In celebration of International Women’s Day 2019, UNDP Lesotho is seeking stories of innovation led by women and youth in Lesotho. In line with the UNDP Administrator’s speech on IWD2019, these stories will provide information on how women and youth in Lesotho are contributing to livelihoods development, transformation of lives at household and community levels, and maintaining peace and social coherence.

Stories of grassroots innovations will identify life ‘hacks[1]’ emerging from ordinary life and used to address the bottlenecks of our daily lives. The resulting ideas and innovations will be reviewed and shortlisted for validation through the UNDP Accelerator Lab (A-Lab), with selected cases published into a UNDP compendium on  Innovations in Lesotho, in August 2019.

For more information, and to submit your innovation story, e-mail to Ms Cassy Harvey at cassy.harvey@undp.org  All submission must be made using this form, with the title ‘Women’s and Youth innovations in Lesotho - 2019’ in subject. The deadline for all submissions is 30^th  April 2019.

About the UNDP Accelerator Labs (A-Labs)

The UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021 embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and rising inequalities pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the national development priorities.

As a global strategy to ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces, UNDP will implement Country Accelerator Lab Network in 60 countries worldwide, including Lesotho. The Accelerator Labs (A-Labs) are intended to be the fastest learning network to deploy new approaches to address emerging problems at country level. Utilizing some of the grassroots and in-country generated solutions and innovations, the Labs will mobilize a wide array of partnerships to contribute to knowledge, expertise and resources, to ensure strategic and relevant advisory and support.

[1] Innovative solutions to everyday challenges, which have proven useful