Frequently Asked Questions

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.

The MLC focuses on delivering against four core functions:

Aggregate & Verify: Identify innovations addressing global development challenges at scale, and coordinate their independent assessment by technical experts to validate their impact.

Showcase: Raise awareness of verified, impactful innovations (MLC Members) among the global innovation community.

Connect: Support MLC Members to access collaboration / funding opportunities from potential adopters and scaling partners among the MLC network and beyond, to further enhance their impact.

Learn: Capture and disseminate practical insights on the scaling process through peer-to-peer learning and case studies.

Members will benefit from opportunities to:

Convene with other ecosystem actors. Collaborate with the MLC’s supporting Partner network, including the brokering of introductions, connections and invitations to shared events. For example, this WHO Primary Health Care Showcase Event featuring MLC Members.

Gain exposure. Celebration and profiling on an international scale through Partner communication materials, MLC-branded sessions at key events. See examples from SOCAP and Devex World, on Twitter, and in the press including Voice of America, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Convene with other Members. Connect with other organisations, innovators and social entrepreneurs, sharing challenges and learning from each other's scaling journeys, as well as valuable capabilities, market insights and relationships. Explore insights from our events on the MLC Blog and via our newsletter.

The Million Lives Collective is currently comprised of two cohorts of organisations, innovators and social entrepreneurs who are improving the lives of those living on less than $5.50 a day.

MLC Vanguard celebrates those who have directly impacted 1,000,000+ clients with their innovations.

MLC Voyager recognises those whose innovations are expected to impact 1,000,000+ clients within 18 months.

The Million Lives Collective is not a funding platform or a grant fund and is not offering any financial support at this time, but selected innovations will have the opportunity to showcase their work to MLC Partner initiatives on a case-by-case basis.