From crowd sourcing to outside-the-box partnerships, USAID is ramping up efforts to embrace innovation and promote new technologies to address a range of water problems.

Our cover story spotlights USAID’s Securing Water for Food Grand Challenge for Development. The Grand Challenges call on the public to come up with fresh solutions to improve health, food security, and livelihoods. Our Securing Water For Food Challenge asked you, the global water community, for ways to boost the sustainability of agricultural water use. You did not disappoint. From drones that bring farmers real-time information about crops to sandbar pumpkin farming techniques, we believe the 17 first-round awardees will revolutionize the ways that food is produced.

While these technologies and approaches are cutting-edge, using partnerships is a tried and true approach to development. The Farmer-to-Farmer program, the subject of our Real Impact piece, has been pairing U.S. farmers with farmers from 110 countries for training and technical assistance for nearly 30 years. These pairings focus on everything from irrigation to marketing, help farmers gain new knowledge and skills, and often lead to long-lasting friendships.

Putting people together is particularly essential in urban areas, with their teeming, diverse populations with myriad needs, so this issue explores six of Africa’s fastest-growing cities, where a USAID program improved WASH services for the poor. The program cast a wide net by partnering with utilities, churches, landlords, and ordinary citizens to meet its goals. The approach has been a raging success: Half a million people in these cities now benefit from improved WASH.

Going forward, these inclusive approaches will help us continue to address the world’s most pressing problems, such as child undernutrition. USAID Nutrition Division Chief Anne Peniston introduces our new Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy in a thought-provoking opinion piece about the connections between WASH and nutrition and the importance of taking a holistic approach to this critical issue. With the Strategy, we are creating more opportunities for collaboration to ensure that every child has the opportunity to grow, learn, and earn.

We hope you enjoy this issue and continue working with us to ensure every man, woman, and child has the chance to thrive.