Three projects from across Asia-Pacific awarded seed funding

With support from European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations Department (ECHO) we’re working to improve innovation skills in the humanitarian sector, and we’ve recently awarded funding to three projects who participated in a capacity building workshop.

At the HIF we are constantly looking to develop innovation skills across the humanitarian sector, to enable people to look at problems differently, to develop new ideas or adapt ideas from other sectors, and to put those ideas into practice in a way that is inclusive and responsible.

We want to make this approach, and the financial and advisory support that we at the HIF can provide, as widely accessible as possible. And with support from ECHO, we’re building innovation capabilities through a number of workshops and the development of a ‘field guide’ for innovation management.

In March 2017 we signed a strategic partnership agreement with the Asia Disaster Reduction and Response Network (ADRRN), and in May/June we co-hosted an ECHO-funded workshop for national and local organisations across the Asia-Pacific region to come together and develop their innovations.
Over three days at the workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia, we worked with eight different teams to strengthen their partnerships, better articulate their ideas, map the resources they’d need, assess the risks they face, and start to develop project proposals. After the workshop we invited proposals for seed funding from each of the project teams, and with support from the UK Government we’re pleased to announce that three have been awarded funding.

Refugee Assets
HOST International with Refugee Talent
The Refugee Assets project is using an online job matching platform and end-to-end support services to provide employment to refugees in the Asia-Pacific and meet labour shortages in the region.
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DIGITAL PH
NASSA/Caritas Philippines
The DIGITAL PH project (Digitized Community Disaster Risk Mapping and Information for Efficient Humanitarian Response and Development Programming in the Philippines) is giving communities in the Philippines ownership of comprehensive mapping data in order to empower them to lead response efforts in the event of an emergency.
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Climate Adaptive Farming in Drought Prone Areas
YAKKUM Emergency Unit (YEU) with the Centre for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
YAKKUM Emergency Unit (YEU) and the Centre for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry are working with farmers to encourage climate adaptive farming, blending local wisdom (eg practices, knowledge, seed varieties) with other sources of information (eg forecasting) for optimum results.
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