As remittances are an important part of the economic impact of migration, in Serbia we're working on designing a proof of concept for remittance transfers over blockchain. The program's goal is to find a cheaper cross-border transfer system which cuts out intermediaries such as Western Union, and targeted toward specific needs in Serbia. In this project, we are working together with AidTech - a blockchain startup, one among ten finalists of the European Commission 2016 Social Innovation Competition. ​

To tackle the challenges and negative impacts of long-term youth unemployment, UNDP together with Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and the Government of Serbia is designing a Youth Employment Bond pilot with the Social Impact Bond (SIB) mechanism. Social Impact Bond is a result-based financial instrument for impact investing, where private investments are intended to create a positive social or environmental impact as well as a financial return. The first SIB was launched in 2010 in UK and by now over 60 SIBs have been commissioned across Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States. SIBS have raised over $200m of capital and touched over 90,000 lives in the areas such as employment, homelessness, health, child welfare, education and crimin...

Alternative Finance Lab (AltFin Lab) is helping UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina and their national and regional partners in the Vrbas region in designing an Forecast Based Financing mechanism that seeks to attract insurance investment into addressing the risk on the basis of the forecast based triggers. Based on the Red Cross/Crescent Climate Center Forecast Based Financing model UNDP Bosnia and Herzegovina is piloting implementation of using weather forecasting models for raising financial support of regions that might be hit by extreme weatherUltimately our intention is not only to minimize the risk and secure funds before a disaster has received sufficient media support but also to test the feasibility of attracting new sources of funding (t...

UNDP'S 1ST GLOBAL CROWDFUNDING ACADEMY UNDP's 1st Global Crowdfunding Academy took place in December of 2015 in Istanbul. Inspiring projects that ranged from community green solutions to peacebuilding and poverty reduction were presented by 11 teams from around the world. Global Crowdfunding Academies are envisaged as 3-6 month service where the team identifies a pipeline of potential ideas, develops ideas into crowdfunding campaign and provides hands-on support during the campaign. The team is moving into the area of setting regional support centers with the best candidates by providing education, training and by connecting local actors, diaspora, start-up community, and social enterprises. UNDP'S 2ND GLOBAL CROWDFUNDING ACADEMY The intere...

​Ana and Maja are two girls whose great passion is manufacturing quality beer. Up to March 2016, their passion was just a hobby, but then they came to an idea of founding the first women-run cooperative craft brewery in Croatia - Brlog. Craft beer is a preservative free, unfiltered and unpasteurized beer. Such a beer has higher nutritional and, most people believe, culinary value. Through the crowdfunding campaign, they have collected funds to finance fermenters, bottles, labels and cases. The initial goal was to raise $ 8,000, but with the support of more than 300 backers, they raised more than $ 11,000!Brlog has thus become an operative brewery, which works on the principles of good economics. This means that profit is not the supreme goa...

​ Global Crowdfunding Academy is a program aimed at training UNDP staff to learn to conduct their own crowdfunding campaigns and thus contribute to 2030 Agenda and its goals. The interest for this year's academy was twice as large as last year and can be understood as an indication that new funding mechanisms are beginning to gain larger ground in CO operations across the globe. This year's Global Crowdfunding Academy was conceived as an educational program that brings together two types of teams, so the program includes two types of Academies. This year, 11 different teams from around the world will be educated through this program. Most of the work will be done through webinars and individual consultations, while the campaigns will accomp...

What are the campaigns, what is in the #BigStoriesSmallBusinesses? Take a small A to W quest with Maša and find out! A. stands for Antonov, Ukrainian engineer who constructed the biggest cargo plane in the world, the famous Antonov! Produced in Ukraine. Mašenjka saw it in Zagreb several years ago, once it landed to pick up a transformer for a powerplant . The queue of curious people was the longest queue she has ever seen! Can you imagine how thrilled she was she realised we have another Antonov in one of the teams that is composed of engineers who once worked in the Antonov factory? Now The A. team has created the first electric cargo bike in Ukraine – find out what is their name and try-out the bike when they go out to the crowds with gue...

"How can we finance the next 15 years of development work? In what ways should true innovators be engaged in the development process? How viable is impact investment for business and governments alike?" - these were only a few of the many questions discussed at the very first global summit on impact investment for development, held in Yerevan on March 21-22. The summit, has been hosted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Armenia and INSEAD's Social Impact Initiative as a knowledge partner. Together they have brought together some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs, impact investors and development practitioners. During the two-day event UNDP officials, social entrepreneurs, impact business leaders, representatives...

  On a calm early Saturday morning, with her tiny feet and red hair-locks under her cap, Mašenjka walked swiftly across St. Sofia square. And then down with a funicular to Podil. And then straight along Riviera to Kyiv Hub 4.0. More then thirty curious entrepreneurs waited for her. Fifteen komandas couldn't wait to learn about a whole new world of crowdfunding. Mašenjka was not alone. Little rasta-girl with blond dreadlocks from the Crowdfunding Academy was with her, and two nice and bright comrades from Spilnokosht platform and a cheerful piccola djevushka Italiana. The komandas started pitching: We want school-kids to grow trees and turn grey destroyed areas into green woods. We want anti-cafe in Slavyansk to have a wonderful yard an...

Buba bar - extra chromosome for extra coffee'' crowdfunding campaign was launched with the aim of opening the first coffee house in Croatia to employ people with Down Syndrome. The Bubamara Association needed to raise 10,000 USD to make Buba Bar a reality.Their mission was to improve the quality of life for the intellectually challenged and to evolve the Croatian societal views and acceptance of these individuals into society. With Buba bar project, they wanted to give young adults with disabilities the possibility to live their lives just like every other person.We have collected 16 821$ through this campaign, and the money was invested in space arrangement and furnishing. Buba Bar is now completely adapted for people with disabilities and...

In six months, after a successful pilot in the Korail slum , we helped students who were barely familiar with computers to transform into IT freelancers, earning an average of $100 USD per month. Following up on that success, on October 9th UNDP Bangladesh launched the Youth Employment through Skills (YES) campaign . Today, we are raising money to build our first pilot classroom. If successful, we will expand this programme to 100,000 students across Bangladesh. The Inspiration for Youth Employment through Skills (YES) Despite the huge gains that Bangladesh has made addressing poverty, almost 1/3 of the population, or 45 million, still live below the poverty line. Not only that, but, approximately 41% of Bangladeshi youth are NEET : Not Emp...

​ UNDP Serbia is experimenting impact investing through Youth Employment Bond together with Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. The high cost of youth unemployment The youth unemployment rate is very high in Serbia, which requires more attention and also innovative ways to tackle the challenges. The youth unemployment rate in 2015 was 43.2 %, which is significantly above the general unemployment rate in the country (18.2 % for the population of working age 15-64). Having 4 out of 10 young people (ages 15-30) neither in employment, education or training (NEET youth) costs the Government over EUR 1.6 billion a year. You read it right- EUR 1.6 billion. This figure includes costs of various unemployment related social benefits and foregone income ta...

In a school in a town South of Lebanon, a young boy rushes out of class on a Friday excited to get home and start the weekend. He exits the school gate onto a crowded road that leads to a concealed curve where cars rush by. There is no pavement, no footpaths, and no security measures. The child runs up and down the street looking for his mother, stuck in the usual heavy traffic around the school…  Last year alone, 83 children under 14 years of age lost their lives in road accidents. Many of these accidents took place within the school's perimeter. Live Lebanon is launching the Green Light zone Project to reduce the number of casualties by providing a safe environment for students within and around the school. Children In Direct Danger ...

​ The idea of tackling the problem of low fruit intake in Moldova came during a banal lunch. We were intrigued by the paradox that in a country that is a regional "garden", abundant in fruits and vegetables, the average consumption of these goodies constituted only 60% of the minimum WHO recommended quantity. We then thought about connecting the private sector represented by the fruit producers with the educational institutions, targeting the young generations of our country, where the culture of fruit consumption is just about to be shaped. Our mission was to increase children fruit consumption, by offering them local fresh apples, sliced and delivered in an attractive package, thus making the consumption process "cool" for them. The chall...

If you need just money, go to the bank and don't use crowdfunding. Use crowdfunding if you need awareness building, campaigning, initiating debate, attract other funders and build up your community. When we started our first campaign for an energy independent school in Croatia, we didn't have the slightest idea where crowdfunding would take us. From conducting a successful campaign to setting up Crowdfunding Academy and UNDP Alternative Finance Lab , helping to launch more than 15 campaigns in 10+ countries - crowdfunding has definitely taken a hold on us. In the UK alone, crowdfunding for civic causes has gained $30 million over the last five years . But crowdfunding is so much more than about getting the required financing for your projec...

​ Seems like the last few months have gone away in a blink of an eye – that's how long it passed since a group of seven started to plan the Crowdfunding Academy project at small UNDP office in Croatia. Many e-mails, social media posts, new faces, public presentations, crowdfunding facts and working hours later, we are starting to realize the real size of a rock that we've managed to move by successfully bringing this project to life. Within the Crowdfunding Academy educational programme we gathered experts in business, financing, marketing, social media, journalism, strategy planning and many other fields, along with more or less successful crowdfunding campaigners from Croatia. They've shared their experiences through three modules tacklin...

Enter your text  Nothing could beat the pleasure of starring at a packed auditorium while I was waiting for the opening talk of the Zagreb Crowdfunding Convention and thinking back of the months of preparations behind us. Industry experts, NGO's and private companies, government representative and numerous curious individuals – we got them all at one place to discuss future of crowdfunding in our region! We've been intensively focusing our work on a variety of crowdfunding activities in order to climb closer to the goal we've set more than one year ago, when we co-founded the Crowdfunding Academy . That was to contribute to the development of a crowdfunding market in Croatia. Our Zagreb Crowdfunding Convention event nowadays comes as a...

Bangladesh is a country with a population of over 160 million people, and millions of youth not in education, employed, or in training. On the other side, the need for good jobs in Bangladesh is high. The Youth Employment through Skills (YES) initiative came up with the solution for this huge problem. YES is an educational programme that works with Bangladeshi youth to teach them basic coding skills. Students participate in a 6-month training course, which is led by a skilled coding instructor. They learn how to use computers, perform basic coding, and market themselves on freelancing web portals. ​ YES launched the crowdfunding campaign in November 2016 and, together with their partNers (Standard Chartered, Coders Trust, bKash, Better Shel...

Guzgef Solar School project aimed at improving education facilities in rural Tajikistan and provide a better education for children. Almost 70% of the population of Tajikistan live in rural and mountainous areas where electricity is available for no more than three hours a day. The country's lack of consistent grid power means that it is too dark and cold to study in the school during the winter months. As a result, students miss many days of school, making it difficult for them to receive a good education and graduate. At the same time, the country enjoys 280-330 sunny days a year, so the team behind this project created a plan to help resolve the problem of the energy crisis and provide an opportunity to use renewable energy solutions. ​ ...

Elderly centre in Balykchy town in Kyrgyzstan was set up by a local non-governmental organisation to provide a gathering place for retired and elderly people who don't have relatives or access to a social network. But, with temperatures dipping way below zero, the centre is largely inaccessible during late fall and winter season due to the poor heating system. This created a break in an otherwise dynamic routine, keeping its visitors contained to their own homes, alone during the colder months of the year. The team behind this project wanted to change that, so they launched a crowdfunding campaign in March 2016 to make the elderly centre energy efficient. With the support of many backers, the UNDP Catalytic and Scaling-up Facility for Europ...