Irish charities finding new solutions for old problems

There is an assumption that innovation entails vast expense and needs to be technology-related in some way. But this is not necessarily the case and Irish charities are innovating in various ways to become more efficient at delivering help to those who need it most.

“Innovation is thinking about things differently and looking at how to solve problems in different ways with whatever tools you have at your disposal,” says Concern international programme director Anne O’Mahony. “It’s taking an idea, testing it, demonstrating it and bringing it to scale, and we do quite a lot of it in Concern. Innovation can be about getting people to do new things better without putting themselves at risk.”

In one instance, it led to Concern developing new ways to identify and target those members of communities who are most in need of its help. Having identified those people, the organisation worked with them over a period of years to teach them new skills to help lift them out of poverty.

“It’s not an easy or cheap way of doing it but we proved this approach works as a sustainable way of lifting people out of poverty and we are now scaling it in other communities around the world,” says O’Mahony.

In another instance, the charity was working in Nairobi in 2008 in the aftermath of election violence. The material needs were so great that Concern couldn’t possibly lay its hands on the supplies required.

Money transfers

“We thought about giving cash instead but that would have been too insecure,” O’Mahony says. “We couldn’t just go around with boxes of cash. That was the very beginning of mobile phone cash transfers and Safaricom was just starting to role out the service in Kenya. We partnered with them and trialled the service with 627 people. We proved it works and are now doing it for people around the world.”

Innovation is as important in the NGO sector as it is in other sectors, according to a spokeswoman for Goal. "The non-profit sector has a huge role to play in fostering a culture of innovation, and it does not have to be expensive or tech-related," she adds.

Goal’s nutrition team is currently developing a simple but very important new screening tool which has the potential to save lives by combating malnutrition in babies aged under six months. The new tool, the MAMI-MUAC tape, is being trialled in Ethiopia and could be an important first step in detecting and tackling malnutrition for what is considered a highly vulnerable age group in the developing world.

The screening tool was developed by Goal global nutrition programme technical team members Hatty Barthorp and Alice Burrell, along with consultant Mark Mayatt of Brixton Health. "They are using the well-known Mid Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) tape – already widely used in the developing world to help identify malnutrition in children aged between six months and 59 months – and adapting it for babies under six months," the spokeswoman adds.

The tape is placed around the left arm of the infant, with a simple traffic-light system of green, yellow and red used to indicate ‘nourished’, ‘moderately acutely malnourished’ and ‘severely acutely malnourished’ respectively.

Goal has adapted the standard MUAC tape and is currently trialling it to identify nutritional risk and to support easy identification in children under six months. It is hoped this will support other research to determine appropriate cut-off points for this age group. The charity is also currently in the pilot phase of training community outreach agents on how to use the MAMI-MUAC tapes and they will in turn train primary caregivers.

Innovation is also important to Barnardos. “We are trying to innovate as much as we can,” says director of fundraising Mary Gamble. “Of course, we are limited in the amount of resources we can devote to new initiatives which have not been tried and tested.”

The fundraising area is a fairly obvious candidate for innovation. “Digital fundraising has given us the ability to connect with an audience we couldn’t reach before,” says Gamble. “It’s much cheaper than TV or radio and has been quite successful. We are looking to do more of that next year.”

Barnardos tends to look to its corporate partners to help with innovation in service provision. “Dell is an example,” she says. “They came on board to give coding workshops to children. Children from deprived areas often don’t have access to devices for coding. Dell delivers clubs to children in Cork, Dublin and Limerick. They come to our after-school clubs and teach them how to code. They are giving the children incredible potential. Who knows where they could go with those skills? We wouldn’t have been able to do it without Dell. Working with our corporate partners on innovative projects like that is very exciting.”

Technology

Technology has its place too, of course, and 2018 Irish Times Innovation Award winner Aid:Tech has created a new blockchain-based platform as a secure means to deliver aid and other benefits to people around the world who have no bank account or legal identity in the form of a social security number of equivalent.

According to Aid:Tech chief operating officer Niall Dennehy, there are currently 2.4 billion around the world with no legal identity. This presents huge difficulties in providing them with a range of benefits such as welfare, medical entitlements, remittances, healthcare, aid and peer-to-peer donations.

The Aid:Tech platform allows for the creation of a secure identity for an aid or welfare recipient which is stored on a blockchain ledger and can’t be subsequently altered or erased. Aid in the form or vouchers or actual cash can be sent via the platform completely securely with an unalterable record of receipt thus helping address corruption and improve efficiency. The platform offers full end-to-end visibility from donor to recipient with donors alerted when their donation has been used so they can be sure it has been used for the purpose intended. “We have secured the last mile for charitable donations,” says Dennehy.