Crisis Academy

We're crisis-ready.

Collective intelligence to confront the complexity of crisis and protect sustainable development gains

Crisis Academy upscales crisis capabilities corporately across multiple thematic areas to ensure UNDP’s vision for the future of development becomes a reality—even when conflict, disaster and shocks threaten progress.

SURGE Crisis Response

6

Learning pathways

for specialized talent: crisis response, digital assessments, stabilization, humanitarian-development-peace nexus, infrastructure, and conflict prevention and peacebuilding

2k+

Experts

across thematic areas connect in digital campuses to learn and collaborate on solutions across local, national and  global contexts

5

Regions taking action

through crisis deployments, collaborative projects, and co-created experiences

154

Crisis deployments

to support countries experiencing or at risk of crisis—conflict, disasters, climate risks, or social and economic shocks

Experiential pathways connect learning, networking, and action to support systemic change, create results, and maximize development impact.

Co-created learning experiences contribute to a new culture of embracing crisis and complexity, actively managing risk and continually adapting.
Integrated digital communities within and across thematic areas create space for professionals to contribute their expertise and collaborate on new solutions to complex crises and fragile contexts.
Strategic action and scalable support to countries affected by or at risk of crisis becomes part of the learning journey—where knowledge, skills and adaptive attitudes are solidified, retained and transferred through collaborative experiences.

Learning Paths

Nexus

When humanitarian, development and peace responses to crisis are aligned we stand the greatest chance of overcoming the root causes of crisis and paving a lasting pathway out of crisis and fragility. Nexus Academy drives a new generation of collaboration to accelerate humanitarian-development-peace nexus approaches.

By leveraging the Crisis Academy model for multi-stakeholder learning opportunities that include other UN agencies and NGOs across the system, like Nexus Academy does, we help to create shared understanding and bring energy towards collective efforts that address crises system-wide.

A DAC-UN common good initiative.

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SURGE

When development progress is hindered, and at times reversed, by crises, UNDP comes alongside countries to co-create solutions for response and recovery—from day one.

The SURGE Academy learning path prepares expert UNDP staff for rapid response deployments to country offices in the immediate aftermath of disaster, conflict, or shock.

In supporting countries affected by or at risk of crisis as part of the learning journey, knowledge is solidified, retained and transferred through collaborative experiences, supported by a community of crisis experts.

Data

Ensuring vulnerable populations aren't overlooked in policy-making decisions after crisis requires access to critical data about where the impact is and who is most effected by the damage.

SURGE Data Hub empowers technical experts to leverage emerging technologies for data-informed crisis response—to collect data about the impact of a disaster or conflict and analyze using satellite imagery, social media analysis, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

In this campus, the path of learning, community, and strategic action is bolstered by direct country support for digital assessments and advanced analyses in the aftermath of crisis.

Infrastructure

Crises tend to expose stark inequalities, putting the most vulnerable populations at the greatest risk. Without investment in infrastructure that ensures all people have access to basic community services, the 2030 agenda may be out of sight.

UNDP invests more than $1 billion a year in resilient infrastructure as a foundation of our work in crisis settings with the goal to ensure communities adapt and thrive even when challenged by a fast-changing world.

To cultivate the technical talent needed to support country offices through response and recovery with infrastructure programs that build forward better and greener, Infrastructure Academy develops and strengthens the skills of staff for post-crisis assessments, debris management, climate change, and more.

Prevention

1.2 billion people now live in conflict-affected areas, half in countries not usually considered fragile, and protracted conflicts are wiping out decades of development gains and pushing people into poverty at an astonishing rate. We’ve recently seen this in Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine.

With UNDP’s commitment to place prevention at the center of our country programming, Prevention Academy strengthens capacities to stabilize and protect hard-won development gains, mitigate risks of relapse or recurrence, and build institutional and community resilience to sustain peaceful development pathways.

Prevention Academy empowers UNDP country office staff to act early and at scale for conflict prevention and peacebuilding through a development lens.

Stabilization

Conflict and insurgency combined with extreme violence and weak government structures has challenged many countries in recent years. UNDP's stabilization work in these crisis countries enables communities affected to return to normal as quickly as possible.

Through Stabilization Academy, we're developing a common understanding of a stabilization model centered around three proven guiding principles: speed, scale, and strengthening the social contract.

This learning path takes specialized UNDP staff through interactive and co-created learning experiences, a campus community, and opportunities for strategic action to scale up stabilization as a clear path to peace.

Diversity and inclusion

Crisis Academy provides an atmosphere of learning representative of diverse identities and varied perspectives. Engagements value and respect unique experiences by understanding that identity is multi-dimensional and intersectional.