Meet Lokkhi’s family
Context:
For Lokkhi and her family, the weather has always shaped their everyday life.
Lokkhi lives with her husband, Daulat, their daughter Alo, and her elderly mother in a village where she farms a small piece of land and keeps a few cattle. Like many families around them, they have always planned their lives around the seasons when to plant, harvest, save and prepare for the rains.
But over the years, the seasons are becoming harder to predict.
Some years, heavy rain arrives just before harvest and floods the fields. Other years, long periods of heat dry out the soil and make it harder to keep crops and cattle healthy. During the dry season, the family has less water to rely on, while floods and salinity can affect the quality of the water around them. Their village has ponds, canals and other local water sources, but these are not always managed or used in ways that help the community through changing conditions.
The family has learned to cope. They save when they can, store water, rely on neighbours and draw on years of experience. When a bad season comes, they may borrow money or sell an asset to get by.
But coping comes at a cost.
Last year, Daulat spent long hours working through the hottest part of the day to save the crop. He often felt dizzy, dehydrated and exhausted. Daulat came home with chest pains that turned out to be the start of a heart condition, one that now needs ongoing medication and rest he can't always afford to take.
Lokkhi’s elderly mother also depends on regular medicines for diabetes and high blood pressure. During floods or extreme heat, reaching the clinic or collecting medicines become difficult.
The family has managed to cope with each difficult season, but each time they have fewer resources left to deal with the next challenge.
One morning, Lokkhi’s rice is almost ready to harvest when she hears that heavy rain may be coming. If she waits, the crop could be damaged. If she harvests early, she may lose part of the yield. She checks the weather update, but it only tells her that rain is expected in the area. It does not tell her what that means for her field or what she should do next.
Her daughter Alo is also trying to help the family earn more. But some local work means spending long hours in or around saline water, making Lokkhi worry about the risks to her daughter’s health.
A potential lost or damaged harvest doesn't just mean less food, it means less income at exactly the moment medical costs and daily expenses are rising, and it's often the children's schooling that gets cut first to cover the gap. In a bad enough year, families like Lokkhi's have felt the pressure to marry off a daughter earlier than they'd planned, simply to reduce the number of mouths to feed leaving the daughter with a risk of future maternal complications.
Their son Amir, who now works in Dhaka and sends money home, faces his own uncertainty. Extreme heat can make working outdoors unsafe, while heavy rain can disrupt transport and cost him a day's income. A general warning does not always tell him what is happening where he lives or when it is safest to travel. After heavy rain, stagnant water around his neighbourhood can also lead to more mosquitoes and illness increase mosquito breeding and the risk of mosquito-borne diseases.
When something goes wrong, the effects reach the whole family. A damaged harvest can mean less income and more borrowing. Health problems can bring additional expenses, while floods and other disruptions can make essential services harder to reach.
Lokkhi’s family has always found ways to manage. But as the risks become harder to predict, experience and coping alone are no longer enough.
They need better ways to prepare, make timely decisions, protect what they depend on and recover when things go wrong. For families living with climate risks, resilience is not about preparing for one crisis. It is about having the information, resources and support to make better decisions when it matters—and make better use of what they already have.
Climate Information Services
Problem Areas
- 01
Climate adaptation for Agriculture & Livelihoods
- Do you have an idea that could help a farmer like Lokkhi understand what a weather forecast means for her location and decide whether to harvest early, wait, irrigate, or take another action?
- Do you have an idea for a farming or livestock practice, tool, or arrangement that could help households protect crops, cattle, and other sources of income through longer heat spells, floods, or unpredictable rain?
- Do you have an idea that could help rural households adapt their livelihoods when their usual source of income becomes less reliable because of changing climate conditions?
- Beyond Lokkhi’s story, are there other rural livelihoods such as fishing, day labour, or small livestock trading—where people have access to weather information but still struggle to know what to do, that a solution could address?
- 02
Urban Life & Work
- Do you have an idea that could help someone like Amir understand what a heat or heavy-rain warning means for their specific neighbourhood, work, or journey—and what they should do next?
- Do you have an idea for a tool, service, workplace practice, or arrangement that could help outdoor workers stay safer and protect their income during extreme heat or other climate-related disruptions?
- Do you have an idea that could help people in cities respond to flooding, stagnant water, waste, transport disruptions, or other climate-related problems in their neighbourhood?
- Beyond Amir’s story, are there other urban workers, informal businesses, or communities that receive climate information but still struggle to turn it into practical decisions that a solution could support?
- 03
Climate adaptive financial protection
- Do you have an idea that could help a household like Lokkhi’s understand how a coming climate risk could affect their income and prepare financially before the loss happens?
- Do you have an idea that could help households access the right financial support after a damaged harvest, lost working days, health expenses, or damaged assets, without falling deeper into debt?
- Do you have an idea that could make savings, credit, insurance, emergency finance, flexible repayment, or other forms of financial protection more useful when climate disruptions happen?
- Beyond Lokkhi’s family, are there other farmers, workers, small businesses, or people shifting to alternative livelihoods who face climate-related financial risks that better information or timely financial support could help address?
Solutions do not have to be insurance products. They could explore savings, credit, insurance, emergency finance, flexible repayment, risk-sharing or other financial approaches.
- 04
Water Resource Management
- Do you have an idea that could help a community like Lokkhi’s understand what changing rainfall, dry periods, floods, or salinity mean for their available water and what they should do next?
- Do you have an idea for a practice, tool, or system that could help communities protect water sources from salinity, contamination, waste, or other changes that affect water quality and availability?
- Do you have an idea that could help households, farmers, or local businesses manage when their usual water sources become unavailable, unsafe, or difficult to access?
- Beyond Lokkhi’s village, are there other communities or livelihoods (fishing, farming, or small businesses) facing water challenges where better information could help people make more timely decisions?
- 05
Health & Resilience
- Do you have an idea that could help someone like Daulat understand what extreme heat or other weather warnings mean for their health and what they should do to stay safe?
- Do you have an idea that could help people like Lokkhi’s mother continue getting essential medicines, treatment, or care when floods, heat, or other disruptions make it difficult to reach a health facility?
- Do you have an idea that could help communities reduce health risks linked to flooding, stagnant water, waste, unsafe water, mosquitoes, or other climate-related changes?
- Beyond Lokkhi’s family, are there other people or communities (outdoor workers, migrants, older people, or people with regular healthcare needs) who receive climate information but still struggle to know how to protect their health or access care?
Solutions
What We Are Looking For
There is no single type of solution we are looking for.
Your idea could be a new product or service model, behavioral change initiative, financial mechanism, business model, frugal technology, or a combination of these.
A strong solution should:
- 01
Address a clear and real problem
- 02
Be practical and affordable
- 03
Work within the realities of communities and existing systems
- 04
Show how climate information, resources or services can help people prepare or act
- 05
Have potential to work beyond one person or location
Solutions can be cross-cutting and may address more than one problem area.
Note: The story of Lokkhi's family is meant to spark thinking, not define the boundary of the problem — applicants are encouraged to look beyond it to other people, places, and risks shaped by climate change.