New UNICEF-backed platform looking to crowdsource innovation

A new platform has launched with the aim of crowdsourcing innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. Called CauseTech, the platform comes out of a partnership between the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network and UNICEF Innovation Center.

It aim is to aggregate the world’s best innovators, technologists, developers, and researchers in a global ideation ecosystem to start finding unique ways of addressing some of the biggest challenges currently facing the planet.

As well as connecting groups of people who might otherwise not have contact with each other, the platform will play host to a series of challenges and contests. The first challenge is the Renewable Energy Challenge, which focuses on sourcing alternative energy solutions for Burundi, the most energy-poor country in the world.

In fact, just three percent of the Burundi population is connected to the grid, with the vast majority of the population reliant on simple biomass fuels, such as wood, coal, and kerosene, to meet their cooking and lighting needs. Aside from being energy intensive to gather, these fuels can be harmful to both the environment and the people using them.

UNICEF Burundi is already working with private sector, academic, government and development partners and communities to tackle energy challenges in the country. CauseTech members are invited to improve upon the existing initiatives, or propose new solutions (products and business models) to be tested in collaboration with UNICEF’s Burundi Innovation Lab.

Essentially, the platform is about making ideas reality.