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…Senior Program Officer, Humanitarian Grand Challenges. People affected by humanitarian crisis have the best understanding of the problems affecting them and will probably have the best solutions to those problems. In February, we launched Creating Hope in Conflict: a Humanitarian Grand Challenge, in partnership with USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID). We are seeking life-saving or life-improving innovations to help the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach people impacted by humanitarian crises caused by conflict. These innovations will involve a connection to the private sector and input from affected communities in order to provide, supply, or locally generate safe drinking water and sanitation, energy, life-saving information, or health supplies and services to help conflict-affected people. I’m really pleased that of the 615…the needs, who understand the problems the best, fail to have their voices heard. We have 615 ideas. We now need to choose the best ones. We’ll invite experts in the humanitarian system and people affected by conflict to review the most innovative and relevant applications. We’ll take advice from ethical experts and harness the…

…“Who do you like on Twitter?” This question was among the many in the arsenal of Communication personnel Katherine Hannemann and Zina Nelku as they interviewed me for the Summer Student program for 2013. My mind raced as, up until that point, I had been a passive follower on Twitter. Luckily, my brief exposure provided me with an answer that seemed to satisfy the web-savvy ladies in front of me. Once out of the interview room, it was overwhelmingly obvious to me that I had to work on getting…Shih pointed out in his blog post. I drew out a plan where I likened social media to an orchestra, where each platform played a different, but significant role in creating a harmony. As for the content, it was vastly different from promoting, say, mascara. But the core approach wasn’t very different. After all, both for-profit and not-for-profit sectors demanded a thorough understanding of target audience and constant revaluation of…

Dr. James Shultz is the co-principal investigator of the OSITA project in Colombia, supported by Grand Challenges Canada’s Global Mental Health program. For World Mental Health Day 2015, Dr. Shultz writes a blog post about two “heroes” of the OSITA project.  Mental health needs in Colombia are pervasive and population-wide. For eleven consecutive years, Colombia has consistently ranked first or second internationally in numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs) due to armed conflict, a consequence of one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies. In addition to the continuous armed conflict, Colombia experiences significant narco-trafficking related violence as the world’s primary source of cocaine, community violence at the hands of gangs and criminal bands, and intra-familial and gender-based violence. In 2011,…Their work has been better than all other OSITA counsellors, including masters’ students, doctors, and trained psychologists. They have been extremely effective at recruiting, intervening, and following up with participants. There is not a single person in Colombia who is certified in interpersonal therapy/counselling, and there is no capacity for in-country training. The OSITA project…

…research and evaluation partnerships. “Since you came home from Jacaranda Maternity, have you had fever or chills?” asks Sharon, a Jacaranda Community Health Worker (CHW). Ruth* came to Jacaranda Health three days ago to deliver her healthy baby girl. When it was time to leave the hospital, Jacaranda nurses counseled Ruth –  as they do for all of our mothers – to make sure she and her newborn had the best opportunity to stay healthy once they returned home to Kasarani, just outside Nairobi. But this is just the beginning of Jacaranda’s commitment to Ruth and her baby. Sharon’s question comes from Jacaranda’s Postpartum Home Follow-Up Checklist, a series of screening questions Jacaranda’s Community Health Workers (CHWs) ask once our mothers are leaving for home. This is part of an innovative strategy to…use the checklists to conduct a comprehensive follow-up to reduce risk in the potentially dangerous time after delivery. The checklists guide CHWs to identify and refer danger signs early, and to provide reminders for essential counseling on topics like breastfeeding and cord care. Community Health Workers counsel the new mothers on the importance of seeking…with our referral and sought the recommended care. What are some of those risks? Newborn jaundice, infection and breast issues were among the most common complications we identified. Promote Healthy Postpartum Behaviour. Here’s what we already know: less-educated and poor women are less likely to receive postnatal care than their wealthier and more educated counterparts in…

On March 8, International Women’s Day, Grand Challenges Canada features two women Innovators who are helping other women to overcome the struggles and issues they face. Raquel Bernal is a Professor at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá (Colombia). She leads a Transition-to-Scale project under our Saving Brains program, along with a team of experts from different parts of the world that includes Professor Orazio Attanasio from UCL (UK) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (London), Professor Costas Meghir from Yale University (U.S.), Professor Helen Henningham from Bangor University (UK) and University of the West Indies (Jamaica), and Marta Rubio-Codina…of children between birth and age 5 are living in poor conditions, making them much more vulnerable than their peers residing in urban areas. Their families are significantly poorer and these children exhibit a tremendous development lag. Take language development, for example. It has been shown that young children from rural areas are lagging approximately…Colombian families with children ages birth to 2 can access a public parenting program called FAMI (Family, Women and Infancy). The aim of this program is to promote early childhood development by improving parenting skills in a home setting. FAMI serves socioeconomically vulnerable children with one monthly home visit and one weekly group meeting. Each…attended by the mother of the child. Close to 40% of them are single mothers and/or teenage mothers, whose children run a much higher risk of ending up in a poverty trap if their education process is postponed or discontinued. By working with these mothers, and by promoting self-efficacy, self-esteem, motivation and better knowledge about…