Million Lives Collective

The Million Lives Collective (MLC) is a global, multi-sectoral network of actors committed to promoting proven, impactful innovations and supporting their further scale-up to address global development challenges. It recognizes innovations reaching new horizons of impact and improving the lives of those living on less than $5.50 a day. MLC is made up of 114 innovations across a wide range of sectors and geographies.

MLC has launched its first Regional Hub in East Africa that will be managed by a consortium of 3 respected organizations in the innovation ecosystem: Villgro Africa, E&K Consulting and Insight Health Advisors. This strategic expansion is part of MLC’s ongoing efforts to enhance its model by forming partnerships with organizations that are optimally positioned to foster stronger ties with country and regional ecosystems, identify innovative solutions, and provide more tailored, contextually relevant support for their scale-up.

Through this Regional Hub, the MLC focuses on delivering against four core objectives:

▶ Aggregate & Verify Innovations: To date the MLC has identified 114 innovations with a combined estimated impact of over 913 million lives.

▶ Showcase impactful innovation: Raise awareness of verifies, impactful innovations among the global innovation community. As part of this, six MLC Members were, with MLC facilitation, included in the WHO Top 10 Primary Healthcare Innovations list.

▶ Connect: Connecting MLC members to supply/demand matchmakers and funding/collaboration opportunitiesWith the support of the Bayer Foundation, the MLC has been able to provide two of its Members with a Collaboration Grant, including funding and technical assistance to test an innovative, collaborative model.

▶ Learn: Capturing and disseminating practical insights on the scaling process through peer-to-peer learning and case studies. The MLC has garnered strong interest and positive feedback on its learning events. The most recent event on Monitoring, Evaluation & Adaptive Learning for Innovation welcomed over 130 attendees.

The MLC is seeking innovations making significant impact to join the MLC Membership. By becoming an MLC Member, innovations are celebrated through profiling on an international stage, learning and networking events, capturing key lessons on scaling, and facilitating collaborations within the network. The MLC is accepting applications now, and you can find more information on the MLC’s application process.

Please do reach out to ida@villgroafrica.org with any questions and we’d be happy to facilitate an introduction to the MLC team.