The Humanitarian Collaborative is the heart of the Global Policy Center’s work. The Collaborative brings together faculty, staff, and students from across Grounds with practitioners and community partners to address the world’s pressing humanitarian and development challenges. The Collaborative works with our organizational and community partners in interdisciplinary research, advocacy, and policy projects to bridge scholar-practitioner gaps in humanitarian aid. The Office of the Provost’s Strategic Investment Fund, the Center for Global Inquiry and Innovation’s Ruth Young Endowment/Indar-Riyukhe Fund and the Center itself fund the Collaborative.
UVA Humanitarian Collaborative
Research, Advocacy and Policy (RAP) Labs
Our Research, Advocacy and Policy (RAP) Labs fuel the Collaborative's applied, interdisciplinary work. We organize each lab around a theme designed to understand, explore, and develop solutions to each humanitarian and development challenge.
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Almost 90 million children under the age of seven have lived their entire lives in war and conflict. They’ve endured unthinkable violence and loss during a critically important time in their development. Yet major policy and research gaps exist. In order to recognize early childhood development as a life-saving priority, we need radical changes to the humanitarian system.
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The “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy has resulted in more than 60,000 asylum seekers being turned back on the US-Mexican border. Spontaneous settlements on the border house thousands of asylum seekers, including young children, who live without sufficient shelter, sanitation, food, and water. This lab aims to provide research and policy expertise to support children and families seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border. UVA Global Policy Center faculty Lucy Bassett is working with Project Adelante and community partners on the ground in Matamoros to provide support to understand conditions and contribute to solutions, especially approaches that support parents and families with children.
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As the humanitarian operational community invests in data-driven strategic planning and programming, they’re developing the forecasting tools that will help predict the timing, magnitude, and duration of mass-displacement and crisis events that affect children and their families. This lab brings together faculty from Batten, the Departments of Statistics, Politics, and Systems Engineering, along with the School of Data Science, among others to build and evaluate useful displacement models that can guide humanitarian response.
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Global humanitarian response organizations use advocacy campaigns to call attention to humanitarian crises. These communication efforts call for individual and government action to alleviate human suffering. Despite these efforts, we still don’t know the best way to effectively and ethically accomplish this goal. Our team of faculty, students, practitioners, and community members work to help us find new answers to these long-standing challenges.
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The Covid-19 global pandemic has impacted people across the world, including in the Charlottesville area. Our team is working with partners both locally and internationally to aid in the response and recovery efforts for those hardest hit.