Humanitarian Innovations Funded

Four projects will receive funding from our Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) to help develop innovative solutions to the challenges of delivering effective humanitarian aid.

The successful projects will receive funding from the HIF’s large grant facility, which supports the development, implementation and testing of innovation in humanitarian contexts with grants of up to £150,000. The projects, chosen from over 180 applications, were approved by the Fund’s independent grants panel made up of leading independent experts in the field of humanitarian work and innovation practice.

One of the successful projects, from the Catholic Relief Services (CRS), will receive funding to create a viable model for designing and implementing disaster risk reduction (DRR) projects in complex humanitarian emergencies that occur in urban, conflict-prone areas with non-state actors. Through hazard mapping, vulnerability and capacity assessments, DRR planning and implementation of DRR initiatives in Gaza, CRS hopes to develop a new programmatic framework for DRR in urban and conflict prone areas.

The Danish Refugee Council (DRC) will also receive a HIF grant, to pilot a project designed to improve accountability and beneficiary participation in Somalia and other remote management contexts. The project will use a range of technologies - mobile telephony, geo-mapping, on-line communities and social media - to encourage and help beneficiaries participate in development and humanitarian interventions, encouraging a culture of accountability and transparency. Peter Klansoe, Regional Director of the Danish Refugee Council, observed: "We are obviously very pleased at the news. By giving projects such as ours the space and capacity to develop and implement a challenging, innovative project this fund has the potential to stimulate sector-wide change."

Jess Camburn, Director of ELRHA, added: "We are very excited about these projects and their potential to change how humanitarian aid is delivered for the better. We received a very strong response to this first call for proposals, with a high number of clearly innovative and quality proposals for our grants panel to consider. We hope that this is just the start of what will become a facility that supports real transformation in humanitarian aid and we are really looking forward to launching our second call later in the year".

Jemilah Mahmood, Chair of the HIF’s independent grants panel, commented, "You never quite know what to expect when a new and unique funding mechanism is established. However, the high interest and quality proposals from the final recipients during this first round of the Fund’s large grants facility demonstrates that the process has clearly worked well and this is certainly an exciting development for the sector."

Full details of the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, the projects funded and the different types of funding available can be found at www.humanitarianinnovation.org.