The winners of the 2019 WFP Innovation Awards
The five winners of the 2019 WFP Innovation Awards were announced yesterday at WFP’s annual Global Management Meeting in London.
From microloans for mothers to pop-up retail shops in emergencies, these innovative solutions exemplify how WFP is embracing innovation and technology to achieve Zero Hunger.
The Innovation Awards celebrate and honour the outstanding innovative achievements of WFP country offices and divisions. Organized by the Innovation Accelerator, the awards are reviewed by an advisory group of WFP leaders from offices around the globe.
“WFP is full of smart people with game-changing ideas, said WFP Executive Director David Beasley. “The winners of this year’s Innovation Awards show how WFP is leading the pack in developing new ways to save lives, change lives and get us to Zero Hunger.”
The Innovation Accelerator provides funding, recognition and support to WFP employees, start-ups, and entrepreneurs revolutionizing how hunger is addressed. Applications are accepted at any time and can be submitted through the Innovation Accelerator website.
She Can: Microloans for mothers
Egypt Country Office, Innovation and Knowledge Management Division
A lack of access to loans and other financial services can trap families in a vicious cycle of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition. “She Can” empowers the mothers of children enrolled in school meals programmes by providing them with financial training and microloans to kickstart and develop their own businesses. The project has conducted a successful pilot in Egypt in collaboration with the government, training more than 53,000 mothers and providing microloans to 13,000, enabling them to increase their incomes by 30–50 percent with a repayment rate close to 100 percent. She Can is working to expand operations to other countries and is seeking additional capital through crowdsourcing and partnering with private and institutional investors.
Retail-in-a-Box: Pop-up shops for communities in need
Supply Chain Division
Markets and crucial retail infrastructure are often destroyed by disasters or conflict, or refugees flee to areas where no market infrastructure is accessible. Retail in a Box is a retail turnkey solution that facilitates the access to essential goods in emergencies while accelerating the recovery and development of local markets. The customizable package provides shop infrastructure and layouts, check-out systems, retail operational guidance, and capacity building support. The objective is to build a reliable market serving the local community, run by the local community. Retail-in-a-Box is planning to run pilots in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh to validate its model and prepare for scale.
Drones to the rescue in Mozambique
Mozambique Country Office, Johannesburg Regional Bureau, Technology Division
In 2019, two deadly cyclones hit Mozambique, killing hundreds of people and rendering millions more homeless. WFP supported the broader humanitarian response by deploying drones in an emergency for the first time, helping rescuers respond faster and more efficiently. Over 70,000 images were used to create dozens of detailed maps for affected villages and towns, helping over 20 humanitarian organizations to deliver aid where it was needed most.
School Connect: Digitizing school feeding data in Burundi
Burundi Country Office, School Feeding and Technology Divisions
In Burundi, one third of the time, children enrolled in schools with feeding programmes go hungry — mostly due to empty food stocks, driven by old, manually-inputted data. School Connect digitises data entry for stock inventory, student attendance, and meal consumption for school feeding programmes to improve supply chain planning and nutritional intake. The web-based solution is being tested in 20 schools in Burundi and will scale up to 820 schools in 2020.
HungerMapLIVE
Research, Assessment and Monitoring Division
HungerMapLIVE is WFP’s new Global Hunger Monitoring System, which provides near real-time estimates of the food security situation in over 90 countries. Jointly developed by WFP and Alibaba Cloud, HungerMapLIVE pulls together key metrics — such as food security information, weather, population size, conflict, hazards, nutrition information and macro-economic data — to predict and monitor the food security situation in near real-time. The resulting analysis is displayed on an interactive map that helps WFP staff, key decision makers and the broader humanitarian community to make more informed and timely decisions on food security. These data-driven insights will help shorten emergency response times, optimize operations and reduce costs.
The WFP Innovation Accelerator sources, supports and scales high-potential solutions to end hunger worldwide. We provide WFP staff, entrepreneurs, start-ups, companies and non-governmental organizations with access to funding, mentorship, hands-on support and WFP operations.
Find out more about us: http://innovation.wfp.org
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