World Vision To Use Crowd-Solving To Search For Breakthroughs

Newark, NJ - October 15, 2020 – SeaFreight Labs today announced that it will be serving as Project Advisor for four global challenges for World Vision (www.worldvision.org), a Christian humanitarian organization. In this role, SeaFreight Labs will provide coordination, facilitation, promotion and support services to World Vision to help drive each project to one or more impactful innovations. The challenges will be designed and judged by staff associated with the WASH (Water, Sanitation and Health) group at World Vision. All of the challenges will be executed on the platform of Seafreight’s strategic partner, InnoCentive (www.innocentive.com).

The first challenge of the engagement is soliciting new ideas to reduce the cost of adequate household sanitation systems to below US$45 for a rural household, particularly in East Africa. The US$45 target was chosen based on extensive market research by World Vision in Mozambique. The target price is more than 50% less than the current market offerings available in the target markets. Largely because of the current cost of sanitation systems, over 850 million people globally still live with inadequate sanitation. This situation leads to needless disease and death and has a deadly impact on children. The challenge prize will be US$15,000.

This project will be executed as an ‘ideation’ challenge. The ideation challenge solicits proposals from the global solver community that do not need to be finished products. The objective is to attract revolutionary ideas from solvers of diverse backgrounds and from all around the world.

“World Vision is always looking for innovative ways to advance our mission of eliminating causes of poverty and injustice,” said Jordan Smoke, Director, Water at World Vision. “These challenges will dramatically expand the network of people thinking about how to do this. Core problems of sanitation will gain visibility around the world from curious people with diverse backgrounds and all walks of life.”

“Crowd-solving is an excellent tool to rapidly and cost-effectively be able to solicit ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking”, said Harry Sangree, President and Founder of SeaFreight Labs. “We will work with World Vision, InnoCentive and other partners to publicize this challenge far and wide so as to attract as many high-quality proposals as possible.”

Participation in this project is a direct result of the recent SeaFreight Labs decision to join Pledge 1% movement. Stated Sangree, “Steve Jobs said ‘the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.’ The 1% Pledge and these World Vision challenges are efforts to this end.”

Visit the World Vision Pavilion to see all the challenges as they launch and check out Harry’s blog on the project at www.seafreightlabs.com/blog.

About SeaFreight Labs
SeaFreight Labs is an open-innovation consultancy offering turn-key crowd-solving services to the seafreight, maritime and logistics industries. We design and execute global challenges to cost-effectively deliver breakthrough innovation for intractable problems. Visit www.seafreightlabs.com.

About World Vision
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to 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 or follow on Twitter @WorldVisionUSA.