Innovation Award

The Innovation Award showcases organisations, coalitions or initiatives that are taking inventive approaches as they chart a course through a complex and changing external environment.

Now more than ever organisations need to innovate to survive. Factors such as a rise in the economic and political power of emerging countries, rapid urbanisation, demographic and climate change, increasing awareness of the earth's natural limits, changing geographies of conflict and poverty, and a changing understanding of the goals of development, all have potential to drive fundamental changes in the sector.

The winner

The judges selected three innovative projects as the finalists, with the winner announced at the awards ceremony on 26 February.

Vision for a Nation Foundation - Eye Care for Rwanda 
This collaboration with Rwanda’s Ministry of Health integrated nationwide “primary eye care” services into Rwanda’s public health system.

The finalists

Integrity Action - Sindhupalcheck
Sindhupalcheck harnesses technology and citizen feedback to provide insight into the effectiveness of the construction of earthquake resilient homes in Sindhupalchowk district, Nepal.

Pump Aid - A better way to end water poverty in Malawi
This project piloted a self-supply approach to see if it could improve reliability of water supplies, giving 21,614 individuals access to safe water.

Submissions

Check out the entries for the Innovation Award below.

Action Against Hunger - Treating Severe Acute Malnutrition with Community Health Workers

British Council - World Voice Greece

Concern Worldwide - Maker Movement for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, Kenya

InsightShare - Innovating for social innovators

Insitute of Development Studies - Sex education in the digital era

INTRAC - Consultants for Change (C4C)

Overseas Development Initiative - 2030 Hive Mind

Relief International - Social innovation labs

Small Media - Iran open data

Trócaire - We are the change

WSV - Business in a box

2017 winners

Last year the Innovation Award was shared by CABI and Send a Cow. 

CABI’s Plantwise programme is helping to make plant health systems more effective for the farmers who depend on them by establishing plant clinics, where farmers can find practical plant health advice. 

Send a Cow's Taro project trained and supported 300 vulnerable smallholder farmers and their families in Ethiopia to form cooperatives to produce taro flour, making their vital form of sustenance available to their communities during food shortage months and raising their household income.