The Humanitarian Water Engineering Lab at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research has been awarded a major grant from Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge (CHIC) as part of its Transition to Scale program for proven humanitarian innovations.

The new CHIC Transition to Scale grant, valued at $300,000 CAD, will provide transformational funding to accelerate the global scale-up of the Safe Water Optimization Tool (SWOT), an innovative water quality modelling platform that helps humanitarian responders ensure water safety and protect public health in crisis zones globally.

The SWOT is a free and open-source tool that has been deployed, to date, in nine countries by seven humanitarian organizations, as part of initiatives aiming to improve water safety for over 1/2 million people. The new CHIC funding will enable the further scaling of the tool by supporting the development and piloting of the SWOT as a joint quality assurance platform for safe water programs in a national WASH coordination cluster in a selected country in 2024.

Dr. Syed Imran Ali, Humanitarian Water Engineering Lab Lead, says: “This grant will enable the integration of the SWOT into the ways of working in the humanitarian sector. We are excited to work with local implementing and global coordination partners to demonstrate how the SWOT can help ensure safe water program effectiveness and protect public health in crisis zones globally. We are incredibly grateful to Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge for their amazing support in the past, and now with this grant, and for seeing the SWOT as a game changer for humanitarian WASH.”

Fawad Akbari, Director of Humanitarian Innovation at Grand Challenges Canada, which oversees the implementation of CHIC, says, “The Safe Water Optimization Tool is a preeminent example of how innovation adoption in the humanitarian system can directly and efficiently safe and improve lives. We are proud to continue to support this initiative, and are looking forward to nurturing this next stage of collaboration.”

The SWOT was developed by a team of researchers and humanitarian practitioners at the Dahdaleh Institute and the Lassonde School of Engineering including Dr. Ali, Prof. Usman Khan, Prof. James Orbinski, and Lassonde Ph.D. candidate Michael De Santi, with collaboration from Dahdaleh Institute research staff James E. Brown, Mohamed Moselhy, and Ngqabutho Zondo. To learn more about the SWOT, please visit www.safeh2o.app.

Creating Hope in Conflict: A Humanitarian Grand Challenge is a partnership of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, and Global Affairs Canada, with support from Grand ChallengesCanada.CHIC seeks to enable local organizations, humanitarian agencies, and the private sector to work alongside affected communities to respond more nimbly to complex emergencies, address the unprecedented magnitude of suffering around the world, and empower people to create better lives for themselves. This challenge seeks to fund and accelerate innovative solutions that enable life-improving assistance to reach the most vulnerable and hardest-to-reach people in conflict-generated humanitarian crises.o learn more about Creating Hope in Conflict: a Humanitarian Grand Challenge, please visit: humanitariangrandchallenge.org

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