“What’s really unique and valuable about [Tanzu Act] is that it brings a new perspective and tools to the humanitarian sector and they do it with a lot of humility and respect.”
What makes a successful Tanzu Act project
We measure success in two ways. First, we seek to create a measurable impact on humanitarian, social, and environmental challenges facing the world. Second, we aim to build up organizations’ internal technology capabilities so they can continue developing innovative technology and applying the practices they’ve learnt after the engagement ends.
We achieve this by working closely with clients to develop practical and effective solutions to hard problems. Most importantly, the projects Tanzu Act works on are the ones we believe can make a real impact on the lives of those being served through the solution we build together with the client. We achieve our impact goals if our partners achieve theirs.
“We knew there was a technology component to what we wanted to do. Working with [Tanzu Act] to find the shared value and develop products together enabled us to actually do it.”
Working together with Seattle-based nonprofit Carina, we developed a web app that allows home providers to list their services so those looking for care can find suitable options. Tanzu Act worked with Carina’s product team to help build their skills and prioritize during a time of crisis.
In 2018, more than 5 million children under the age of five died, and undernourishment was a key contributor to nearly half of those deaths. Save the Children is exploring challenges related to nutritional causal analysis, and partnered with Tanzu Act to identify opportunities to improve this process.
Social Finance set out to build a software application called Leaving Well to improve the experiences and outcomes of teens as they age out of the UK’s social welfare system, as they can often end up out of work or education or find themselves homeless. Tanzu Act worked with Social Finance to establish new development practices and methodologies to make Leaving Well a high-quality, people-centered product.
The Collaborative Cash Delivery Network is a consortium of 15 NGOs innovating in the humanitarian space. Giving cash directly to people as a form of aid is becoming more widely used by NGOs for emergency response. Tanzu Act worked with the CCD to design and build a platform to facilitate coordination between NGOs providing cash to people. By applying agile and design-led practices, together we developed a new tool for NGOs for setting up a collaboration in an emergency.
Coastal cities are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as sea-level rise and changing weather patterns. Tanzu Act worked with communities in Luganville, Vanuatu, and Semarang, Indonesia, in collaboration with the Red Cross, to learn approaches for designing solutions to minimize the impact of these threats.
Standardized testing is often biased by narrow-minded questions and an overemphasis on scores. Tanzu Act worked with The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA) to help close pernicious opportunity gaps.
Drivers with depression are seven times more likely to have been in an accident; the three leading causes of death are heart attack, heart disease, and suicide; and 38.2% of all workers with reported conditions say their workplace has caused or worsened their mental health condition(s). Healthy Heads in Trucks & Sheds (HHTS) engaged with VMware Tanzu Act to build and design a mobile application to support the mental health and well-being of these workers.
A21 has a mission of ending human slavery. One of the ways they do this is through educating and equipping everyone to understand, identify, and reduce the risk of human trafficking. A21 partnered with Tanzu Act to explore how to digitize their school-based curriculum focused on human trafficking prevention.
We’ve learned so many things since Tanzu Act was launched, and we know we’ll continue to learn as we work with more nonprofits. In this post we share some of these learnings, in the hope that we can together hold space for reflection on our failures and successes, so that we can collectively move towards our goal of creating meaningful impact for people and the planet.
Systems make up the structures we live in, and analyzing them allows us to isolate the parts that we want to change and the leverage points that make such change possible.
Toilets in refugee camps are built quickly and in bulk, and do not take into account the social, cultural, and religious habits of communities. As a result, people don’t feel safe using them, and so instead, often defecate behind tents and in alleys, which contributes to the spread of contagious diseases. By applying design-led methods, Tanzu Act and Elrha’s HIF, a grant-making facility focused on enabling effective humanitarian assistance, helped NGOs think through how to make toilets safe and accessible for people to use.