finance landscaping exercise complete

Building on extensive desk research, expert consultation, interviews with donor agencies and original data analysis, the landscaping exercise developed a new unified

definition of innovative finance and mapped existing financing innovations. Findings from the exercise were shared with partners and are available on request ahead of publication later in 2020.

October 2019 | Project start

The Airbel Impact Lab at IRC is a team of researchers, strategists and innovators committed to the accelerated design, rigorous evaluation and cost-effective scaling of the most impactful solutions supporting people affected by crisis.