Through a partnership with the UK Department for International Development, IDEO.org is creating a new model for international development that replaces bureaucracy and competition with collaboration and creativity. Amplify is a series of innovation challenges that are allowing us to invest in early-stage solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems, providing each winning organization with funding and design support to bring its solution to life.
By pairing the insights, talents, and experience of local partners with our human-centered design approach to innovation, IDEO.org is helping bring new products and services to life across Asia, the Middle East, and Africa—from Kampala to Kathmandu.
Safety is a basic human right. But for the millions of women and girls living in low-income urban communities across the world, true safety can be difficult to achieve. The three winners of our first challenge are focused on addressing gender-based violence, reducing social isolation, and increasing women’s economic empowerment.
The first five years of a child’s life are a crucial time—filled with exciting milestones and innumerable roadblocks. Skills, competencies, health, and habits gained in these early years accompany children into adulthood. The five winners of this challenge are focused on helping parents support and monitor their children’s development and connect with service providers for help.
There are more than 50 million refugees around the world. For our third challenge, Amplify partnered with UNICEF, UNHCR, and our challenge winners to help these refugees learn new skills and gain access to quality education. Our five grantees represent the breadth, complexity, and diversity of educational needs refugees face across the Middle East and Africa.
Almost four billion people live in cities globally. As the earth gets warmer, sea levels rise, and weather patterns become more erratic, the fates of billions will rest on the ability of cities to transform in response to these pressures. For our fourth challenge, Amplify partnered with the Global Resilience Partnership, Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, and SIDA to explore new solutions to help urban slum communities adapt and transform in the face of an uncertain future.
Around 80% of the world’s farming is done by small-scale farmers, translating to about 500,000,000 farmers around the world, working hard to provide food and income to sustain their families. Yet over 42% of the food these farmers produce is never consumed, but rather lost during harvest, or on the journey from farm to market. We are inviting NGOs, entrepreneurs and social innovators to join us in designing solutions that can have a big impact on reducing waste and spoilage, including improving access to markets, ensuring farmers have access to relevant information, using technology in new ways, and financial services.
Africa is home to more young people than anywhere else on Earth. These young people have the potential to unleash the economic power of the continent – and lift millions out of poverty – but only if they have access to the skills, information and resources they need to achieve economic stability.
For this Amplify challenge, we looked for a wide range of solutions to motivate, inspire, and provide opportunities to the young men and women in East Africa, while reinforcing their role as agents of change and supporting their transition into long-term financial stability.
Over one billion people around the world have a disability, and a disproportionate 80% live in poverty. Disabilities are diverse—some are visible, while others are not—and the experience of having a disability is different for everyone.
For Amplify’s seventh challenge, we sought ideas that we believe will help to create more inclusive communities globally through making social services more accessible, enabling economic inclusion, and creating context-appropriate products for people living with disabilities.
Of the more than 125 million people affected by humanitarian crises, approximately 94 million are women and children—they make up over 75%. In both acute and protracted crises, collapsing health and other social support systems disproportionately affect girls and women.
For Amplify’s eighth challenge, we searched for grantees who shared our belief that girls and women have the fundamental right to choose what is best for their bodies and should be free to exercise this right by making their own informed decisions about sexual and reproductive health.
