Highlights
- Supported by SeaFreight Labs, World Vision uses crowdsourcing platform to seek innovative solutions towards improving global sanitation.
June 29, 2021 (Seattle) –– Using a crowdsourcing platform, World Vision has awarded $15,000 to three innovative solutions for their challenge of improving sanitation for families and communities in rural areas of developing countries.
Lack of adequate sanitation facilities is a global problem with an estimated 2.3 billion people using unimproved toilets or no toilets at all when eliminating waste. This problem leads to significant public health issues with an estimated 280,000 diarrheal deaths per year attributable to inadequate sanitation. Poor sanitation is also a major factor in several neglected tropical diseases, including intestinal worms, schistosomiasis, and trachoma, as well as, contributing to malnutrition.
“As the largest non-governmental provider of clean water in the world, World Vision aims to advance sanitation solutions for the entire industry that are accessible, equitable and inclusive,” says Keith Kall, Senior Executive Director at World Vision. “There are so many experts around the world with game-changing ideas that can bring us closer to solving the global sanitation crisis, and crowdsourcing those ideas provides more options to scale sustainable solutions faster.”
Properly designed toilets that are also affordable is a huge challenge for the rural poor in many parts of the world. With the support Harry Sangree, President/CEO of SeaFreight Labs, World Vision turned to crowdsourcing platform InnoCentive to seek novel ideas, concepts, and technologies to significantly lower the cost of safe, sanitary, and effective toilets. There were hundreds of submissions, but three solutions stood out to receive $5,000 awards.
- Best Scalable Design: HappyLoo Toilet designed by Leo Prakash which uses locally sourced materials to build properly designed toilet.
- Best Use of Eco-Friendly Materials: Bottle Toilet designed by Gagan Sharma with an innovative design for separating urine and feces to make toilet more usable.
- Most Versatile Design: 20 Combinations proposed by Mario Alejandro Rosato with innovative solutions replicable across multiple global contexts and cultures.
“Crowdsolving is ideally suited to tackle hard problems and there are no harder and more important problems than the global water and sanitation problems that World Vision is working on,” said Harry Sangree of SeaFreight Labs. “We had 525 registered solvers from 82 countries participate in the challenge and I am so pleased that the process led to three affordable solutions which World Vision plans to field test in the coming fiscal year.”
“Providing affordable rural single-family sanitation solutions” is the first innovation challenge World Vision submitted on InnoCentive’s platform for a crowdsourced solution for water, hygiene and sanitation challenges. Currently, a challenge to provide low-cost chlorine monitoring for rural piped water systems is being evaluated and a challenge to provide efficient and reliable counting of improved latrines is open for submissions through September 7.
About World Vision:
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization conducting relief, development, and advocacy activities in its work with children, families, and their communities in nearly 100 countries to help them reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. World Vision serves all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or gender. For more information, please visit www.WorldVision.org/media-center/ or on Twitter @WorldVisionUSA.
About SeaFreight Labs:
SeaFreight Labs is a crowdsourcing consultancy that delivers solutions to the global seafreight community. SeaFreight Labs supports this challenge as part of our commitment to the Pledge 1% movement.