Case Study: UNICEF achieves rapid, life‑saving emergency response—reaching 22,000 people in under 30 hours—with Trello

Helping Others When They Need It Most

UNICEF’s Global Innovation Centre (GIC) is a distributed, 24‑hour team that pilots and scales digital solutions to improve child health, protection, and education worldwide. Facing the challenge of coordinating remote work across nine time zones and rapidly supporting country offices during crises like Hurricane Irma, the team needed a single, transparent workspace to move life‑saving information fast and reliably.

After testing 17 collaboration apps, GIC selected Trello as its core coordination tool—simple, flexible boards became the team’s single source of truth for country and project work. That rapid coordination helped scale U‑Report and related communications: during Hurricane Irma over 22,000 people received life‑saving messages in under 30 hours, 89% found the information useful, 80% shared it, and 57% shared it with five or more people; Trello today supports GIC’s global initiatives and remote workflows across UNICEF.

Unicef

Tanya Accone

Senior Advisor