In northeast Syria, farmers are facing conflict and destruction, supply chain disruption, and little to no agricultural support. The ongoing disruption has led to skyrocketing fuel costs: with more and more farmers unable to adequately power their irrigation systems for their crops, the seed quality is deteriorating from season to season. Reduced quality and quantity of yields is directly affecting the livelihoods of farmers and food security across the region.
In this Challenge, the IRC is looking for two types of solution: effective, affordable solar power systems to power irrigation systems; or more efficient irrigation pumps, generator designs, or other innovative advancements that can lessen the fossil fuel usage of diesel-powered systems. Solvers are encouraged to submit their own solutions, modifications to existing technologies, and/or mature partner and market proposals to deliver the requirements of the solution: greater technical and feature requirements to power irrigation systems.
The IRC’s success with the Citizen Seed Network in the country means that they are also interested in cost-sharing recommendations: how to minimize upfront costs for farmers, set up subscription or cost-sharing models, and how to scale it within the region. Further information about the weighting of the evaluation criteria (technical and economic factors) of this Challenge is available in the Solution Requirements section.
There are monetary prizes available from a US $35,000 award pool for solutions that meet enough of the criteria after theoretical evaluation.
NOTE: The details of this challenge and challenge submission are hosted on a different platform. Clicking "Learn More" will take you away from HeroX to the hosting site.
Intellectual Property
Your IP Rights are protected in this Prize Challenge; the International Rescue Committee (IRC) must award you to obtain them.
This is a Prize Challenge which requires a written proposal to be submitted. Awards will be contingent upon the theoretical evaluation of the proposal by the IRC and evaluators against the Solution Requirements. To receive an Award for this Prize Challenge, Solvers are required to transfer non-exclusive rights to the Intellectual Property (IP) in their proposed solution. There is no assignment of IP Rights with this challenge.
Solvers will retain all rights to any proposal not Awarded.
