The Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation is comprised of governmental actors, knowledge institutes, academia, businesses, and humanitarian organizations in the Netherlands who develop and scale innovative solutions to increase the impact and reduce the costs of humanitarian action.
Affected communities and their needs as well as the needs of humanitarian organizations providing emergency action are at the centre of the coalition’s activities. The Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation follows a win-win-win strategy to pursue and achieve results on three levels; a benefit for affected communities in disasters, benefits for the partners of the Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation, and benefits for the humanitarian sector.
The Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation is a dynamic movement that leverages the power of resources, expertise and capabilities in the Netherlands to support humanitarian innovation with a global impact. The Coalition is recognized and acknowledged as the driving force in the Netherlands for effective humanitarian innovation.
The Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation
The Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation (DCHI) is a Coalition comprised of governmental actors, knowledge institutes, academia, businesses, and humanitarian organizations in the Netherlands who develop and scale innovative solutions to increase the impact and reduce the costs of humanitarian action.
The Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation is a dynamic movement that leverages the power of resources, expertise and capabilities in the Netherlands to support humanitarian innovation with a global impact. The Coalition is recognized and acknowledged as the driving force in the Netherlands for effective humanitarian innovation.
The need for humanitarian innovation
In the last ten years the need for humanitarian assistance has grown and become more complex. The amount of funding requested through inter-agency appeals has tripled, and the number of people targeted was four times as high in 2016 compared to 2006.
Innovation is needed to meet the changing needs, increase efficiency and effectively use available resources. However, the current approach to innovation in the humanitarian domain is often inadequate. Resources for research and development are lacking, innovative solutions are developed in isolation, and success is not being shared. Too often, innovation efforts fail to build on solutions already developed elsewhere, and the people involved in these efforts, do not manage to tap into the wealth of expertise around them.
Connect. Create. Collaborate.
The Dutch Coalition for Humanitarian Innovation (DCHI) strives to increase the impact and reduce the cost of emergency action through innovation with public and private partners in the Netherlands.
DCHI brings together governmental actors, knowledge institutes, academia, businesses, and humanitarian organizations and enables them to jointly develop and scale innovative solutions in line with the initiatives we focus on. DCHI is currently focusing on Energy and Safety and Protection.
Within the Coalition, partners work in line with the guiding principles.
To realize impact with innovation supporting these initiatives, DCHI:
- Builds a Coalition. DCHI knows what’s going on in the humanitarian sector. We share trends and lessons learned, organize events where relevant stakeholders can connect to each other, and put partners in the spotlight to share their inspiration with the network. This is how we create new connections and build alliances to innovate together.
- Creates a Humanitarian Innovators Network. DCHI believes that humanitarian organisations implementing innovations in the sector can be more effective and impactful when their learnings are shared amongst each other. In the Humanitarian Innovators Network we encourage humanitarian organisations to share their implemented innovative solutions both in terms of what worked and what did not. Together we gain new insights that help us to identify better ways of realising innovation in the humanitarian sector.
- Connects the dots. DCHI understands the questions from the humanitarian sector and connects them to potential solutions. We actively connect partners through tailored humanitarian accelerator programmes, so that they can develop effective innovations together. Also, DCHI can create access to funding for innovation. In the first half of 2019 the accelerators are focusing on Access to Modern Energy and Safety and Protection.
Who we are
DCHI was launched in 2016 by the Netherlands Red Cross, CARE Nederland, UNICEF Netherlands, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, the Municipality of The Hague, and VNO-NCW. The Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands joined the DCHI board in 2017.