Elrha Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF): AI For Humanitarians: Shaping Future Innovation

Funding for humanitarian practitioners and academics to undertake a six month guided ‘learning journey’ to gain knowledge and experience of artificial intelligence to inform professional insight of the opportunities and risks shaping the future of humanitarian AI.

The Elrha Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) supports research and innovation to improve outcomes for people affected by humanitarian crises by identifying, nurturing and sharing more effective and scalable solutions. The fund works by identifying and prioritising humanitarian challenges and designing Innovation Challenges to address them. Teams are awarded grants to develop innovations that address the identified challenges and share their findings with their communities and the wider sector.

This Call for Applications – AI for Humanitarians: Shaping the Future of Humanitarian AI – is seeking to support a cohort of up to ten grantees (individuals or teams) to take part in a six month ‘guided learning journey’ that takes a problem-led approach to collaboratively explore the opportunities and risks associated with AI, to identify future areas of impact for further investigation and potential investment.

The overall objective of the call is to support humanitarian practitioners from diverse contexts to look to the future potential of AI, to engage with the development of AI systems, and be responsive to emerging plans to govern them.

Humanities practitioners and academics, who should have experience of supporting or working with humanitarian communities in crisis, will identify a humanitarian problem that they have a deep understanding of, and explore the potential for AI to develop an effective intervention for the identified problem, while also taking into account factors such as the current application and future potential for AI to address the problem, the potential  arms be of responding with AI, and how to inform policy and government of AI in a humanitarian context.

The cohort will be part of a 6-month guided learning journey, where they will take part in group discussions and hands-on exercises trialling AI tools, hear from guest speakers and experts from the field to provide real-world insights in best and next practice, as well receive one-on-one support from mentors.

At the end of this journey each grantee will have developed a concept note which will contain a clear problem statement, an analysis of the associated opportunities and risks, reflections on the feasibility of existing solutions both AI and other, and which, with the support of mentors, outlines potential future AI solutions of relevance to their chosen problem field.

The cohort will also co-design a set of recommendations for funders and policymakers informed by the consultation and learning activities throughout their journey. To achieve the objective for this challenge each grantee will:

• Develop their voice on, and deepen their understanding of, the potential of AI for their own work, developing a concept note which they could use to inform ongoing activity and spark new initiatives.
• Give real time feedback on the learning journey curriculum to support the development of an open access tool for other humanitarian actors.
• Connect with other practitioners, innovators and funders from across the humanitarian system to explore the potential of AI and make collective recommendations to decision makers.