Campfire Innovation Greece

Campfire Innovation is giving a voice to the "small & smart" organisations providing dignified refugee aid to thousands of people. They are the role models for humanitarian innovation, putting efficiency at the service of dignity for all displaced people. Migration will be the challenge of a generation. With 65.5m million people displaced already, and climate change playing an increasing role in displacement, refugee aid is under more pressure than ever to deliver dignified and humane conditions to millions across the world. But, with growing donor fatigue towards traditional humanitarian actors and images of misery spread around the world by media, this challenge seems overw... read more Campfire Innovation is giving a voice to the "small & smart" organisations providing dignified refugee aid to thousands of people. They are the role models for humanitarian innovation, putting efficiency at the service of dignity for all displaced people. Migration will be the challenge of a generation. With 65.5m million people displaced already, and climate change playing an increasing role in displacement, refugee aid is under more pressure than ever to deliver dignified and humane conditions to millions across the world. But, with growing donor fatigue towards traditional humanitarian actors and images of misery spread around the world by media, this challenge seems overwhelming. The fear that we are not ready to handle such a daunting challenge with the current humanitarian tools is feeding xenophobia and demeaning policies and closing borders across the world. We want to change this discussion from fear to hope and innovation. The aid sector is at a turning point and humanitarian innovation is more important than ever. While traditional actors have the scale, smaller organisations are valuable local partners and an alternative vision of humanitarian interventions led by passion, creativity and an entrepreneurial approach. We've focused our work on the grassroots community in Greece and the innovation that is being created on the front lines of migration since 2015. These include refugee-led initiatives, small non-profits, volunteer groups and social enterprised. Our activities are centred around making the work of the most effective organisations visible and bringing them the tools to grow their capacity. We have seen their impact in Greece and now want to explore the work done by grassroots organisations around the world. Using a carefully developed assessment methodology, we seek to identify the most impactful and sustainable solutions developed by small initiatives. We've mapped over 100 organisations and have selected 80 to join our community. We then provide them with tools to grow their ability to help. These tools include collections of best practices, access to fundraising and training opportunities, and our recently launched "Impact Platform", a Campfire Innovation-built online tool to measure the performance and impact of small organisations. All our tools and services are specifically designed with the needs of small organisations in mind, giving them solutions to pressing problems while they keep their operations rolling, providing help to an estimated 5,000+ refugees and asylum seekers. Beyond capacity building, what small organisations lack is visibility. We have been testing new ways to make that one of our core services, from our social media and speaking opportunities to direct representation at municipal and UNHCR level. We are present at all levels of aid coordination (INGO/UNHCR clusters, municipality and grassroots) and have brought their stories to stages, publications and universities such as Techfugees, RefugeesDeeply, TEDx and the University of Oxford. Our goal is to create content for each of the organisations in our network to spread their work beyond the local refugee community. There is an increasing demand in media for good stories and stories of social innovators. Using simple photo and video formats that matches our identity as a "boots on the ground" organisation, we want to take viewers directly where things are happening and shed light on what humanitarian aid can look like. Combined with our in-depth knowledge of these organisations, we are not only spreading the message that small & smart organisations are inspiring but that they can be organised, efficient, sustainable and strong actors in the field. People displaced by conflict, persecution or climate change and scrambling for survival have the right to humane and effective help. By changing the narrative of what a small organisation is, we aim to encourage larger NGOs, donors and authorities to cooperate more with smaller actors and work together towards innovative and dignified aid.