A new kid on the block is trying to tackle an old problem.
“The humanitarian funding gap: needs are growing, funding isn't, yada yada,” former banker and co-founder of the Humanitarian Finance Forum, Simon Meldrum, told Devex in a recent interview. “Everybody writes about it. Everybody knows it needs to be solved, right? But … no one has any kind of credible answers.”
Enter the HFF. Conceived in 2019, the forum grew from conversations between Meldrum, who works in the private sector and innovative finance unit at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and Cyrus Ardalan, then board chair of the International Finance Facility for Immunisation, or IFFIm, which supports Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.