Jordan | Understanding Humanitarian Innovation: RIL on #HikayatAthar
Watch the podcast episode where our Head of Programs, Ruba Hijazi, tells the RIL story in Arabic. Hosted by Al Manar Foundation.
Innovation Story | From Unsafe Water to A More Affordable Household
An innovation story from WaterKit, a U-RIL supported initiative.
Innovation Story | How Storytelling is Inspiring Syrian Children to Protect the Environment
How storytelling is inspiring Syrian children to protect their environment? Check out the story of Lamiaa, an innovator supported through our Made by Syrians program.
Innovation Story | From the Ground Up: How RaySat Brings Precision to Syrian Farmers
What does locally-led innovation look like in one of the world's most challenging humanitarian contexts? RaySat offers a compelling answer. Built by two Syrian innovators after eight years of fieldwork, RaySat translates satellite data into simple, practical irrigation recommendations for smallholder farmers — helping them save water, cut costs, and improve yields even in low-connectivity environments.
SomRIL | Project Documentary: Turning Waste into Value
This short documentary is under the Social Plastics for Economic Development project led by Response Innovation Lab, together with Engineers without Borders Norway, World Vision Somalia, and the Somali Resilience Programme (host of Somali Response Innovation Lab), with funding support from Innovation Norway.
Organizing the Mess: System Innovation in Fragile and Resource-Constrained Contexts
Brought to you by Liban Mohamed, a thought piece reflecting on the livelihoods behind “messiness”.
#PostRILx25 | Reflections on Building Local Humanitarian Innovation Ecosystem by Hana Kaise Abdi
Bilow Capital is an innovation project supported by the Somali Response Innovation Lab through the FIRM Challenge 2024. In this piece, Co-founder and General Partner Hana Kaise Abdi—also a speaker at RILx25 on the “Local Innovation Ecosystems” panel—shares her insights on what it takes for a local innovation ecosystem to truly thrive.
#PostRILx25 | Climate Smart Agriculture Strategies: The Case of South Sudan
Climate-smart agriculture isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a lifeline for farmers on the frontlines of climate change. In this piece from a South Sudan perspective, we explore what truly makes a solution “climate-smart,” from boosting productivity and resilience to cutting emissions and protecting natural resources. We look at which food-system actors can drive this shift, what farmers in resource-poor, climate-affected areas are actually asking for, and whether current innovations match their needs.
Small Machine, Big Change: Navigating Humanitarian Innovation with Purpose and Partnership
An inspiring story of Navjot and The Washing Machine Project, and his messages to the next-gen innovators and the broader humanitarian innovation ecosystem.
Congratulations, Khalid!
Great news from Khalid Hashi, an innovator we’ve been proud to support over the years!
The Obama Foundation has just announced that Khalid will join its eighth cohort of Obama Scholars — a group of 11 emerging leaders from around the world who will participate in the program at Columbia University in New York City.
Impact Video | RIL x OGOW Health
Watch the impact video telling the story of OGOW Health - supported by RIL - and how it contributes to heath care in Somalia.
RIL Story | Celebrating Resilience and Innovation: Ddokolo Distributors Atom Uganda Limited
Inspired by the term “Ddokolo,” a slang word symbolizing resilience and cultural identity from Northern Uganda, the enterprise has grown under the stewardship of Ms. Winfred Nanungi. Today, Ddokolo is a guiding light of hope, blending innovation, community development, and social impact into its core operations.
RIL Story | Sowing Hope: A Refugee's Odyssey of Empowerment and Change
A story showcasing how U-RIL partners with social innovators in the community to drive positive changes.
Innovator Highlight: Prum Ventures
In the heart of Uganda, a transformative story unfolds—Prum Ventures, a beacon of innovation and compassion, is rewriting the narrative of community well-being. This is the inspiring chronicle of Walter Dunga and Prudence Mucunguzi, visionary entrepreneurs on a mission to combat micronutrient deficiencies and reshape the health landscape of the region.
Kumwe Hub releases video on Rainbow Health Food support
RIL Affiliate Facility Kumwe Hub has been supporting Rwandan social enterprise Rainbow Health Food with critical investment capital. This funding has allowed the company to scale up its business of providing nutrient-rich foods to school children. That story is told in the video below.
Refugee-led Innovations in Uganda: the Innovations we Need
In Uganda, refugee-led organizations (RLOs) are developing innovative solutions to everyday problems found throughout their settlements and host communities. In this blog post we shine a spotlight on 13 RLOs creating, testing, and providing new solutions for refugees and others.
Learning from a savings group digitisation pilot in Uganda
Financial inclusion efforts and savings groups are common interventions in humanitarian and development programming. Individually or combined they help promote savings, increase access to credit and ultimately, build self-reliance. With more commercial and mainstream financial services moving online, there are also efforts to do the same at the community level. With this in mind, Ugandan company Akaboxi developed a way to help digitise village savings and loan associations (VSLAs) and link them to banks and other finance institutions. Akaboxi hoped their innovation would not only help people save but also help them build a base from which they could access commercial financial services in the future.
Boosting interest in open source in Uganda
Starting around May 2022, RIL and Audiopedia Foundation ran three interactive events in Kampala. These events also included developing interesting case studies of open source in action and running a contribution competition. Through these events it was hoped that existing open-source users and developers would find humanitarian and development actors to partner with and that more people, regardless of their background, would feel more confident to try using open-source software.
The Journey So Far
Five years ago, Response Innovation Lab launched its first platform in Jordan, kicking off an adventure that continues to prove exciting and essential to this day. To mark this milestone and the start of a new phase in our initiative, we wanted to share with you some of the most noteworthy accomplishments of our amazing colleagues and partners. Together, we have grown RIL into the largest network of field-based humanitarian innovation platforms in the world and have collectively demonstrated that decentralizing innovation processes, strengthening response-level ecosystems, promoting locally-developed solutions and encouraging horizontal scaling can improve humanitarian and “nexus” programming while also delivering on the promises of the Grand Bargain.
Meet the winners of the Nutrition Innovation Challenge Fund
In 2021, LINS issued a call for nutrition innovations/solutions that are locally rooted, market-driven, sustainable, with satisfactory proof of concept, and less dependent on humanitarian aid flows. The call sought to support quality solutions to at least one of the major challenges of malnutrition