The Welthungerhilfe (WHH) will be awarded this year the Lynn C. Fritz Medal for Excellence in Humanitarian Logistics. This is indicated in a press release by the prize organizers dated September 12. The medal, which since 2023 has been awarded by the Logistics Hall of Fame and endowed by the Fritz Institute in the United States, thus goes to Germany for the first time. The previous recipients were International Medical Corps, a US-based non-governmental organization focusing on health issues, and Strategies for Northern Development, a local humanitarian organization based in Kenya.
The international award honors the humanitarian organization from Bonn for its ongoing pioneering project since 2019, Emergency Supplies Prepositioning Strategy (ESUPS), which improves national strategies for stockpiling relief goods in disaster regions. The core of the project is the digital platform STOCKHOLM (STOCK of Humanitarian Organisation Logistics Mapping). It enables logistics professionals worldwide to record inventories of various relief goods, analyze them, and provide precise recommendations on which items, in what quantities, should be held at which locations.
Improved Collaboration
The impact is tangible: ESUPS provides better visibility and easier collaboration between governments, non-governmental organizations, and United Nations organizations. This shortens response times, makes deployments more efficient, and reduces costs for warehousing and disposal of surplus goods. This is particularly important for the localization topic. For many local partners, such as national disaster protection organizations, the platform can be used to visualize stock data and gain an overview of the resources available nationwide. At the same time, they know what goods are available regionally and internationally.
A three-person team from WHH is driving the project forward. In the steering group sit representatives from Action Contre la Faim, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, The International Organization for Migration (IOM), Save the Children International, United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD), Welthungerhilfe (WHH), and World Vision. The mathematical model for stock analyses was developed by international scientists, among others, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Penn State University.
New Financing Basis
The project
benefited from a diverse financing base to ensure its sustainability. When the original funder, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was no longer available, WHH anchored it on three new financial pillars: First, WHH contributes funds from its own donation pool. Second, funds flow from European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), the humanitarian aid organization of the European Commission, as well as a private donor. Currently, the project's financing is secured through June 2027. “Many lives would have been at risk if the project had died after the dissolution of USAID,” emphasizes Mathias Mogge, Secretary General of WHH.
The 15-member international jury selected the project from all applications because it is an “innovative pioneering project that enables real collaboration with all actors and serves as a model for the entire humanitarian aid sector,” as stated in the justification.
“Because stakeholders formerly rarely communicated with each other about global, regional, and national stock levels, national authorities were poorly informed about the relief goods stocked in their
country. This led to items being either overstocked or available in too small quantities. This problem was solved in an exemplary manner with ESUPS. As a model for others, the communication strategy that led to the rapid linking of numerous actors can also serve: today 127 actors exchange data on inventories from nearly 800 logistics professionals in 60 countries, and this decisively paves the way for the establishment of coordinated preparedness strategies,” emphasizes Thilo Jörgl, chair of the jury of the Lynn C. Fritz Medal.
On December 4, representatives of WHH will present the results of ESUPS at the Bertelsmann Repräsentanz in Berlin. On that day, the third edition of “ConnectChains – The Humanitarian Supply Chain Conference” will take place there. International experts from business, academia, aid organizations, and the United Nations will travel to this summit. On the same day in the evening, Lynn C. Fritz, CEO of the sponsor Fritz Institute, will hand the medal to the winner during the Logistics Hall of Fame gala reception in
