An Open Letter to Innovators

We Need Your Help to Change the World

Field engineer Mathew tests a Smart Tractor at a farm in Kaduna. Hello Tractor strives to increase food and income security in sub-Saharan Africa by producing affordable “Smart Tractors” and connecting their owners with farmers paying for timely tractor services via SMS. / Courtesy of Jehiel Oliver, Hello Tractor

Dear innovators,

What are you doing right now? How about tomorrow? Next month? Five years from now?

If your answer is “ending global poverty,” keep up the good work! We may even be working together right now on an initiative at USAID’s U.S. Global Development Lab.

If your answer is anything except “ending global poverty,” keep reading — we need your help to change the world.

The stakes are high. We’ve made incredible progress, but nearly 1 billion people around the world continue to survive on less than $1.90 a day. As a comparison, that’s as if every day, every person in India had to live on the cost of a medium-sized soft drink from McDonald’s.

This is where you come in. We live in a time of unprecedented innovation. New approaches, tools and technologies give us more opportunities than ever before to help lift the world’s most vulnerable people out of poverty. By tapping into your talent and creativity, we know we can produce the breakthrough development solutions that will help to end global poverty.

CommCare is a free, open-source, mobile platform from Dimagi that enables anyone to build their own mobile apps. Community health workers can use these apps instead of paper-based forms to track and support patients with registration forms, checklists and SMS reminders. / Courtesy of Dimagi

Through our open innovation programs, USAID works with innovators from around the world to test, prove, and scale ideas that can impact millions of people.

We’ve already seen incredible ideas come from the most unlikely sources: the app developer, the auto mechanic, the wedding dress designer, the university student — people who didn’t set out to solve global problems but took their good idea and used it to make a difference.

You could be next. We challenge you to think about the projects that you and your organizations are already working on, the expertise you already possess, and that one idea that could help end extreme poverty.

To start, join us at South by Southwest (SXSW) and learn more about how we’re forging high-impact partnerships to harness innovation and scale meaningful results to end extreme poverty. Learn how you can join this movement.

As part of the Global Goals Innovation Challenge, USAID will host an interactive pitch competition at SXSW. Three entrepreneurs will vie for the opportunity to attend President Barack Obama’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford in June.

The winning entrepreneur will be chosen by judges Jean Case, CEO of the Case Foundation; Rajesh Anandan, senior vice president at UNICEF Ventures for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF; and by the audience in a live vote.

Ubongo is a Tanzania-based social enterprise that creates interactive edutainment for kids in Africa, teaching math and science with animated stories and catchy original songs. / Photo courtesy of Ubongo

Our entrepreneurs are:

Jeheil Oliver, founder and CEO of Hello Tractor: Hello Tractor is an agricultural technology company that has created “Uber for tractors.” The social enterprise sells its Smart Tractor to low-income farmers, providing financing when needed, and pairs them with a network of farmers who can text and use mobile money for tractor services. In true shared economy fashion, this makes tractor services available to labor constrained farmers, while creating income opportunities for Smart Tractor owners.

Doreen Kessey, COO of Ubongo: Ubongo is a Tanzania-based social enterprise that creates interactive edutainment for kids in Africa with technologies they already have — basic mobile phones. Ubongo teaches math and science with fun animated stories and catchy original songs. Viewers can answer questions on their mobile phones while they watch. Ubongo entertains kids as they learn, teaching them to love learning.

Jonathan Jackson, co-founder and CEO of Dimagi: Founded in 2002 out of MIT Media Lab, Dimagi is a social enterprise founded on the belief that developing high-quality mobile solutions at scale can impact millions of people’s lives. CommCare is Dimagi’s free, open-source, mobile platform that enables anyone to build their own mobile apps. Community health workers can use these apps instead of paper-based forms to track and support patients with registration forms, checklists and SMS reminders.

CommCare allows community health workers to use mobile phone apps instead of paper-based forms to track and support patients with registration forms, checklists and SMS reminders. / Courtesy of Dimagi

Attending South by Southwest? We’d love to connect with you at one of our events:

Global Innovation Challenge: Lifting 1 billion people out of poverty

Designing Collective Action for Global Development

Fighting Wildlife Crime with Tech Innovation

Follow along during the events with the hashtags #SXgood and #EndPoverty.

About the Author

Ann Mei Chang is USAID’s Chief Innovation Officer and Executive Director of the U.S. Global Development Lab. Follow her @annmei.