Innovative Finance

Achieving the Zero Hunger hinges on unlocking dramatically increased investments over the next decade.

New forms of sustainable financing, polling capital from public donors, philanthropies, development banks, and impact investors are crucial to closing the funding gap and achieving social impact at scale.

The Innovation Accelerator intensified the Innovative Financing activities launching the Innovative Finance and Venture Launchpad portfolio forging strong collaborations internally with other Innovative Financing teams across WFP, and with leading external stakeholders across the humanitarian sector and impact investment ecosystem.

184,100+ people
received more resources through
‍Innovative Finance

Innovations

SheCan

SheCan is a digital crowdfunding platform that promotes financial inclusion and gender transformative projects by investing in WFP field programmes that bridge the gap of access to financing for people accessing WFP assistance.

Kicked off at a WFP bootcamp in 2020, and having received a vote of support from USAID, SheCan continued to drive a strong impact investor user research and platform design approach in 2021, including partnering with IDEO.org on how best to develop the SheCan 1.0 digital platform. SheCan began 2022 planning in Zambia, Rwanda and Peru, to support smallholder farmers and small agri businesses to get access to affordable financial products.

H2Grow asset-based loans

H2Grow Asset-based Loans aims to make hydroponics assets affordable and accessible through fair and transparent loans. Our vision is to build a more sustainable path to finance hydroponics assets but also to function as an internal case study to inform WFP’s efforts in blended finance.

In 2021, H2Grow asset-based loans raised a multi-year funding from the Scaling & Diffusion Programme of the Humanitarian Innovation Programme Norway and it was presented as part of the Humanitarian and Resilience Investing (HRI) Initiative of the World Economic Forum in February 2021.

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Comunity Inclusion Currencies

Community Inclusion Currencies offers a community-driven credit programme to enable people to exchange goods and services and set up new businesses, helping local economies and communities to keep moving despite insufficient national currency and volatile markets.

plugPAY

plugPAY is a digital payment solution for people we serve to rapidly receive cash assistance through their payment instrument of choice. The plugPAY team has completed the validation of plugPAY proof of concept, making direct payments that reached 1,063 people. Going forward, plugPAY targets to scale up their reach to 100,000 people by the end of 2022.

Share the Meal

WFP’s fundraising app that allows smartphone users all over the world to provide people with vital nutrition through a simple tap on their phones. In 2021, Share the Meal raised over USD 30 million globally and helped its members to share 134,534,489 meals with people in need. Share the Meal has since been adopted in WFP corporate structures as part of its global fundraising efforts.

ShareTheMeal has completed the life cycle within the WFP Innovation Accelerator and became part of the Alumni Programme.

2021: A year of impact and growth