Learning
What we do
Innovation Learning supports individuals and teams to build skills, learn from real-world innovation, and generate evidence that informs better decisions. Our work focuses on two interconnected areas:
Building capacity through open learning
Monitoring, evaluation & evidence for learning
Building capacity through open learning
We offer accessible learning opportunities for people working on innovation, displacement, and within the humanitarian sector. Our capacity-building initiatives are practical, applied, and designed to build skills that can be used immediately in real-world contexts.
The UNHCR Innovation Fellowship is our annual, hands-on learning journey for UNHCR staff and select partner organizations. It equips participants with practical innovation skills and supports them to apply new approaches directly to real challenges in operations, divisions, and communities. The Fellowship embeds people-centred innovation into everyday work, moving beyond one-off projects. Fellows become ambassadors for innovation and lasting positive change within and beyond UNHCR.
The Innovation Alumni Network connects alumni of UNHCR Innovation programmes into a global community of practice. Through shared learning, collaboration, and reflection on real-world experience, the Network helps sustain innovation momentum and translate ideas into impact.
Innovation-friendly monitoring and evaluation helps teams understand how ideas evolve, what changes through iteration, and how solutions are developed in partnership with forcibly displaced and stateless people. Rather than measuring success against fixed targets alone, we track learning, adaptation, and emerging impact to inform decisions on scale-up, replication, or redesign. Key principles include: Evidence to inform decisions, not just reporting; learning from both success and failure; iteration, adaptation, and real-time feedback; meaningful participation and accountability.
Innovation learning, by the numbers
Stories, publications & resources
Get involved in innovation learning
Join learning events, explore open courses, or connect with communities of practice shaping innovation across humanitarian contexts.