Innovations Fair at 25th ALNAP meeting

Ushahidi is a novel platform that facilitates the use of ‘wisdom of crowds’ approaches in gathering and managing crisis information. The platform connects a number of technologies ranging from the Web, e-mail, SMS and Twitter to dynamically collect, map and disseminate geographically tagged crisis information in near real-time.

The free and open source platform enables users to subscribe to specific alerts in specific geographies and to visualize the crisis data dynamically over time and space. The platform is also available as a mobile application on a host of phones. The information flow is therefore horizontal and decentralised. Ushahidi is an African initiative that emerged out of the post-election violence in Kenya. The platform has since been deployed in Colombia, the DRC, Gaza by Al Jazeera, and by local civil society groups in Lebanon, India and Afghanistan, amongst others. Several groups have recently suggested their intention to use the platform in the Ukraine, Sudan and Burma.

View their poster here

Important innovations in the way that cash reaches those in need are changing the way that aid is delivered and there are a growing number of NGOs and UN bodies that are implementing and building capacity in cash based responses. Programme design and implementation are moving fast and it is important to capture and share these experiences.

Following the Asian Tsunami in 2005, the Cash and Learning Partnership (CaLP) started working together (with ODI, Concern Worldwide and Mercy Corps) to ensure that the wealth of learning from the tsunami response was captured. This informed the development of Cash Transfer Programme (CTP) trainings which have been rolled over in the last three years.

CaLP aims to improve the quality of cash transfer programming across the humanitarian sector and key stakeholders through capacity building, research as well as development and communication of good practice.

View their poster here

Valid Nutrition (VN) is a new form of humanitarian business that is run as a fully fledged commercial food company. As a registered charity, VN combines best practice from industry with a legal structure that puts humanitarian ethics and principles at the forefront of its business activities. All profits generated from trading are reinvested in the business without any return to shareholders.

This paradigm shifting combination is at the forefront of stimulating the ethical engagement of the food industry with the needs of poor malnourished people globally. Highly nutritious Ready to Use Food (RUF) products are sold at affordable prices under the VN brand and are manufactured by VN in Malawi or by local food companies elsewhere in developing countries. Extensive R&D and relationships with the UN, NGOs, governments and food businesses, provides VN's third-party manufacturers with access to low cost, highly efficacious products and improves their competitiveness and access to markets. VN's products use locally grown ingredients, creating demand for agricultural produce. VN increasingly purchases ingredients from small-scale farmers using smart procurement mechanisms that target vulnerable households and communities.

On May 2nd 2008, Cyclone Nargis hit the coastal delta of Myanmar killing over 150,000 people and severely affecting 2 million more. The brief period of creative chaos which followed in the wake of the storm, and the slow start of the international response allowed a number of innovative products and processes to be developed that focused on supporting the massive autonomous relief intervention of local civil society. These attempted to combine rapid and flexible systems for grant disbursal with initiatives for simultaneously developing, or at least protecting, existing capacities of CSOs.

The experience demonstrates that appropriate systems for supporting a civil society response to rapid-onset emergency can enable very fast and sensitive relief at scale, with greater penetration and at much lower costs than conventional direct implementation by international agencies.

View their poster here

CTC is a paradigm-shifting approach to the treatment of severe acute malnutrition (SAM). The inpatient model of treating people suffering from SAM exclusively as inpatients in either hospitals or specialised therapeutic feeding centres saw high mortality rates of between 20-30%, was resource intensive, impractical and unpopular. Most troubling, it appeared to show little population level impact – posting extremely low coverage rates of less than 10%.

CTC programmes treat the vast majority of acutely malnourished people in their homes. They use decentralised networks of outpatient treatment sites to provide a take-home ration of specialist ready-to-use therapeutic food and routine medicines. By providing easy access and limiting the opportunity costs associated with programme enrolment, the CTC model increases both coverage and compliance. The de-medicalised, decentralised approach ushered in by CTC is now standard.

Thirty-five countries are practicing CTC, cure rates have increased dramatically, mortality rates have been cut several fold to under 5%, and coverage has increased to over 70%. It is now axiomatic that humanitarian interventions to address acute malnutrition are judged on the basis of public health impact (coverage).

RedR’s new competency-based assessed courses in Security Management and People and Project Management are innovations in process driven by the need to improve the impact of training for humanitarian personnel. Key issues continually facing the humanitarian sector are accountability and quality assurance, including how to build a professional and recognised international humanitarian workforce.

RedR’s competency-based and assessed training is an approach to training that places emphasis on what a person can do in the workplace as a result of completing a program of training. It is also more rigorous and more flexible; rigorous because the emphasis is on performance not on the recall of knowledge; flexible because competencies are independent of the learning process and can, therefore, be achieved through several modes and long after the course is over.

These new courses have also addressed the need to provide continuous learning – beyond the training room – with pre-course preparation, highly participatory face-to-face training courses and a reflective journal completed over several months after the course, based on their application of the learning in a work environment.

View their poster here.

Complaints and response mechanisms, a paradigm-based innovation, are a critical element of what makes an organisation accountable and enables disaster-affected communities to exercise a level of real power and input into the decisions affecting their daily lives.

A complaints and response mechanism (CRM) encompasses all the procedures an agency adopts to enable beneficiaries, staff, partner agencies and other specified stakeholders to raise concerns related to the agency’s work, actions and commitments. An effective CRM will appropriately review and respond to complaints in a timely manner as well as allow beneficiaries to enforce agencies’ claims on quality and accountability while also presenting agencies with significant opportunities to improve services and strengthen their stakeholder relationships.

Developing a safe, transparent, confidential and accessible CRM, with beneficiaries’ involvement in the design and implementation, is one of the most innovative and challenging aspect of humanitarian accountability.

View their poster here

The Enhancing Learning and Research for Humanitarian Assistance (ELRHA) Project: ELRHA is the first collaborative network dedicated to supporting partnerships between UK Academia and the humanitarian community.

View their poster here

Oxfam GB's WASH Innovation presentation is on "Encouraging innovation from field practitioners" and explains the process of an individual innovation prize chosen by field staff themselves which lead to the creation of a larger fund to encourage and support country team innovation. Due to this process Oxfam has launched a number of projects new to Oxfam and the WASH sector.

View their poster here

ACF works to improving the survival and physical well-being of infants and children in emergencies or in conditions of extreme poverty. Recently, ACF’s activities have extended to provide mental health support and to protect and foster child development. This extension is in response to the growing evidence that nutritional deficiencies, high incidence of infections associated with poverty (e.g. malaria), unsatisfied basic social and emotional needs and stress derived from natural or man-made disasters and emergencies have serious detrimental developmental effects.

The research aimed at defining indicators for use in contexts in which AAH intervenes. As part of this work, AAH has been using data extrapolated from nutritional surveys in different countries to assess the pertinence and the validity of ‘gross motor milestones’ as a development indicator for children in contexts of poverty and malnutrition. This is based on the understanding that the acquisition of bipedal locomotion - an important aspect of gross motor development - ultimately affects the cognition of young children.

This is a process innovation, which brings a new analytical tool to the analysis and understanding of malnutrition.

View their poster here

Having been asked by a number of NGOs to develop information management software, Groupe URD has now gathered all the necessary ingredients to do so: the software design, an appropriate development method and the means of guaranteeing its long term maintenance. Based on an assessment of NGO needs, a survey of the computerisation of donor reporting and lessons learned developing the Dynamic COMPAS software, our new project aims to improve information collection, planning and reporting processes. It will help NGOs focus more on the quality of their projects, less on administrative obligations and allow them to report to donors more effectively.

A working group of nine NGOs is already meeting regularly to discuss what they want from the software. They will continue to be involved through the use of an agile software development methodology. Technical partners from IT companies, free software communities and universities are also eager to take part in the project.

The free software we plan to develop will help to improve quality and coordination by making reporting, planning and information exchange easier.

The Humanitarian Response Index (HRI) is an annual research process that assesses and ranks government donors on how well they support humanitarian action. The HRI represents innovation as both a product and a process.

As a product, the HRI publication is unique as it provides an evidence base on donor performance around 60 indicators of donor practice, as well as case studies in different crisis contexts. This provides an objective evidence base for stakeholders to identify donors’ strengths and highlight areas for improvement in the sector.

As a process, the scale of the HRI’s research process makes it one of the largest annual exercises of its kind. It includes field research in 13 different crises, interviews hundreds of humanitarian actors, and gathers over 2000 survey responses of donor practice. The process has opened up a space for humanitarian organisations to reflect on the quality and nature of their relationship with funders and engage in a more informed debate – and perhaps a paradigm shift - on what good donor practice is and how to apply it in today’s’ complex environment.

The Last Mile Mobile Solutions (LMMS) initiative introduces innovative mobile computing technologies and better business practices within the “last mile” of humanitarian programming – the final transaction area between aid agencies and end-beneficiaries.

The innovation is a collaborative effort between World Vision and the Information Technology sector that addresses a notable gap in the remote, field-based data management needs of humanitarian organizations.

Using the systems, aid workers can now employ robust, wireless mobile devises to register food-aid recipients and assign them to various food programming interventions. Bar-coded identity cards link beneficiaries to a wireless data management system, which enables faster and more efficient field operations.

Preliminary results indicate a 60% reduction in beneficiary processing and verification times at food distributions. LMMS eliminates the reliance on paper-based systems, automates calculations and delivers faster web-based reports to donors and stakeholders.

View their poster here

Humanitarian interventions have historically focused on saving lives rather than livelihoods, and key livestock assets can be overlooked in this urgent response. The Livestock Emergency Guidelines and Standards (LEGS) project aims to increase the quality of emergency response by promoting minimum standards for livestock-based interventions. The standards follow the format of the Sphere handbook, including minimum standards, key indicators and guidance notes, and cover a range of livestock-based interventions - destocking, feed, water, veterinary services and restocking – as well as support and guidance on livelihoods-based needs assessment and identification of appropriate, timely and feasible emergency responses.

LEGS contributes to innovative processes in emergency response, while also playing a role in the re-positioning of humanitarian action in terms of bridging the gap between disaster response and long-term development, by highlighting the importance of saving not just lives but also livelihoods through support to key livelihood assets during and after an emergency.

View their poster here

Half of the world's poor suffer from waterborne disease, and nearly 6,000 people - mainly children - die from diseases contracted from unsafe drinking water every day. LifeStraw® water purifiers have been developed as a practical way of preventing disease and saving lives, as well as achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe water by the year 2015.

LifeStraw® and LifeStraw® Family are complimentary point-of-use water filters - truly unique offerings from Vestergaard Frandsen that will help people obtain safe drinking water at home and outside.

View their poster here

Groupe URD has launched an innovative collective learning programme in Chad. The first phase of the Observatory of Humanitarian Practices in Chad is being funded by DG ECHO, with the objective of facilitating the learning process, thereby helping to improve the quality of humanitarian practices.

The Observatory builds on past experience; ALNAP elaborated in 1999-2000 the concept of the Learning Office and tested it in Malawi and Groupe URD kept the ball rolling in refining the experience in Afghanistan (2001-2008). The Observatory of Humanitarian Practices in Chad is the continuation of efforts to innovate in learning mechanisms. This is currently carried out in connection with existing networks such as the NGO Coordination Committee (CCO), clusters and sectorial meetings, and national institutions, as well as with individual organizations and institutions.

The aim is specifically to improve the quality of aid provided, the transition between relief and development and the environmental impact of the humanitarian response in Eastern Chad.

The Feinstein International Center, in partnership with a range of NGOs across Africa, has been developing an approach to program evaluation which uses community based knowledge to uncover locally relevant program impacts. Participatory Impact Assessment (PIA) allows communities to be directly involved in generating data on the impact of aid and in identifying the full range of local impacts. It counters accusations of data mining and of only looking at expected impacts. It helps counter cherry-picking in evaluations and evaluator bias. The techniques look simple, but they can generate good quantitative as well as qualitative data, when applied with the same rigor and discipline as any other research methodology.

View their poster here

The importance of having accurate and valid information from nutrition anthropometric surveys in pastoralist populations has been a major issue to all partners involved in Humanitarian Action.

One of the challenges of carrying out nutrition surveys amongst nomadic pastoralists is that populations are scattered, mobile, migrating and of unknown & changing community size. The other challenge is that pastoralists tend to have a particular body shapes with longer legs and shorter trunk compared to settled populations; this makes the usual case definition for malnutrition (weight for height) biased. The pastoralist survey method is innovative because it uses both a new sampling method and an appropriate case definition for malnutrition in pastoralist populations.

The new survey method has been field tested in Mali and is ready for the next test. Whilst designed for assessment of acute malnutrition, the sampling method could be used for a range of other assessments, such as vaccination coverage, animal health assessments, and water and sanitation surveys for example.

View their poster here

The Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping branch in WFP performs food security assessments to understand who the needy people are, how many they are, where are they, what the risks they face are and what is their ability to cope with these risks. Massive data collection activities are performed during these assessments where thousands of households are interviewed throughout a country, about health, nutrition, agriculture and socio-economic issues. Each assessment was hugely resource heavy and the potential usage of the data was often limited because of errors or missing elements.

The innovation was born with the programming of a questionnaire into a PDA for data collection. A knowledge base of reusable questionnaires was later developed, with the ability to quickly create a very large questionnaire in one day. A GPS component was created to gather coordinates automatically, and a mobile phone connection to immediately upload the data into an automatically created database. A light version was adopted using mobile phones sending SMS messages for regular collection of a small core set of indicators for early warning. This innovation led to drastic drop in the time required to collect and deliver the data, which was cleaner and more reliable, and to the saving of resources. It is also opening the door to streamlining of methodologies and metadata tagging and data cataloguing.

View their poster here

Human vulnerability in remote, mountain villages of Tajikistan has grown increasingly acute since the fall of the Soviet Union, complicated by a rugged national topography and weak state infrastructure that impede ease of transport and communication. In response to disaster response communication needs related to recurrent risks in Tajikistan such as avalanche, flooding, mudflow, and rockfall, Humanitarian Futures Programme and InSTEDD propose the introduction of small group SMS communication at village and district levels to enhance disaster information management by the very persons facing these risks on a regular basis.

HFP uses InSTEDD’s GeoChat programme – a software that allows select individuals to communicate with each other simultaneously through “radio broadcast”-like messages that can be instantaneously mapped anywhere in the world on a web-accessed computer. The project hopes [1] to promote horizontal communication, early warning and shared response mechanisms within and across remote communities and [2] to enhance vertical flows of information both to and from central disaster preparedness and response hubs and finally [3] to learn from communities themselves about priority uses of this technology for villages facing acute risk.

An initial launch of the project is scheduled for January 2010.

One of the constraints facing international aid agencies is how to monitor and evaluate within the context of humanitarian emergencies, especially those that are of rapid onset. Given the changing nature of the environment in which agencies work, summative or impact evaluations are often carried out too late for important changes to be made to the programme. Baseline data are often missing or unreliable. The real time evaluation (RTE) has proved to be a critical tool for carrying out a process evaluation during the early days after a disaster has occurred. Although there are several risks associated with the methodology, these are outweighed by the advantages, both immediate and longer-term.

View their poster here.

Since the ‘transitional shelter approach’ was introduced by Shelter Centre in 2005, following the South Asia Tsunami, it has been used by agencies and governments worldwide to accommodate millions of people affected by both conflicts and disasters, from Kenya to Indonesia. Shelter and reconstruction happen in parallel: people need somewhere to live while their houses are rebuilt. The transitional shelter approach recognises that reconstruction lasts two to five years, but that a tent only lasts around one year.

The ‘transitional shelter approach’ is not another phase of response: instead, it involves building and upgrading a shelter incrementally, from plastic sheeting to sustainable local materials, which are all then reused as part of reconstruction. Assistance to displaced and non-displaced populations is often delayed as housing, land and property rights cannot be resolved quickly, however transitional shelter can be relocated, and can therefore be supportive immediately and continuously until reconstruction is complete.

View their poster here

The joint WFP-DFID review of the “Institutional Strategy (IS): Working in Partnership with the World Food Programme” (2009) assessed DFID’s £15m / US$29.4m of extra-budgetary funding to WFP between 2006 and 2009.

This review found that the UK’s Institutional Strategy with WFP significantly contributed to enhance WFP’s capabilities and performance through the roll out and standardization of corporate systems, the adaptation to the local context or through innovation.

According to the definition of innovation key concepts provided in the “ALNAP Innovation Study” the Institutional Strategy supported the process of redefining the position of WFP in a range of countries and the organization advanced in its transition from a food aid to a food assistance agency, in accordance with WFP’s Strategic Framework (2008-11).

View their poster here