“Never before has generosity been so insufficient”. This hard-hitting statement was in the opening paragraph of a report published in January 2016 for the World Humanitarian Summit, titled “Too important to fail- addressing the humanitarian financing gap”. According to this report, we are spending twelve times more in humanitarian aid today than we did 15 years ago. Despite this, the funding gap has never been greater. We have an astonishing $15 billion global funding gap that is widening due to the growing number of conflicts and natural disasters. Unfortunately, traditional sources of aid are struggling to close this gap.

Global GDP stands at a whopping $78 trillion today, so we clearly don’t live in a poor world. How do we unlock these resources in support of humanitarian aid?

Picture this: if only 1% of the $5 trillion global consumer market is diverted to funding humanitarian aid, we would be able to close the aid gap three times over. Of course things aren’t that simple; changing age-old business models of established corporations in order to integrate an effective social component is next to impossible, but where we can make a difference is the next generation of startups.

If every new startup has a social component integrated into its business model, we could go a long way in reducing the aid gap. Can we leverage the growth of consumerism to tackle global humanitarian funding challenges? According to Stats Canada, the proportion of people who had purchased or boycotted a product for ethical reasons rose to 27% in 2008, proving Canadians are already on board.

I started JOGGO with precisely this in mind: to launch a superior quality, impeccably designed product with a business model that has the potential to provide sustainable scalable support to humanitarian aid. With each purchase of a Joggo bag we are helping educate refugee kids through our partnership with CARE Canada. JOGGO is our JOurney to Greater GOod.

Author: Mohamed Al Lawati, Founder JOGGO