Despite growing emphasis in the humanitarian sector on the importance of improving the collection, sharing and use of data on disability and older age, there is still a lack of high-quality and action-oriented data about people's experiences and barriers faced in humanitarian settings (Robinson et al., 2020).     This innovation challenge is looking for innovative data collection approaches that will generate action-oriented recommendations on how to make humanitarian programmes more inclusive of older people and people with disabilities.

The Problem

In humanitarian settings, data is    often collected without a clear purpose and is not used to inform and improve humanitarian programming. While tools    like the Washington Group questions are increasingly being used to collect data on individual    functional ability, there is limited evidence of disaggregated data being collected on a large scale or being used    to increase the inclusion of people with disabilities and older people.

Commonly used qualitative data collection methods can pose barriers to exclusion, and are    rarely co-designed with representative organisations, such as older people’s associations (OPAs) and organisations    of persons with disabilities (OPDs).

Data collection is additionally    challenging due to key features of humanitarian settings, such as insecurity and populations that include vulnerable    individuals. Despite agreed principles and standards, approaches to data responsibility are often inconsistent in    humanitarian settings.

This innovation challenge is designed to respond  to these multi-layered and interlinked problems, and we hope that the innovation projects we support will make  measurable progress towards addressing them.

The Challenge

We are looking to support innovative data collection approaches that will generate action-oriented recommendations on how to make humanitarian action more inclusive of older people and people with disabilities.

The expected outputs for supported projects include:  

   
• Action-oriented recommendations for how to make the chosen humanitarian programme(s) more inclusive based on the data collected.
       
• A step-by-step guide on the data collection approach used, including any knowledge and tools that could be shared with the wider humanitarian community.
   

Projects must be delivered through meaningful collaboration between one or more        representative organisations (OPDs and OPAs) and humanitarian actors. OPAs and OPDs are expected to play an integral role in all of the project stages, including planning and budgeting, design and implementation, as well as in writing the proposal.