We’re excited to announce our new collaboration with the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF)!
The HIF are doing some great work in supporting and funding projects that improve the effective delivery of humanitarian assistance in emergencies. While their scope is broad, the project we are developing in collaboration is focusing on the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector.
The aim of the project is to identify impactful and tangible innovation opportunities in six key WASH challenge areas. These areas were chosen following a Gap Analysis the HIF carried out in 2013 and include surface water drainage, sanitation provision, solid waste management, water treatment, and handwashing promotion.
This is a particularly exciting project for us as in addition to refining our process for identifying good problems, we have also been exploring the potential of different kinds of interventions, such as hackathons or sandpits, to support the development of new ideas and encourage new collaborations.
The HIF commissioned experts in each challenge area to write Problem Exploration Reports that explain the problem, highlight current approaches and limitations of existing solutions, and suggest areas for further exploration. Our first task on the project was to edit, structure and design these reports as part of a coherent series. The reports are now available on the HIF website here.
Designed and edited WASH Problem Exploration Reports.
Our current role on the project is to identify the most timely and impactful innovation opportunities within each of these problem areas and design a series of WASH innovation challenges for the HIF to launch throughout 2016. We are also delighted to be working with the HIF on the design and planning of an innovation workshop around the first topic of Surface Water Drainage in Emergencies. More about that to come!
