Globally, the Philippines has been ranked as the country at the greatest risk of disaster and exposure to multiple high-intensity hazards, including typhoons, floods, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, droughts and sea-level rises. It is also among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, which is projected to cause intensified extreme weather events. Multifaceted shocks and stressors have led to loss of livelihoods and hampered access to basic social services, thus aggravating food insecurity and malnutrition. As one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia and with a large and growing population, it is critical that the Philippines applies innovative approaches to build resilience and emergency preparedness.
To address these challenges, the World Food Programme (WFP) Philippines country office and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in collaboration with the WFP Innovation Accelerator, launched the first-ever call for applications leading up to the 2024 Preparedness and Response Excellence in the Philippines (PREP) Forum. The PREP Innovation Challenge identified and scaled low- and high-tech cost-effective solutions for the food-insecure population in disaster-prone areas of the Philippines.
WFP Philippines provided comprehensive support to selected teams, facilitating the development and scaling of the most promising solutions. The focussed on nurturing innovations that are not only novel to the context of the Philippines but also sustainable, scalable and capable of bringing long-term change within challenging environments.
The WFP Innovation Accelerator supported WFP Philippines in the formulation of the priority areas and call for applications and the sourcing of these innovative solutions. We completed our support for the programme in 2024.
The selected solutions showcased their innovations during the 2024 PREP Forum event taking place in Manila, Philippines and received subsequent visibility. They also received up to US$45,000 in funding from WFP and one year of mentorship and operational support from WFP Philippines.
