Celebrating IFAD’s 2025 Innovation Champions

On 31 March 2026, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) recognized 19 colleagues from across its global network during the 2025 Innovation Champions Awards, celebrating the completion of the first cohort of the UN Innovation Toolkit: Training of Trainers Programme (ToT), co-designed and delivered with UNSSC’s Hub for UN Transformation. 

The event marked a key milestone in IFAD’s efforts to strengthen its organizational innovation culture. The newly awarded Innovation Champions, based in 10 duty stations worldwide, are now equipped to facilitate learning, cascade knowledge, support colleagues and partners, and embed innovation practices across teams and regions. 

The UN Innovation Toolkit was developed in response to IFAD’s need to build internal capacity to better understand, teach and adapt internal innovation processes across diverse contexts. 

As curator of the UN Innovation Toolkit, UNSSC partnered with IFAD to design and deliver a tailored seven-week ToT programme to support sustainable knowledge transfer and internal ownership of innovation practices.  

Participants described the programme as a gradual and practical learning journey, in which concepts were applied directly to real work situations. Learning alongside peers from different regions and functions created a supportive environment, enabling participants to test facilitation approaches, reflect on challenges, and treat missteps as part of the process rather than setbacks. 

By investing in internal innovation capacity, IFAD continues to strengthen its ability to deliver more effectively for rural populations. As the UN’s trusted learning partner, UNSSC is proud to continue supporting entities through learning that enables meaningful, system-wide transformation.