25 February 2025, Geneva - Destina Mensah wants to bring good nutrition to more people while preserving Ghana’s rich culinary heritage. Inspired by Tom Brown, a traditional breakfast meal cherished in Ghana, Destina launched a business that provides healthy food options and bridges the gap between modern living and cultural identity. A 2023 UNITAR digital skills and entrepreneurship programme helped her define her vision and bring her idea to life.

20 February 2025, Hiroshima, Japan – John Ladu Simon Jacob is on a mission to transform agriculture in South Sudan. As a managing director of an agricultural enterprise, John is tackling one of his country’s greatest challenges: food insecurity. His vision is to reduce South Sudan’s reliance on food imports and build a self-sufficient agricultural system. The UNITAR Great Ideas Space for South Sudan 2023: Entrepreneurship and Innovation Training for Food Security programme helped John gain more skills and confidence to turn his vision into action.

20 February 2025, Hiroshima, Japan - Seungjae Lee is a South Korean student at an international school in Hong Kong. He is passionate about social issues and active in leadership positions and service activities. One year ago, he started a project to help refugees in Hong Kong who face language barriers.

20 February 2025, Hiroshima, Japan – John Isidore Laure, a youth advocate from Cotabato City, Philippines, currently serves as a monitoring, evaluation and learning officer at a local non-governmental organization (NGO), where he works with local youth councils (Sangguniang Kabataan) to promote good governance and community development. As a teenager, he co-established an organization to prevent violent extremism and misinformation in his community. This experience shaped his commitment to empowering young people and addressing pressing social issues.

20 February 2025, Hiroshima, Japan – In Kenya, where access to basic technology remains a luxury for many, Betty Mwende advocates for digital literacy and inclusivity. Learning through a UNITAR programme and applying what she learned have helped Betty – a student of applied computer technology and communication coordinator for a non-profit to foster collaboration in the tech industry – develop her project management and digital skills while championing digital literacy for marginalized youth.

17 February 2025, Hiroshima, Japan – a gender and technology lawyer from Nairobi, is creating safer digital spaces for women and girls. Currently pursuing her master’s degree in law, innovation, and technology in the UK, Lilian is the founder of a non-profit organization in Kenya that is committed to raising awareness and providing solutions to combat online harassment and cyberbullying.

22 January 2025, Hiroshima, Japan - Lucretia Dreyer is an advocate for disability inclusion in South Africa. Driven to empower youth and bridge the digital divide, Lucretia is exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) and assistive technologies can enhance the learning experience for children with disabilities in STEM.

17 January 2025, Hiroshima, Japan - Sara El Koussa, an entrepreneur from Lebanon and alumna of the Great Ideas Space 2023: Entrepreneurship and Innovation programme is helping cancer patients and their caregivers and promoting health security in her country.

Until 08 October 2024, Poland had received 981,335 refugees[1] from Ukraine fleeing the war in the country, most of whom are women and children (UNHCR, 2024a, 2024b). Efforts to assist refugees’ economic integration are underway, including job training and language classes, with support from international and local organizations (UNHCR, 2024b). As part of these efforts, the UNITAR Division for Prosperity, with financial support from the Government and the People of Japan, organized the programme “Emergency assistance for Ukrainian women refugees in Poland with digital 4IR training: Bolstering livelihoods” between October 2023 and March 2024. 
The programme targeted Ukrainian women refugees in Poland and aimed at enhancing their employability by providing them the opportunity to acquire new digital skills for the modern job market that either reinforced their previous professional experience to adapt to their new environment or opened ways for exploring new career paths. The programme intended to develop IT and entrepreneurial skills and mindsets to bolster participants’ livelihoods, with emphasis on refugees with more disadvantaged backgrounds. 
Five hundred women out of 1,000 applicants were selected to take part in the programme, seventy-five per cent of whom are between 30 and 46 years old. Participants have diverse professional backgrounds as illustrated in Figure 1. It is also worth noting that eighty per cent of them hold a high educational degree including a bachelor’s, master’s and even PhD. 
[1] The Ukrainian Embassies in Poland and Japan prefer to use the term “evacuees” instead of “refugees” in specific contexts.

27 November 2024, Hiroshima, Japan - Emmanuel Mutabazi is a Rwandan innovator who offers inclusive training programmes, especially for women and youth in communities that lack access to digital resources. A UNITAR digital skills training programme expanded his capacity to work towards his goal to make sure technology empowers everyone.