Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: Global Grande Challenges – Innovation for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Urban Settings

The Challenge – Innovation for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Urban Settings aims to find solutions to make it easier to access safe, clean water and sanitation services for the urban poor. It seeks digital technology-based solutions that promote access to essential resources and services (clean water, sanitation) and can make a difference in reducing morbidity and mortality to promote healthy, safe, and productive lives.

Ideal solutions may target individuals, families, communities, urban planners, service providers, or WASH/food infrastructure, networks, and systems. Solutions may include but are not limited to: services, models, or tools intended to improve overall access to WASH services and that apply a deeper understanding of users’ (customers/providers) needs when designing programs, services, and products/interventions. The Challenge seeks solutions that are interactive, contextual, scalable, and relevant to WASH systems strengthening. It is specifically interested in work targeting: clean drinking water, household sanitation and hygiene, and urban pollution.

To be considered, ideas must constitute transformative rather than incremental improvements in urban water and sanitation solutions and be low cost. Low cost is defined as interventions targeted for populations with individuals living on less than $1 per day, deliverable, and scalable in low- and middle-income countries. Proposals must (i) have a testable hypothesis, (ii) include an associated plan for how the idea would be tested or validated, and (iii) yield interpretable and unambiguous data in Phase I, in order to be considered for Phase II funding.

Eligibility: Grants of up to $100,000 each will be awarded for a period of 18 months. The Challenge will prioritize selection of ideas that address WASH challenges in urban environments where all partners supporting this call actively work. This includes prioritizing WASH interventions in countries with high burden of open defecation and areas of substantial momentum in sanitation service delivery. For urban WASH, focus areas should support low income urban settlements, small towns, cities under protracted conflict, and cholera hotspots.

Link: https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/innovation-wash-urban-settings-round-22

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