Three years ago at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, world leaders and humanitarian agencies including the Start Network committed to scale up support for locally-led humanitarian action. What has been the progress since then? What milestones has the humanitarian achieved done since then?
The monthly risk briefing provides information on global weather, human and health events where members may consider using the Start Fund Anticipation process.
June witnessed the first ever alert and allocation for Paraguay, as well as the first anticipation alert in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Read how the Start Fund responded to several under-reported crises during the month.
For nomadic herder families in the Mongolian grasslands, living in extreme conditions is the norm. But when it comes to Dzud, the Mongolian term for a bitterly cold winter weather phenomenon, the impact can be greater than many are able to prepare. Anticipating how changes in the weather and environment will impact their lives is key.
This is my last day with the Start Network. It has been an unimaginable privilege to lead this effort over the past 9 years, and I am leaving with a sense of humility, pride and gratitude.
Scaling sustainable innovations is a critical issue for humanitarian innovation. The added complexity and barriers faced by innovators who work in crisis areas, or in areas that are building resilience to crisis, make this already difficult task even more challenging. Far too few promising innovations have gone to scale. A failure to select, validate and implement appropriate revenue models is one of the key reasons for this. This creates a need for new insights regarding the journey to scale for innovators who lack commercial business opportunities to fund and grow their innovations.
Entrepreneur Ahmad Nouh lives and works in Jordan, currently home to some 761,100 refugees, mostly from Syria. Like Ahmad, they fled the brutal eight-year conflict across the border in an attempt to re-establish their lives. Read about Ahmad's innovative solution to rising rental costs in Jordan.
Every year on the 20th of June, World Refugee Day marks the strength, courage and perseverance of refugees. It is important to recognise the difficulties that refugees face, and work towards a world where all refugees have accessibility to assistance and protection. So, how does the Start Network respond to the needs of refugees and migrants?
Innovation and innovative practices are often seen as dependent upon new and transformative technologies. In this guest piece, as part of the Humanitarian Futures newsletter, Professor Randolph Kent shares the transformative work of FOREWARN members to meet present and future challenges in the humanitarian sector.
May saw a quieter month for the Start Fund with only two Start Fund alerts activated in a global context of higher-profile alerts.
