Humanitarian · Humanitarian Accelerator

AI Enablement for Humanitarian Founders

Starting point

Humanitarian initiatives face an honest question: where does AI genuinely make a difference in their field, and where does it remain demo theater. As members of an international accelerator for humanitarian startups, we encountered early-stage founders who wanted to use AI but had no concrete picture of what for. Before the enablement, the buzzword dominated. After three weeks, first use case sketches — that was the goal.

What we did

We developed and delivered an AI curriculum for humanitarian founders within the accelerator. The content: eight canonical use case domains in the humanitarian context, seven steps of AI project management, fundamentals of how AI works, and a model for founders' own use case discovery. Format: talk module plus one-on-one coaching with the founder teams. Engagement ongoing since 2023.

Results

Humanitarian AI use cases in the curriculum

AI project management steps taught

Curriculum building blocks from use case to practice

What we learned

AI enablement does not fail due to lack of interest — it fails at the translation from aspiration to use case. Anyone who leads founders to tools without this step gets demo theater. Anyone who first puts them through a use case filter gets proposals with substance.

This is the summary. How we approached it methodologically — which architectural decisions we made, what we discarded and which patterns can be transferred to other contexts — we discuss in a personal conversation.

Not because we want to sell you something. But because this depth is what our clients engage us for — and it does not belong on the open internet.