Currently, I’m working on a new model that combines the development of a country and the emergency response of that country in times of crisis, combining cash assistance and direct investments., to create a new approach and making „beneficiaries“ proper customers.  This will allow direct and long-term optimisation of the response. The humanitarian market will be more attractive to private companies and allow NGOs to generate income through executing their mission, instead of depending on donations.

Services that allow direct feedback from „beneficiaries“, would make the humanitarian response more competitive and through that improve it. As part of the „new ways of funding“ a “ beneficiary“ gets a customer and can hold up NGOs to promises and misconduct.

But how could a service enabling this look like and be practically and globally implemented?

In the discussion about humanitarian innovation, it is nothing new, that private sector actors should be increasingly incorporated in the response. A multi-actor network including these can bring innovation and competition by itself. Furthermore, they have to think about their own setup, when catastrophe hits them.

But we still find opposing approaches in that discussion. One is that private sector companies do just care about financial benefits. The other one is that a trickle-down economy would eventually save the poor. Both seem unrealistic. But what realistic incorporation, creating benefits for all actors could look like, is still not clear.

The area-based approach, focuses on local parameters, trying to find locally adequate solutions, that also use existing resources.

I have the vision of a digital solution that identifies the local parameters and allows to track them over time. This will create a more efficient initial response and better decision-making processes in the later stages, being able to track the overall conditions that people are facing.