InnoCentive Launches World Vision Challenge to Revolutionise Process for Counting of Improved Latrines

LONDON, June 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Open innovation firm InnoCentive is supporting Christian humanitarian organisation World Vision on a new challenge to find dramatically better ways of counting the number of improved latrines in a community or district.

Around 2.3 billion people still use an unimproved toilet or openly defecate regularly, with up to 280,000 people dying annually of diarrhea-related causes attributable to poor sanitation. Additionally, poor sanitation is a factor in several neglected tropical diseases.

One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is to achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and to end open defecation by the year 2030. There is a need for efficient and reliable methods to verify and track progress against this goal. The challenge - Efficient and Reliable Counting of Improved Latrines - is seeking ways of counting the number of improved latrines in a region.

"Sanitation is taken for granted by many but remains an issue for billions of people all over the world," said Jordan Smoke, Director of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at World Vision. "Identifying and tracking progress in a cost-effective and time-efficient way is vital to support government plans, validate populations with access to improved sanitation facilities, and measure progress towards reaching SDG6. Using the InnoCentive Solvers gives us the opportunity to canvas a much broader group of experts to help address this challenge."

InnoCentive, a Wazoku brand, is the Open Innovation Marketplace component of Wazoku's Enterprise Innovation Platform, a suite of tools to power innovation at scale across global enterprises. InnoCentive has a strong track record working with NGOs, nonprofits, and businesses, who benefit from the expertise of its global network of nearly 500,000 registered expert problem "Solvers."

"Inadequate sanitation remains a day-to-day problem for many people, and the UN has recognised this with its SDG relating to sanitation," said Simon Hill, CEO, Wazoku. "The InnoCentive crowd and platform are used by many organisations to address similar UN SDGs, and I'm sure our Solvers will be able to help World Vision's current Challenge."

Improved latrines - those that separate human excreta from human contact - come in many shapes and sizes and can be constructed of various materials. Methods currently employed for assessing the prevalence of improved sanitation facilities in an area are time-consuming and labor-intensive.

World Vision is looking for proven processes currently in use in other contexts that will reduce or eliminate the need for door-to-door surveys - while still retaining a high degree of accuracy.  The process should be repeatable so that World Vision can regularly measure community progress on this important development metric.

InnoCentive's partner SeaFreight Labs, a crowdsourcing consultancy that delivers solutions to the global seafreight community, supports this Challenge as part of SeaFreight Labs' commitment to the Pledge 1% movement.

"Open innovation is becoming the go-to option for organisations looking to address the world's biggest issues," said Harry Sangree, Founder and CEO, SeaFreight Labs. "Effective sanitation is essential, and crowdsourcing will play an important role in helping World Vision to meet this RTP (reduction to practice) Challenge."

For further information about Wazoku, https://www.wazoku.com

For further information about InnoCentive, https://www.innocentive.com/

For further information about SeaFreight Labs, https://www.seafreightlabs.com/

For further information about World Vision, https://www.worldvision.org/

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SOURCE InnoCentive