Pakistani volunteer network “MilKar” has won the Commonwealth Innovation Award for Sustainable Development 2023.
Recognizing MilKar as one of the 15 exceptional innovations from over 3,000 nominations across 56 Commonwealth countries, Commonwealth Secretary-General Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC presented the biennial award.
The selection process for the award spanned several months and involved over 70 jury members.
The Commonwealth Innovation Awards acknowledge and celebrate the efforts of innovators in the public, private, and NGO sectors working on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Each award category aligns with the five pillars of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership.
MilKar is designed as an “uber”-like platform that connects volunteers with social projects and reimagines development challenges into volunteering opportunities.
By mobilizing, connecting, and enabling the community to take ownership of projects, it rewrites the fundamental challenge of development initiatives: sustainably.
In the past three years, Milkar has become Pakistan’s largest independent youth volunteer platform. The network has grown to over 12,317 volunteers and 261 NGOs registered on Milkar, who have worked on 566 community service projects impacting 2.9 million people.
MilKar led the initiative with the government to convert student volunteering hours into academic credit across several universities in Pakistan.
