With the LINS project, RIL Uganda identified alternative solutions to the traditional distribution of free and imported nutritious foods (corn-soya blend/porridge) through a participative and competitive process.
Learn more about LINS here

Participation in the MIT D-Lab’s Co-Creation Summit in Arua, Uganda, which promoted locally designed solutions to energy and livelihoods challenges in refugee settlements.

The Open Source for Equality initiative aims to promote the development and use of open source that contributes to the Sustainable Development Goals with a focus on health, education and equality. In this video we get to hear the experience of how five organizations are using open source for their benefit.

Read about the experience from innovator Saul Kabali with Response Innovation Lab developing SafeBangle Technologies for the past two years, a wearable technology for immediate reporting of violence attempts against women and girls.

Hello Caafi! is a groundbreaking telehealths solution from Somalia, designed and led by two remarkable women innovators.

Learn about the Uganda RIL’s Kampala Impact Day events, and the three innovators nominated by the team.

Our labs are supporting several innovations that directly benefit refugee populations, learn more about these innovators and their pursuit to support their communities and others.

Field Ready and Response Innovation Lab both aim to inspire and guide disaster response practitioners to develop and test new ideas and implement proven innovations. With the support of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, RIL and Field Ready organized a digital convene event on the topic of locally manufacturing Covid-19 preventive materials, including personal protective equipment, and with an emphasis on the use of 3-D printers in May 2021.

>>> Learn about the outcomes of this convener.

Response Innovation Lab (RIL) and 48percent.org are announcing a strategic partnership to scale further and support innovations around access to connectivity in humanitarian and emergency contexts.

While this pandemic is not without precedent in human history, the novel coronavirus is, as it has fundamentally disrupted and changed our global systems. From history, we learn that during difficult and challenging times, the world and our communities innovate in unique and interesting ways. The stories that come to mind now are more of ad-hoc solutions to very immediate dangers. These tales of quick thinking and decisive action, as well as their aftermath, draw better parallels with the present that can help us see a new way forward.

The case for innovation in the Humanitarian sector is well known, as is the importance of investing in new innovations and the need to adapt and adopt innovations that already exist to make wide-ranging improvements in people's lives. For a long-time, the focus of many humanitarian donors and organisations has been on creating new innovations in the hope of making significant change across the sector. This is an incredibly important focus, and area resources need to be allocated too. However, just as important, donors and organisations need to focus on the adoption of innovations that already work to create a significant change with people affected by the crisis.

The Hiddo & Hirsi educational videos are the first series of its kind for Somali-speaking children. Together, the innovator Poet Nation Media, the Somali Response Innovation Lab, and its local host World Vision Somalia developed a segment called Hiddo & Hirsi – the Protector Twins. These twins envision themselves as superheroes protecting their community from the Coronavirus and show how they deal with the challenges of closed school, psycho-social and mental health awareness, gender inclusivity and handicap representation, and much more!

The Response Innovation Lab (RIL) has developed an Innovation M&E Toolkit to gather evidence around humanitarian innovations to better understand whether it’s having the desired positive impact. This video is a short case study for the toolkit’s use in Somalia to gather evidence around the OGOW EMR digital medical records, health pilot project with World Vision.

Khalid Hashi, founder of the Somali-based OGOW EMR health record innovation talks about the lessons he has learned as a social entrepreneur in a humanitarian setting.

Saul Kabali, who started as an intern at the Uganda Response Innovation Lab shares the 6 lessons he learned from his time at the lab, and how it has impacted the growth of his innovation - SafeBangle.

Written by Jodi Ashley Fleming, University of Copenhagen.

Collaborative private sector-INGO partnerships allow both organizations to combine their valuable expertise and create contextual innovative solutions for a humanitarian and community-based response; something more essential than ever as new types of crises emerge globally. This qualitative study investigated Ugandan private sector attitudes towards partnerships with INGOs to co-create community-based innovations.

A challenge faced by many refugees and rural community members in Uganda is the safety of saving money and the opportunities to access loans. Refugees frequently do not have access to banks, nor are they able to open bank accounts due to a lack of credit history or collateral. Not having a secure place to store money, makes saving challenging and risky. Akaboxi is tackling these problems straight on and transforming opportunities for financial service providers across Uganda.