Stage One Water Window Challenge Finalists Announced
I am delighted to announce that 16 Stage One finalist teams have been selected to move on to Stage Two of the Water Window Challenge – a competition which gives those bold enough to find innovative resilience-based solutions to extreme weather the financial backing to turn their plans into reality. Stage Two will see finalists receive mentoring from experts to develop their proposals, with winners selected later this year.
The finalists have been chosen from a pool of more than 200 applicants from around the world – all of whom we feel provide exceptionally promising proposals. Their projects provide flood resilience solutions in a range of nations in Africa and Asia, including Kenya, Mauritania, Senegal, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
As you can imagine, whittling down entries to just 16 has proven extremely difficult, with each presenting their own merits. Yet whilst all of the shortlisted projects tackle the issue of building resilience in a broad range of ways, they all share some common features. Through a combination of innovation and technological savvy, each of our finalists have proposed credible solutions which challenge the norm and will make a real difference to their communities.
If successful, Challenge winners will receive either a seed grant of up to US$250,000, tailored to local organisations seeking to invest in new ideas, or a scaling-up grant of up to US$1,000,000, tailored to larger organisations to scale-up existing projects or implement new ideas at scale.
The Water Window Challenge would not have been possible without the support of Zurich Insurance Group and the Z Zurich Foundation. Our partnership clearly demonstrates the win-win approach that GRP wants to develop between the private sector and changing the lives of the most vulnerable. In this case, Zurich is providing the financial backing to ensure great ideas can be brought to fruition, and in return, gaining potential new ways of mitigating disaster and protecting people and valuable assets.
The Challenge firmly believes solutions to the most complex, interconnected problems facing communities worldwide exist – it is simply a matter of tapping into the power of great minds around the world, providing the space to test (and potentially fail) and enabling ideas to become actions.
To learn more about the Challenge finalists who are moving onto the next round, visit our website here.
Sida recently chatted to GRP in Stockholm during World Water Week, read more here.