World Food Program USA’s Post

Transcript

Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Dora Tani. I'm the chief philanthropy and partnerships officers at World Food Program USA. World Food Program USA's mission is to support the United Nations World Food Program in its efforts to eradicate global hunger. Today we're in California and Google's headquarters for a very special event. It joined Google WFP Humanitarian ventures pitch event. And I'm delighted to have the opportunity for this, to have this conversations with two wonderful guests. We're not Kovach who is. The head of WFP Innovation Accelerator and Noah have a select who is the head of Google Accelerator for India region. Thank you both for being here. We will focus the conversations on the role of innovation and partnerships on supporting humanitarian work. Again, thank you for being here. And how about we start with providing our audience a little more background on WF Innovation Accelerator. Tell us a little bit more about what the mission of the accelerator is in some of the impact you have already achieved. Our mission is World Food program innovation. Accelerated so identify supportive scale and most impactful startups, but also internal World Food program innovations or nonprofits that can help us either make emergency response more effective or sustainable end hunger. Now we're doing this for World Food Problem, but actually we're running a total of 20 different social impact accelerator programs this year already. And you know, looking back last year. So we typically look into do innovations work and do the scale. So by the end of last year, the innovations that we support. Already reached 6060 point, 7 million people already in the raised a total of $295 million of grant funding. Just goes to show innovations can go to scale and you know, technology innovations have actually potentially do something really big. Again, and so from perspective of your work with WFP and the perspective of this large humanitarian organization, tell us the importance of partnerships with the private sector, like the one with with Google. No, it's like for us, I mean World Food problem is fully voluntarily funded organization. So like you know, there's donations of individuals, corporations, but also governments that actually help us actually do the work to serve hungry people for innovation. It's even more critical in like Noah here, like. You know, it's like from Google, it's like we really need to support not only, I mean, funding cash, that's one critical thing for innovation work, but also the skills of people in the experiences. And like I think we've been collaborating for several years now really. Accelerate the basis, but actually like work with startups, the mentorship, like technology, like I think you know, some of that you can't even even if you have the cash, you can't even buy it. So like you were really grateful for that. No, similar question before you. Like from Google's perspective, how do you see the importance of this kind of partnership that Google has with WP? OK. And yeah, so first of all, let me tell you a bit more about the accelerator program that we're running. So usually we actually work with the deep tech startups or entrepreneurs that have the potential to really change basically the way their industry is working, OK. So really high potential startups and entrepreneurs, we support them by bringing them the best of Google our. People our knowledge and the best practices that we've developed when we learn how to scale solution to millions of people. And I think that's where we connect to what Bernard said this time we had a unique opportunity to work with 10 ventures from the World Food Program and those mentors had been working across areas of emergency of supply change of cash based transfer and and some management services and. And I think that you. Aspect of this collaboration was we were able to actually bring them technology mentoring and tailored support to really unlock what are their challenges and how can they scale what, you know the amazing thing that they're doing to millions of people out there. I think the you know the work that we've done with Bernard and and and work for program innovation accelerator was. Really completing each other because again, we have the technology knowledge and the best practices, but what's your problem? Innovation Accelerator brings the the knowledge from the ground and how to really leverage innovation for food security. And I think that was a very unique match. And on top of that, google.org, basically they had a grant of $2.8 million to fuel the word program Innovation Accelerator. So I think when you think about the monetary support and the technology and the knowledge on the ground, we were really able to accelerate those 10 ventures using. And yeah, absolutely. I think that WWE often say it's the funding that's needed, but it's also the expertise. And I have been chatting with one of the participants from one of the teams and they said how much they value the mentorship and the the sort of expertise from people and how valuable it was for the project they're working on. So that's already from somebody who is part of that event, but. So the, the, the accelerator has been going on now for for throughout 2024. Tell us a little bit more and some of the innovations that have gone through it and some of like how you have seen them actually developed through accelerator and the potential that they have to create impact. I don't know. I'll let you go first. So first of all, it was a very insightful journey, right? Because for me personally, together, this unique look into the important work that has actually been done on the World Food program side was absolutely mind blowing. I think looking for example, at a adventure culture, right, they are doing a geographical vulnerability analysis that is enabling the word problem to take strategic decision and. Characterization, Bernard. Correct me if I'm wrong. And what they're doing, basically they're using satellites and drones data to make an accurate decision. And throughout the problem, they've been working with the teams and trying to understand how can they scale. And they kind of have shifted from being on the. On the laptop to a cloud based solution which enabled them to really get like a lot of knowledge sharing and scaled approach within the entire World Food program, which resulted in a actually in much more efficiency in quicker time to respond when they needed. And we we haven't quantified or they quantified basically with a lot of money saving for the future. So I think that's what we were aiming to bring right like that efficiency that like you know. Better time for support when needed. No, maybe just a compliment like because, like why is it relevant? Why is it important like these types of innovations like is World Food program with over 20,000 staff in 120 countries and territories in like. So the idea here is like how if you donate a dollar, how can we make sure that most of the dollar is used in the most efficient and effective way to help the people? And so like technology tools like that help us deliver the aid that's intended for the people at the right time to the right people when. You know, it's the most critical and it's the same time, you know, we work on supply chain optimization tools. So like we are saving money on like how do we get the the eight or the food to the people in the quickest, the fastest way, but also optimizing for carbon like so I think these are really exciting things that we're working on and why this is super cool is it's not just about like a niche product. It's actually at the core of the World Food program, right? So supply chain about like, you know. Deciding where the aid is being delivered about schoolmates, there's like, there's lots of interesting things that are going on. Cool, awesome. Well, looking to the future, how do you see technology continue to impact humanitarian work? Ohh. So I'll let you go first. So I think. To be honest, my hope and I really think it's going to happen, but like a lot of the trends that we're seeing now. In the tech sector are going to apply for humanitarian organization, right. I think that's exactly the goal of of us working together to make sure that those things stream. I think you know, first and foremost, I think, you know, things like AI and machine learning are going to help do and some have actually the venture that we were going already been using that on kind of like create predictive modeling for emergency cases to to really optimize resource and routes and time. And so on. So AI is kind of like a no brainer. I think we talked about Geo Tower, but that the use of much more accurate data to make a strategic decision is going to be something that we're going to see more and more. Again, we already see them, but I think the entire sector and private and public is going to have a lot more to do in, in, in that area. I think things like robotics and drones and and automation, especially when it, you know, when we're talking about like very distant places, some of them might be a hazard areas. How can we leverage that? Yeah, I think kind of like, uh, I just have to say, I mean, thank you to you all the Googlers and like the support that we've been getting over the years, you know, it's been amazing. Not just for, you know, like it's, you can look at like the individual ventures and like what, how that have changed, but like it's about the people that we're helping right now. And like, I, I think this is where looking into the future as well. It's like, you know, how can we best use like technology, AI, machine learning, like all of that to do things that you might want to have for like, you know, I don't know, maybe you're using it. The daily basis right now tools and you don't know that you're using it. And I believe in the future will be that, you know, the people that were serving, they will have the same access to like tools. We'll be able to serve them better because you know, we will have better services at a lower cost and like, you know, hopefully not even emerging response, but then sustainably lifting them out of 100. Amazing and and hopeful, right how you can help us do the the work better, more efficient, reaching more people. So thank you both. Thank you for your time. Thank you to Google for the incredible partnership for expertise, mentorship. Thank you and thank you for all of you for joining us. Thanks.