Finalist Feature: LightCastle Partners
Written by LightCastle and GKI team members
The USAID-supported Accelerating Innovation for Resilience (AI4Resilience) Challenge supports the co-creation of solutions to strengthen the ecosystem for innovations fostering community-led humanitarian response and long-term resilience. The program is currently being piloted in Bangladesh. This article features one of ten solutions our Challenge Finalist organizations are designing and prototyping. Follow the AI4Resilience Challenge on LinkedIn.
Despite recent developments and at the cusp of becoming a middle-income nation by 2026, Bangladesh remains one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world. To LightCastle Partners, unless robust climate-resilient initiatives, measures, and actions are implemented at scale, there’s a real fear of the country moving backward.
While a plethora of solid ideas and entrepreneurs can make a difference, an appropriate mix of financing structures potentially stunts meaningful developments. The challenges are further compounded by innovators not having access to the right connections with various humanitarian or development organizations that work with on-the-ground communities.
“Unless a common platform can unite all relevant stakeholders, Bangladesh risks falling behind in scaling climate-resilient initiatives — which is the clarion call of the hour. This is a systemic-level challenge and one that requires transformative capacity development.”
LightCastle Partners plans to create a platform that will bring together different financing institutions, government, development partners, media, academia, and the private sector to address financial and market-related challenges associated with climate resiliency. Using a blended finance model, it aims to reduce poverty and inequity while improving pertinent impact sectors without damaging the environment.
Follow along LightCastle Partners’ journey and their climate resiliency platform on their Facebook page, their LinkedIn page, and GKI’s social media channels.