Small Machine, Big Change: Navigating Humanitarian Innovation with Purpose and Partnership

“I just wanted to make a washing machine for my next-door neighbor.” 

Navjot Sawhney, Founder of The Washing Machine Project

For many innovators, scale is the ultimate pursuit. For Navjot, success isn’t measured in numbers alone. 

“It’s about how many opportunities you unlock for people.”

The Washing Machine Project (WMP, or “The Project”) was one of the first initiatives Response Innovation Lab supported. The Project has distributed its “Divya” washing machines to families and communities in India, Iraq, Lebanon, the United States, Mexico, Ghana, and Uganda. They have also reached refugee camps in the Republic of Congo and Greece, and hospital staff in Gaza. What began as a promise to a neighbor has touched the lives of more than 46,000 people to date.

Response Innovation Lab (RIL) invited the founder of WMP, Navjot Sawhney, for a “deep talk” to share his experience as a humanitarian innovator. He brought with him not just a story of invention, but of persistence, relationships, and lessons to share with the larger humanitarian innovation ecosystem.  

Starting with a promise, and falling in love with a problem

Navjot began his career as an engineer, but quickly saw a flaw: many products being made were harming, not helping, the planet. He realized he wanted to become an innovator to bring about products that actually help the planet, not hindering it. He left the UK for India to work with Engineers Without Borders.

In India, Navjot met Divya, his neighbor, who spent up to 20 hours a week hand washing clothes, also constrained by the lack of running water or a generator. Navjot made a promise to bring Divya a washing machine that would work in her circumstances. 

With this promise in mind, Navjot came back to the UK to further his learning in humanitarianism. He enrolled in the University of Bath for a Master’s programme in “Humanitarianism, Conflict, and Development”.  As he deepened his understanding of the humanitarian innovation system and landscape, more gaps began to reveal themselves: the absence of any mention of clothing or laundry in existing standards, and a lack of research to show whether people were actually tackling the right problems, and much more.

“You need to really fall in love with the problem,” he reflected, “because the solutions always change, but the problem will always be there.”

That promise to a friend became the seed of his journey as a humanitarian innovator — one focused on simple, affordable solutions to technical challenges in everyday life. 

“A pivotal moment”: meeting Response Innovation Lab

With the idea taking shape, Navjot went to Iraq to pilot the washing machine, encouraged by a classmate from his Master’s programme. Through Facebook, he quickly found the tribe. One day, he found himself in the meeting of the WASH cluster in Iraq,  usually hosted by the Response Innovation Lab. The Lab’s director at the time heard his story and suggested him submit a proposal to Oxfam — which led to the project’s very first funding. Oxfam also brought international visibility to the initiative.

“Response Innovation Lab provided the right environment, introductions, and encouragement for us to grow responsibly and learn fast. This early support shaped us. And I just don't see that with people that externally invest and take a piece of the pie.”

RIL’s role went far beyond brokering introductions and facilitating partnerships. RIL also supported Navjot with grants management, needs assessments, equipment, monitoring and evaluation, and impact storytelling.

“It was a pivotal moment…we were young, we were ambitious, and we had big ideas. Response Innovation Lab didn’t try to mold us into something we weren’t.”

Navigating the ecosystem as a small, not-for-profit social enterprise

For an ambitious innovator like Navjot, staying “on track” requires three things: access to people who “know what’s going on,” relevant knowledge and know-how, and funding. As he looked to scale up the impact, he began exploring collaborations across the wider ecosystem, unconstrained by the size of The Project. 

“There is often a mismatch (between a small entity and larger organisations): language, timelines, risk appetites … and we have learned how to bridge the gap.”

For him, co-creation is key. Partnerships should be relational, not transactional. 

“We bridge the gap by being transparent and consistent, relentlessly focused on the mission, vision, and the people we serve. We built trust through actions… co-creating our solutions together with our partners. We deliver small pilots instead of presenting a finished product.”

This also means partners are expected to give innovators the room and autonomy to work fast, fail quickly, and learn with experimentation. In the face of a shifting funding landscape — with growing appetite for experimentation and early-stage innovations tackling intersectional challenges such as gender and climate — WMP has adapted its partnership models.

“We rely heavily on working with corporates through their CSR partnerships, which allow us to deliver paid-for pilot programs with NGOs that often don’t have the funding to cover them themselves. For some regions, we try to generate earned income through direct sales….at our core, we still remain a not-for-profit social enterprise which is always driven by impact, not our margins.”

Messages to the humanitarian innovation ecosystem

Collaborations within the ecosystem tend to be hindered by competitions for funding — both in giving and receiving. Many large agencies still operate in silos, even though shared procurement could reduce cost and more frequent cross-sharing and learning amongst different agencies could boost impact. 

For a small project like The Washing Machine Project, they benefited from a “partnership consortium” model, which allowed them to unlock access to the served communities — namely, end users — through INGOs, as well as funding from the private sector. The changing funding landscape at large also calls for multi-year, unrestricted funding to help scale up innovation pilots. 

Navjot reaffirmed the value of what Response Innovation Lab did in the early stages of his innovation journey. The role an “intermediary” can play could be pivotal. As Navjot put it, “Response Innovation lab is really good at championing bold ideas earlier….and facilitating long-term partnerships with NGOs.” He calls for more “ecosystem intermediaries” to act as that bridge and coordinate introductions, since “reducing the red tape” is often something small social enterprises have to do on their own. Intermediaries like Response Innovation Lab can also amplify stories of impact and experience, help innovators tell their stories, build a community of practice for like-minded innovators to share failures and lessons across sectors. 

Advice for the next-gen innovators 

“Remember, your work is not just about being a hero. It's about building trust, and sharing the trust and power, and creating something that outlives you……don't wait for permission.”

For Navjot, “the perfect conditions” for change to happen don’t exist.

“The world's most important problems won't be solved by people waiting for the perfect title, or the perfect funding, or the perfect moment. The challenges will be solved by those who care deeply, listen humbly, and act boldly. Start small, start scrappy, start now.”