By Leila Toplic, NLG Tech Task Force lead

Using design thinking and collective impact to create opportunities
for conflict-affected youth.

In a previous blog post, I reflected on the critical needs of conflict-affected youth: education, participation, and access to dignified work. I detailed the contexts in which these young people live. And I posed the question: How can we start solving these complex problems in real time? U.N. agencies, international NGOs, and local Community-Based Organizations (CBOs), are all responding as best they can, but the overall number of youth that need assistance remains high.

Humanitarian and private sector organizations must work together to create innovative solutions that scale to address the magnitude of needs. That is my personal experience, and it’s also core to the work I am doing with the No Lost Generation (NLG) Tech Task Force, leading collaboration between the humanitarian sector and the private sector, with the focus on tech-enabled programs for conflict-affected youth.

In this post, I will describe how the NLG Tech Task Force is working with private sector companies, humanitarian organizations, and conflict-affected youth to co-create solutions to the challenges they face, including education, livelihoods, participation, and representation by applying lean and user-centered design, and leveraging technology where appropriate. While the work is in progress and solutions are being developed as I write this post, it’s part of our approach to share broadly what we’re working on and what we’re learning so that others may benefit.

Start with the problem you want to solve
In September 2017, NLG Tech Task Force brought together private and humanitarian sector stakeholders at the NLG Silicon Valley Symposium in San Francisco to collaborate on addressing four challenges that conflict-affected youth face. Humanitarian organizations and impacted youth researched these four challenges and brought them to life with videos. Understanding these issues was a starting point for envisioning what it would take to empower them to create a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities.

There's more! Read the full post at the NetHope Solutions Center. 

Filed Under: No Lost Generation Tech Task Force