Innovators or amateurs? The role of do-it-yourself-aid

Anne-Meike Fechter (University of Sussex) gives a talk for the Co-Creation and Participatory Approaches to Humanitarian Innovation session. This presentation investigates the phenomenon of ‘Do-it-yourself-aid’ organisations in Cambodia, describing the ways in which their small-scale and transnational nature enables them to implement innovative approaches to local problems, and suggesting this trend as an example of innovation that might occur in the space created by transnational collaborations between foreign and local small-scale actors. Co-Creation and Participatory Approaches to Humanitarian Innovation This panel explores theories and approaches to engaging in participatory work and co-creation with affected populations and vulnerable groups, focusing on interactions between ‘transnational’ organisations and local actors.

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The Humanitarian Innovation Conference 2015, #HIP2015, was hosted by the Humanitarian Innovation Project, in partnership with the World Humanitarian Summit, in Oxford on 17 and 18 July 2015. The theme of the conference was ‘facilitating innovation’. As interest and dialogue around humanitarian innovation continues to expand, conference participants were invited to explore the challenges of creating an enabling environment for humanitarian innovation. In the lead up to the World Humanitarian Summit 2016, a key focus of the conference explored how we enable innovation by and for affected communities. What does it mean to take a human-centred approach seriously, and to engage in co-creation with affected populations? It also sought to examine what facilitation means across the wider humanitarian ecosystem, and how we can better convene the collective talents of people within and across traditional and non-traditional humanitarian actors.