The IFRC Solferino Academy’s Think Tank in Rome gathered Red Cross, Red Crescent leaders and sector experts to explore how humanitarian action can keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Emphasizing decisive optimism, adaptive leadership, and trust in communities, the event reframed uncertainty as a shared opportunity for innovation and solidarity.
Supported by the IFRC Solferino Academy’s Limitless program, Nalukwago Naswirah founded Bassattu Innovations to transform Ugandan livelihoods. Her initiatives, Fuel Her with Waste and Herharvest, provide cleaner cooking solutions and climate-smart seeds. Read how youth innovation is driving health, resilience, and economic stability for rural and refugee families.
Youth innovators from the IFRC Solferino Academy’s Limitless Youth Innovation Academy are transforming water access in Nigeria. Through the Geotek Geo-WaterGuard project at the University of Jos, young people improve safe water, WASH, resilience, inclusion, and community health by using real-time water quality monitoring and youth-led local innovation.
The Global Innovation Partnership between the IFRC Solferino Academy and Monash University Malaysia formalises a long-standing collaboration that connects academic expertise, humanitarian innovation and the creativity of young people across the Red Cross Red Crescent network. Launched at Monash University Malaysia on 25 November, the partnership creates new opportunities for students, researchers, volunteers and humanitarian practitioners to co-design anticipatory, community-led and evidence-informed solutions to emerging humanitarian risks.
IFRC Solferino Academy supports the Swedish Red Cross to accelerate innovation, responsible AI, and digital transformation, strengthening strategic foresight, anticipatory governance, agile ways of working, user‑centred design, and data‑informed decisions. This collaboration advances Strategy 2030, builds leadership capability, and enables ethical, trusted, community‑centred technologies to meet emerging humanitarian challenges at scale.
Youth Volunteer Natukunda Bernard leads an innovative blood donation awareness project in Uganda’s refugee settlements. Supported by IFRC Solferino Academy, this community-driven initiative leverages AI technology, translation tools, and digital storytelling to combat misinformation, promote safe blood donation, and strengthen humanitarian community engagement and local innovation.
The IFRC Solferino Academy Leadership Bootcamp in Panama’s rainforest brought together Latin American and Caribbean humanitarian leaders to strengthen adaptive leadership, resilience and systems thinking. Through experiential learning and collaborative foresight, participants co-created strategies for sustainable humanitarian impact, advancing innovative leadership and solidarity across National Societies in the Americas.
Misinformation is a growing threat in Burundi, but young people are stepping up to confront it. Olivier Iradukunda and his team of “Jeunes Détectives de l’info” are training youth to detect, analyze, and challenge false narratives — turning misinformation into an opportunity for resilience and trust.
We are delighted to announce an exciting partnership between the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and Monash University Malaysia. This collaboration sets the stage for the establishment of an IFRC Solferino Academy Global Innovation Partnership in Southeast Asia, expanding on the success of IFRC’s partnership with Monash University Australia—which led to the joint youth innovation initiative, Limitless, winning Silver at the 2022 Global Good Awards.
The digital landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by advances in AI and emerging technologies, alongside internal shifts in skills and workforce dynamics.
As we reach the midpoint of Strategy 2030, we are entering a new humanitarian era. A complex mass of emerging trends is changing the world around us and affecting our ability to act…
The concern for an increasingly polarised world has emerged over the first five years of the Strategy period as a more significant challenge impacting the work of National Societies. This is affecting the ability of many National Societies (NS) to operate with neutrality and to maintain independence, but also catalysing new threats.