The world’s challenges are becoming increasingly complex, interconnected and fast-moving. Responding to them requires more than new ideas. It requires a United Nations that can continuously adapt, learn and scale solutions that deliver measurable results.
That ambition sits at the heart of the UN 2.0 and UN80 transformation agendas, which call on the UN system to strengthen its data, digital technology and innovation capabilities to better serve people and planet, while working to become more agile, efficient and effective.
Innovation, however, is not measured by the number of pilots launched or prototypes developed. Its true value lies in what happens after the initial spark — when promising ideas are tested in real-world settings, refined through feedback, adopted by partners and ultimately scaled to improve lives.
That is the role the UN Global Pulse Accelerator Programme is designed to play. By combining strategic funding with mentorship, technical guidance and opportunities for cross-sector collaboration, the Accelerator is a catalyst that helps UN innovation teams bridge one of the most difficult stages of innovation: moving from promising pilots to sustainable, scalable solutions.
Months after receiving the Scale Catalyst grant, three teams from the third cohort — FAO’s DIGICHILD, OHCHR’s Civic Space Pulse and WFP’s School Connect — are demonstrating what that journey looks like in practice. Their stories reveal that scaling innovation is rarely linear, but that with the right support, partnerships and persistence, digital innovations can evolve from promising concepts into solutions that strengthen institutions, improve decision-making and deliver greater impact for communities around the world.
Deepening reach and impact
For millions of children around the world, child labour remains a hidden challenge, particularly within agricultural supply chains. To address this, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) developed DIGICHILD (Digital Geographic Information for Child Labour Risk Estimation), a spatial index that combines georeferenced data to identify child labour hotspots, understand risk drivers and help governments and businesses target interventions where they are needed most.
Today, DIGICHILD is moving beyond successful pilots in Uganda and Honduras into a new phase of geographic expansion. With support from the UN Global Pulse Accelerator Programme, adaptation has begun in Nepal, while additional funding from Germany is enabling expansion into Peru and further field validation in Honduras.
The Accelerator grant played an important role in making this progress possible. It funded critical consultation missions in Nepal, allowing the team to better understand local child labour dynamics in tea plantations, while also supporting the development of guidance to help private-sector partners use the platform more effectively.
The innovation is already influencing decision-making. In Uganda, the index has been published on the government’s website and is being used to inform new strategies and legislation on child labour. Civil society organizations have also found value in using a government-recognised indicator to strengthen advocacy efforts, while private companies and financial institutions, such as the World Bank, are exploring how DIGICHILD can support due diligence, transparency and responsible agricultural investment.
The journey has also reinforced important lessons about scaling within the UN system. Government ownership, the team says, is non-negotiable. “Without early and deep government endorsement, the tool will go nowhere,” explained one member of the DIGICHILD team. Success has also depended on understanding local political realities, building trust around a highly sensitive issue and ensuring that DIGICHILD complements — not replaces — existing national systems.
The team’s focus is now on sustaining this momentum by mobilising additional resources, strengthening partnerships and expanding the platform to more countries.
A stronger solution through testing and iteration
Reliable information is essential for protecting civic space and responding to human rights risks. Civic Space Pulse, developed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), uses artificial intelligence to collect and classify information on demonstrations, internet shutdowns, attacks on human rights defenders and other civic space events, enabling more effective monitoring, prevention and accountability.
Since joining the Accelerator Programme, the team has made significant progress toward integrating civic space signals into the Human Rights Data Exchange — a new overarching platform that will serve as the digital backbone and primary vehicle for delivering the Civic Space Pulse and other human rights innovation products and applications externally. After undergoing cybersecurity review, the platform has now been launched, attracting strong interest from civil society organizations eager to contribute data and build a more comprehensive global picture of civic space and human rights signals.
The team’s journey has been one of refinement. Developing a long-term sustainability and revenue model is important, but the team recognised that they needed to focus first on strengthening the product itself. Recognising another important gap, they also brought in a design researcher to better understand how end users experience the platform and where it creates the greatest value.
The Accelerator Programme helped the team think beyond technology. Rather than concentrating solely on data infrastructure, it encouraged them to consider the entire scaling journey, exposing additional capability needs and prompting new investments in design research and user-centred development. As one team member reflected, “the programme provided a holistic perspective that helped us move beyond our specialised technical focus”.
Although it is still too early to measure direct impacts on communities, the platform is already improving how human rights data is integrated across systems, strengthening OHCHR’s protection and prevention work while supporting more informed engagement with Member States. These improvements ultimately create positive downstream effects for journalists, human rights defenders and civil society organizations worldwide.
Perhaps the team’s biggest lesson is that successful digital innovation requires more than good technology. It needs dedicated delivery platforms, protected time for innovation and an organizational culture willing to collaborate beyond institutional boundaries. As the team observed, scaling also requires “freedom from ego” — a willingness to let external partners play leading roles rather than trying to manage every aspect internally.
Turning innovation into a scalable model
For School Connect from the World Food Programme (WFP), better data means better meal provision. School Connect digitises the reporting process for school meal programmes, providing near real-time information that enables programme managers to improve planning, strengthen supply chains and reduce disruptions that prevent children from receiving daily meals.
Already deployed in over 25 across multiple countries, School Connect is now focusing on strengthening the platform itself before expanding its footprint further. The team is improving user experience, developing automated reporting functions and building dashboards that allow governments and partners to access and visualise programme data outside internal UN systems securely.
Those improvements are translating into measurable operational gains. In Ukraine, the platform has delivered an estimated fivefold increase in efficiency. Previously, it took fifteen days to collect, review, and clean the data for the 100 schools participating in School Connect; now a single person can review it in three days. In other words, School Connect’s automation and ready-to-use dashboards allow a single person to review all entries thoroughly in three days instead of sampling data. Across the programme, the number of meals tracked is expected to increase from approximately 120 million last year to 168 million this year — a 58 percent increase in reach within existing countries, even as broader geographic expansion remains constrained by financing.
The Accelerator Programme has also helped the team reframe how they communicate the innovation. Instead of presenting School Connect as simply another digital reporting tool, they now position it as a solution to wider operational challenges, from logistics to programme monitoring. That shift has strengthened conversations with country offices and helped demonstrate the platform’s broader value.
The experience has also highlighted familiar lessons within the UN system. Scaling requires strong headquarters support to break down organizational silos, while sustainable financing remains essential for expanding successful innovations across multiple countries.
Common threads: What the teams learned
Although each innovation addresses a different global challenge, their experiences reveal strikingly similar lessons.
First, innovation never stops evolving. Each team continues to refine its innovative solution, respond to user feedback and adjust strategies based on real-world implementation rather than assuming their initial design was complete.
Second, partnerships remain one of the strongest drivers of scale. Whether collaborating with governments, civil society organizations, country offices or development partners, each team has found that meaningful impact depends on building trusted relationships rather than working alone.
Third, flexibility matters just as much as careful planning. Teams have adapted to shifting political environments, institutional realities, staffing constraints and evolving user needs, demonstrating that successful scaling requires resilience as much as strategy.
Finally, relatively modest grants can unlock much larger opportunities. Beyond the financial resources themselves, Accelerator support created momentum, strengthened strategic thinking, enabled new collaborations and helped teams position themselves for future investment.
The bigger picture
The journeys of DIGICHILD, Civic Space Pulse and School Connect remind us that innovation does not end when a grant is awarded or a programme concludes. Scaling meaningful solutions requires continuous iteration, trusted partnerships, institutional commitment and the willingness to adapt as new opportunities and challenges emerge.
Collectively, these stories demonstrate what transformation looks like in practice. They show how stronger capabilities in digital technology, data and innovation are enabling UN teams to solve problems differently – building smarter solutions, making faster and better-informed decisions, and creating more responsive services for the people they serve.
At a time when the UN is being called upon to deliver greater impact with finite resources, these innovations also illustrate how targeted investment, strategic collaboration and a culture of experimentation can help the UN become more effective, agile and future-ready.
The Accelerator Programme may conclude with each cohort, but the work of innovation continues. As these teams deepen partnerships, refine their solutions and expand their reach, they are helping shape a stronger innovation ecosystem across the UN system: one where promising ideas are not only tested, but translated into sustainable impact.
As UN Global Pulse continues to support new cohorts of innovators, these stories offer both inspiration and a roadmap: innovation is not simply about creating new technologies. It is about building the capabilities, relationships and confidence to transform bold ideas into lasting solutions — accelerating progress towards UN transformation and advancing responsible, human-centred AI and digital innovation that delivers tangible results for people and planet.
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