International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
PROJECTS FROM 2015-2016:
Enable Makeathon Competition - 2015 - 2016
Government and Corporate Relations - 2015 - 2016
Humanitarian Impact Bond Feasibility Study - 2016
2016 Strategic Action Plan for ICRC Corporate Engagement & Fundraising in India - 2016
Founded in 1863, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the world’s oldest and most eminent diplomatic and humanitarian organisations. Its primary mandate is to provide humanitarian aid and relief to those affected by war and other forms of violence, through economic security, restoring family links (RFL), water & habitat (i.e. sanitation), health, forensic science and international humanitarian law (IHL) programmes. It also serves as one of the two main umbrella organisations of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, along with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IRFC).
Kunal was stationed in the ICRC Regional Delegation for India, Nepal, Bhutan & the Maldives, where he served as the project manager for the humanitarian innovation project, the 2015-2016 Enable Makeathon competition. The Enable Makeathon was a competition held in Bangalore (India), which pooled teams from around the world comprising of engineers, product designers, entrepreneurs, and students to come up with a range of prototype disability aide devices aimed at addressing physical disabilities in rural India and around the world. ICRC envisaged reaching and developing these prototypes into mass-produced disability aides with the assistance of private sector investors and engineers to serve disabled refugees in refugee camps around the world. The competition was organized in partnership with the Word Economic Forum (WEF)’s Global Shapers, Swiss Consul General of Bangalore’s Swissnex India, the Indian Government’s Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s Accessibility India Campaign, Dalberg Global Development Advisors, Intellecap, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Association of People with Disability India, IKP Eden, Workbench Projects, and the IoTBLR Foundation for Pervasive Computing.
In addition to managing the Enable Makeathon competition, Kunal was involved in government and corporate relations, where he collaborated with the ICRC’s Directorate and Corporate Partnerships Unit in Geneva to raise funds for research and development of the prototypes and the technology startup firms, which emerged from the Enable Makeathon competition. This included liaising with senior representatives of multinational firms, the Indian Red Cross and South Asia Office of IFRC, the Irish and Swiss Embassies for India (the latter through Swissnex India), Indian trade bodies such as FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers & Commerce Industry), the Indian Government, multilateral and bilateral agencies and universities.
Kunal was also responsible for overseeing the feasibility study on the incorporation of a humanitarian impact bond initiative for ICRC operations in India, in collaboration with the Belgian Government’s impact investing agency Kois Invest. Furthermore, he formulated and authored the 2016 Strategic Action Plan for ICRC Corporate Engagement & Fundraising in India.