Join us in Mexico City to reimagine the future of global development đ
We're convening innovators, policymakers, and funders to reimagine what's possible. We hope to see you there.
Dear Unlock Aid Community,
Amanda Arch here. We havenât been formally introduced yet, but earlier this year, compelled by the mission of Unlock Aid, I joined the team as Chief Operating Officer. I believe that we are in a crucial moment in history where we still have time to act on some of the biggest threats facing humanity. With rising threats to our planet, health, food and water insecurity, our challenges are complex and intertwined. We canât wait any longer.
I have some exciting news to share - and some dates for you to save this August. But first, let me tell you a little more about how I got here. Â
As a co-founder of Kasha, one of Unlock Aidâs coalition members based in East Africa, I know how challenging it is to build an organization from scratch and scale it up. In just five years, Kasha went from an upstart company to Africaâs leading FemTech platform, delivering over 15 million healthcare products to more than 500,000 women, including in thousands of rural communities.
Kasha is just one of a new generation of innovative impact organizations working to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. Many of us have been operating at scale for more than 10 years, collectively impacting billions of people every day. Scores of organizations like ours have been founded and are led by CEOs from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Some of us have built thriving, market-tested private sector businesses; others are operating nonprofits that receive support from high-impact funders and foundations.
But we all know that, to drive impact at a truly global scale, innovators need public sector partners, too, including UN agencies, multilateral banks, and bilateral global development funders.
Thatâs why Unlock Aid is hosting, in partnership with the Day One Project, our Reimagining Global Development Accelerator, from August 17-19 in Mexico City. We want to see you there and hear your ideas. Registration is open now. Thereâs limited space and weâre reviewing applications on a rolling basis, so please sign up soon.
Together, weâll be:
Convening dozens of the worldâs most innovative organizations, policymakers, and funders to connect and collaborate on the way forward to transform how global development works and who it works for, centering 21st-century models of innovation, transparency and accountability;
Identifying âshovel-readyâ solutions â those that, if given resources today, could immediately scale impact to reach tens of millions of people around the world;Â
Producing a set of policy proposals that Congress, the Biden-Harris Administration, UN agencies, and other global development funders can adopt to scale evidence-based solutions and create the innovation ecosystems needed to achieve big global development âmoonshotsâ before the end of this decade.Â
We hope to see you there!
To progress,
Amanda ArchÂ
Unlock Aid Chief Operating Officer
P.S. We do not want travel to be a blocker for attending the event. Weâve set aside resources to subsidize all or part of the travel to Mexico City for organizations headquartered in low-income countries and that have a founding team from those countries. We also anticipate that, by choosing Mexico City for this event, this should minimize potential disruptions associated with obtaining visas and other issues. However, if you are selected for this accelerator and expect that you will have travel constraints, please let us know and weâll do our best to help.
P.P.S. In case you missed it, last week my colleague Walter Kerr and I published an opinion piece in Foreign Policy about the kinds of things Congress can do right now to give the U.S. Agency for International Development the flexibility to drive greater impact around the world. Check it out and let us know what you think.