Collaborative and impactful insights in crisis
Upinion ensures that communities impacted by crises have a voice and influence in decision-making processes.
The mechanism in implementing our approach lies in our Digital Engagement Platform, that allows for community engagement and accountability (CEA) at all stages of the humanitarian program cycle, i.e. during the emergency assessments, planning the response, during implementation and evaluating and learning from the response.
Upinion’s Digital Engagement Platform (DEP) to enhance digital community engagement
Onboard
Upinion establishes representative online communities to engage with frequently, especially in areas where – due to logistical and/or safety reasons- people are hard to reach.
Upinion employs a three-path ‘community growth’ methodology, which include engagement with people via their preferred social media channels, outreach via local partners, and our ‘Upinionator’ method. Upinion combines these three methods in order to engage with the right communities at the right time.
Engage
We have three distinct ways of engaging with communities, namely by gathering their insights, co-creating interventions and advocacy campaigns, and facilitating communities’ real-time participation in high-level events.
Analyse
Upinion has in-house expertise to turn data into easy to understand reports, tailored to its specific target audience. We create detailed reports with local, national and/or regional level analysis. These include protection and livelihoods monitoring reports, scoping exercises, needs assessments, perception studies, impact measurements, and academic research. See also our News section to read more about our latest reports.
Share
Upinion provides accessible, easy to understand information back to the communities it engages with, whether this is in the form of information flyers, reports and/or updates about what happened with the insights they have shared themselves.
Information is compiled in clear and appealing visuals that provide an overview of the results and/or service points where communities can go for further information. At the same time, in order to make insights actionable, Upinion facilitates participatory advocacy and awareness raising campaigns with stakeholders.
Connected communities
Themes
Upinion tackles a variety of themes that occasionally intersect, but each one addresses a unique distinct inequality in humanitarian action.
Accountability to communities
What do communities actually think of the programs and policies designed to help them? How would communities like to be included in humanitarian action and have agency over decision-making that concerns them? Too often, these questions remain not only unanswered, but are not even asked at all.
It is Upinion’s mission to give the community a central role in evaluating the effectiveness of donor countries’ strategies and local and organisations’ approach to aid. This mission contributes to putting those affected by conflict, displacement and disaster at the forefront, and to enhance accountability and responsiveness to the community’s needs and preferences.
Refugee rights
Displaced people across the world lack agency. Upinion combines methods to connect with people on the move, enabling it to follow the journey of refugees and migrants and to provide them with a space to share their experiences and recommendations regarding their new environment. Upinion believes in a holistic approach to engagement, bringing together insights from all displacement-affected populations, including the host communities.
The online community and Upinion and its partners have co-created advocacy strategies for enhanced refugee and migrant rights, fought against the forced and premature return of refugees to their home countries before conditions are in place, and strengthened social cohesion in Lebanon, Türkiye, Mauritania, Libya, and Greece.
Digital space for civil society
Not only does civil society play a key role in the protection and promotion of democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms, it is also essential in spearheading the digital transformation and achieving bottom-up accountability. Upinion has strong ties with civil society movements in all its areas of operation to secure engagement with the most hard-to-reach communities, and to transfer its experience in digital engagement to those at the forefront of community empowerment.
Monitoring needs and building community relations
Transcending traditional needs assessments, Upinion assesses the needs and preferences of its communities on a longitudinal basis, allowing it to understand the impact of contextual changes such as shifts in the political, economic, or aid climate, and policy shifts. Moreover, the participatory approach enables communities to put the topics they deem the most relevant on the agenda of local decision makers, and to receive information exactly on those issues that concern them most.
Innovation
Ongoing research and development (R&D) plays a vital role in our social enterprise. We are committed to enhancing our engagement platform to effectively address specific requirements and circumstances. For instance, we are currently collaborating with The Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) to develop an e-health learning platform tailored to the unique needs of midwives in rural Yemen. This ongoing endeavour exemplifies our dedication to advancing our services and making a positive impact in underserved communities.