Giving Compass' Take:

• Chloe Olewitz reports that BuildPalestine is funding sustainable social innovation in Palestine by identifying problems in communities and “crowdsolving” them through calls for innovative solutions that are voted.

• What are the advantages of this model? What has traditional aid accomplished in Palestine? 

• Learn about another effort to build entrepreneurship support in Palestine. 

Historically, Palestine has received huge amounts of international financial aid. After the Oslo Accords, Palestinians were the world’s largest per-capita aid recipients of international development assistance, and have consistently ranked among the top aid recipients ever since. But between the stranglehold of the occupation, corruption, economic sanctions and humanitarian crises, much of that aid has been held back from realizing its intended benefit.

“What I saw as fundamentally wrong with Palestine is we have all this aid, but it’s not necessarily in the right places,” she said.

BuildPalestine is selective and accepts one out of every 10 project applications it receives. During the application process, social entrepreneurs are asked to demonstrate how their projects meet the program’s three main criteria: social impact, innovation and sustainability. Last year, they raised about $70,000 for projects on the platform.

The “crowdsolving” part of the platform comes in the form of open calls for innovation, Abu-Joudeh said, “where we can create a space for people in our community to innovate about the problems they face.” Some campaigns on BuildPalestine are pitched directly as complete projects, but others emerge from these crowdsolving challenges.

Read the full article about BuildPalestine by Chloe Olewitz at News Deeply.