Hope for humanity
Challenge
With a mission to mobilise a million new humanitarians in the next decade, the Humanitarian Leadership Academy (HLA) set itself bold, uncompromising targets.
The academy wanted to host a new summit that would help transform the humanitarian sector, creating a more collaborative approach to overcoming the impact of global crises. We needed to curate a summit that would bring together a diverse range of experts and practitioners on the ground to generate new thinking and solutions in a sector fundamentally fatigued and “stuck”.
The HLA also wanted an event platform that would enable the whole sector to scope out what humanitarianism should look like. It wanted 400 in-person attendees, 3,000 online registrations and a two-track agenda.
Solution
We hosted a workshop with HLA and its strategic partners to establish key aims and points of difference from other events in this sector.
The name “Humanitarian Xchange” was inspired by the desire to bring the sector together to exchange views and collaborate. We refined the graphic identity with a brighter, flexible colour palette to retain a message of hope and negotiated amazing deals with the venue, the Business Design Centre in London, and with Cvent. We also engaged our technical partners, who offered substantial discounts on AV.
The website we built promoted the event and hosted all the on-demand sessions. Our mobile app guided attendees through the jam-packed schedule, enabling them to ask questions to speakers on stage, whether they were participating from London or Lebanon.
On a very tight budget, we launched the first Humanitarian Xchange on February 20, 2024. A total of 5,488 people registered, with 485 people attending in person and 1,500 engaging with on-demand content. It was the biggest humanitarian gathering in the UK for 50 years.