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27.05.2019 | Blog

8 innovative ideas to tackle hunger and social injustice

Eight new promising ideas to combat hunger and social injustice were shortlisted during the Social Innovation Challenge 2019.

8 teams of innovators and their ideas were awarded during the Social Innovation Challenge 2019
8 teams of innovators and their ideas were awarded during the Social Innovation Challenge 2019 © Trang Nguyen/ Civil Society Academy

We recently set an exciting challenge to solve one of today´s most pressing social issues: Hunger and Social Injustice. We asked: 

sketch of presentation at workshop
'Graphic Recording' by Arnaud Bilande at Social Innovation Workshop. © Trang Nguyen/ Civil Society Academy

Through the Challenge, Civil Society Academy, Impact Hub and Welthungerhilfe aim at developing ground-breaking innovations to tackle hunger and social injustice over the next 18 months.

Creative people, entrepreneurs, visionaries and innovators from all over the world participated in the “Social Innovation Challenge”. We received more than 900 applications, out of those we invited 35 social innovators and activists from 20 countries to a Design Workshop in New Delhi to work on their ideas. On 3rd May 2019, the top 8 innovations with the biggest potential to impact social justice were selected for the next phase.

ReGrow helps women-owned agriculture micro-enterprises

One of the 8 innovations selected is ReGrow, founded by Tiffany Tong and Sonika Manandkar in Nepal. ReGrow is an SMS platform using digital tokens to channel impact investments into fueling the growth of women-owned micro-enterprises in agriculture. ReGrow helps solve the problem of trust between funders and borrowers. Funders can trust that the loans will be spent on business expenses and borrowers without collateral or credit history can access affordable finance.

Useful companion: Activist's Best Friend

Activist’s Best Friend (ABF) is a digital app that provides support to social activists. Social activists can access and download resources such as templates and toolkits relevant to their work. It also provides self-paced e-courses, e.g. to learn new concepts or refresh knowledge from previously attended workshops. The app, presented by Lulu Thomas Meiyan and Jackie Wahome, will also provide a network of peers through which users can share experiences, exchange ideas, and mentor each other.

A presentation including video pitches of all 8 top innovation can be found here.

What happens next

The selected innovators will get all the tools they need to unleash their innovative potential and realise their ground-breaking ideas. The eight top innovations, including ReGrow and Activist’s Best Friend, receive a small grant of 3000 EUR and other support to further develop their prototypes. This summer, four of the innovation concepts will be selected for a one-year scholarship of up to 40,000 EUR to get their pilot projects up and running. By August 2020, two to four innovations will be ready for scaling.

Expectations are high: The previous Call for Innovators has produced great ideas, such as Child Growth Monitor or Agrishare, which are already being implemented by Welthungerhilfe.

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