Archive for category: Technology

Information and stories about technology news.

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3 Charity Apps You Should Know About

Charity appsIn addition to advocacy and mobilizing governments to make a difference, donating to charities can have a major impact in the fight against global poverty and hunger. Here are three charity apps that are making a difference on a global scale:

  1. Share The Meal: Share The Meal is the world’s first charity app against global hunger. By donating only 50 cents you can feed one child in hunger for an entire day. Since its founding in 2014, Share The Meal has donated more than 7 million meals to children suffering from hunger. Share The Meal funds are distributed by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger. Currently, Share The Meal funds are being used to feed Syrian refugee children in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley where 40 percent of the 360,000 Syrian refugees living in the Bekaa Valley are under the age of 12, according to data compiled by the UNHCR.
  2. Donate A Photo: Taking a picture can do more than just capture a moment, it can help people across the world. For every photo you share through the Donate a Photo charity app, Johnson & Johnson donates $1 to a cause of your choice. So far, over 1.3 million photos have been donated through the app. Causes vary from helping a newborn in Ethiopia survive through UNICEF, to giving a girl in Guatemala school supplies via Girl Up. Sharing photos not only helps to raise money but also spreads awareness. Sharing one photo per day is equivalent to donating $365 in a year.
  3. Charity Miles: Charity Miles allows you to raise money for every mile that you walk, run, or bike. The app uses your phone’s GPS and accelerometer to calculate the distance you traveled. Walkers and runners earn up to 25 cents per mile and bikers earn up to 10 cents per mile, according to Charity Miles’ Terms of Service. There are more than 30 different charities to earn donations on behalf, including The World Food Programme, Pencils of Promise, Girl Up and Every Mother Counts. Charity Miles’ goal is to raise $1 billion for charities by the end of 2016.

If you are looking for ways to donate funds, in addition to empowering others and spreading the word on poverty reduction, these three charity apps put the opportunity to make an impact directly at your fingertips.

– Kristyn Rohrer

Photo: Pixabay

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How Laptops Are Helping Cooperatives in Rwanda

Rwanda_Laptop

In today’s world, laptops are often taken for granted. To the members of farming cooperatives in Rwanda however, they are vital tools that are helping them better manage their business.

According to the National Cooperatives Confederation of Rwanda (NCCR), there are about 7,500 cooperatives in the country with a total of three million members as of 2016.

Despite their small scale, cooperatives have produced some successes. Smallholder farmers in Muko sector, located in the northern Rwandan district of Musanze, are one example.

A few years ago, with the help of ActionAid Rwanda and Faith Victory Association, individual farmers, and households that were working separately, came together to form cooperatives and savings groups.

Now, farmers in the district reported that they have tighter, improved food security. A maize milling factory, which cost 35 million Rwandan francs (Rwf) of NGO money to build and churns out 1.2 metric tons of maize flour each day, has generated a total profit of Rwf3.2 million, or about $4,000, for the cooperatives in the sector. Moreover, the savings groups have allowed families to construct houses and single mothers to pay for their children’s education.

Cooperatives demonstrate enormous poverty-reduction potential, but many suffer from mismanagement and a lack of engagement from members, who only contact managers occasionally.

According to Médiatrice Kibukayire, the head of a Kacyiru, Gasabo District-based ceramics cooperative, the problem is that everything is done by pen and paper. Among other things, this makes it harder for cooperatives to keep track of financial records and reach out to members for their input.

Indeed, in 2014, Augustin Katabarwa, the Chairman of the NCCR, stated that the biggest challenge facing cooperatives is gaps in technology.

This is why Africa Smart Initiative-Distribution (ASI-D) launched a new project called SMART Cooperative on June 14, 2016.

The initiative will enable laptops to be made locally in the Rwandan capital of Kigali by Positivo-BGH, a Latin American multinational tech company, and distributed to cooperatives in Rwanda.

According to Alleluya Iradukunda, ASI-D’s Chief Technology Officer, the software that comes with the devices will help managers coordinate with members, create websites to market their products and streamline their operations.

The initiative is not without difficulties, among which are equipment costs. While the base price of the laptop is Rwf230,000 (around $295) this rises to Rwf530,000 if a solar kit and an internet connection need to be installed. More IT education and training are also required to equip managers with the skills needed to run their cooperatives with the new software.

These problems, however, do not discount the benefits of improved technology for cooperatives in Rwanda. More initiatives like SMART Cooperative can help reduce the digital divide within the country and alleviate poverty in the process.

– Philip Katz

Photo: Flickr

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Internet Access: Reducing Global Poverty

Reducing_Global Poverty

In a speech to the United Nations in September 2015, Mark Zuckerberg stated, “When communities are connected, we can lift them out of poverty.” During his talk, the Facebook CEO and founder asserted that increased Internet access can aid in reducing global poverty.

According to the World Bank’s 2016 World Development Report, 60 percent of the world’s population do not have access to the Internet. In the United States alone, 60 million people do not have Internet access at home. However, for the rest of the world’s population, technological advancement has provided enormous levels of wealth and development.

A recent report by Price Waterhouse Cooper’s consulting and strategy firm, Strategy&, states that giving internet to the world could bring extraordinary results. If the 4.1 billion people without Internet were given access, 500 million people could be brought out of poverty.

For those in poverty, the Internet provides a multitude of opportunities, including jobs, access to global current affairs and education. In 1998, the World Hospitals and Health Services Journal released an article discussing the advantages of Internet access, arguing that “Access to information is an essential condition to development.” Almost twenty years on, researchers and institutions are still looking to the Internet as a technique for reducing global poverty.

In developing and impoverished areas, most individuals cannot afford the cost of the Internet. According to the World Economic Forum, only 20.7 percent of Africa’s population use the Internet, compared to 77.6 percent of Europe’s population.

The Head of Africa for the World Economic Forum, Elsie Kanza, discussed the way in which technological advancement could help bring “vast improvements in the way the region governs, feeds, lives, educates, trades and interacts with itself.”

On a recent “Intersections” podcast, the Brookings Institute recently discussed the issue of poverty and internet access. Laurence Chandy, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, stated, “Digital technology is changing what it means to be poor because it’s bringing poor people out of the margins.”

With projects such as Internet.org and Project Loon, tech giants such as Google and Facebook have begun to tackle the goal of creating widespread internet access for reducing global poverty.

– Isabella Farr

Photo: Flickr

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The Poverty Stoplight: A Technological Aid Revolution

Poverty_Aid

In Paraguay, where the poverty rate is 35 percent, the challenges of providing strategic and meaningful aid seem overwhelming. However, the Poverty Stoplight, a newly developed technology to help families self-assess poverty in their lives, is transforming communities.

In the words of Martin Burt, founder of Fundación Paraguaya and creator of the Poverty Stoplight, the technology “enables poor people to self-diagnose their own level of poverty in 30 minutes using a smartphone or tablet.” The app works through a survey that utilizes images as well as a color-coded system to identify extreme poverty with red, poverty with yellow, or no poverty with green. Families complete the survey by examining their poverty level in a number of different areas: Income and Employment, Health and Environment, Housing and Infrastructure, Education and Culture, Organization and Participation and Interiority and Motivation.

These six categories encompass 50 different indicators of poverty in Paraguay and therefore provide a multidimensional understanding of the circumstances faced by families in disadvantaged areas. Once they receive their results, families work with local community support to come up with a plan for improvement in red or yellow areas.

The international community also recognized the Poverty Stoplight for its efficacy in supporting gender equality. Many of the aid plans for families in impoverished communities include microfinance efforts to provide opportunities for women as well as training to reduce sexual harassment. Thanks to the technology of the Stoplight, many Paraguayan women are lifting their families out of poverty as owners of their own micro-franchises.

The color-coding mechanism of the Poverty Stoplight works beyond helping families describe their living situation by creating maps of countries, regions, even neighborhoods, that reflect the level of poverty in any given category. These maps help struggling families to identify others who face the same challenges or those who may have already overcome them, providing an opportunity for support and mentorship.

The Poverty Stoplight maps also allow governments and aid organizations to more fully understand the problems in these areas so that strategic plans can better support those who need it. By encouraging people to think of themselves “less as beneficiaries [of aid] and more as empowered agents of change,” the Poverty Stoplight is a respectful, insightful, and exciting tool for change.

In 2014, with only $1.5 million in donations and funds, the Poverty Stoplight helped improve the welfare of 18,000 Paraguayan families, an estimated 92,000 people. The low-cost nature of the technology, as well as it’s comprehensive strategies for assessing poverty in any given community, make it incredibly versatile.

As this revolutionary tool continues to eliminate poverty in Paraguay, it is migrating to other regions around the world. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in 18 different countries have already integrated this new technology into their support initiatives, demonstrating the name Poverty Stoplight is quickly making for itself as a means of revolutionizing our modern strategies for identifying and alleviating poverty.

– Kathleen Kelso

Photo: Flickr

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CyberSmart Africa: Technology for African Classrooms

CyberSmart Africa

90 million children in Africa go to schools that lack electricity. CyberSmart Africa harnesses technology in Sub-Saharan African classrooms in order to educate the world’s poor.

CyberSmart Africa, founded by Jim Teicher in 2007, is a social enterprise that provides educational technology specifically designed to meet the needs of schools in developing nations. In 2016, 12,500 students will have access to this technology.

In 2006 Jim Teicher visited Senegal, a country on Africa’s West Coast, and was concerned by the unequal distribution of technology across communities. There was a discrepancy between accessibility of technology in cities and youth in schools.

This observation led to the creation of CyberSmart Africa in 2007. The technology works exclusively in classrooms that have poor physical infrastructure, including those with little or no electricity. In addition to addressing the U.N. Sustainable Development goals, this digital learning platform reaches 250 students in Africa per day. It operates on less than $1.00/student/month.

Most schools in developing nations lack electricity. In Sub-Saharan Africa, three out of four primary schools do not have electricity. According to the World Bank, educational technology is expensive and it is difficult to train teachers in highly technical equipment.

The CyberSmart device uses solar technology, an energy-efficient projector, an interactive whiteboard, speakers, cooling fans and a dust filtration system. Teachers can easily adapt to the simplified technology with the help of directions received through SMS mobile text as well as through video tutorials.

Michael Trucano, a World Bank Senior Education and Technology Specialist, wrote a blog post commenting on CyberSmart Africa’s initiatives. Noting that there are not enough computers for the amount of students in schools, Trucano commends this technology as it allows for an entire classroom to access information at one time, increasing student engagement.

Senegalese schools have had great successes with this technology. CyberSmart Africa has allowed for students to create videos, with the support of parents and the community and post them on the Internet. These videos are meant to bring traditional storytelling of everyday Senegalese life into a digital realm.

Some of CyberSmart Africa’s partners include USAID, Senegalese Ministry of Education, Earth Institute at Columbia University and the United Nations Development Programme.

– Kimber Kraus

Photo: Flickr

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Tablet Computers: Enhancing Global Literacy Rates

Literacy

Researchers from MIT, Tufts and Georgia State University are conducted a study to determine whether tablet computers that have with literacy applications can improve global literacy rates among children living in extremely poor communities.

As part of the first phase of the study, tablets were sent to a pair of Ethiopian villages with no schools or written culture, a suburban South African school with a student-to-teacher teacher ratio of 60 to 1 and a rural school in the U.S. with mostly low-income students.

The tablets contained specially designed apps to help illiterate children ages four to 11 learn letters, sounds and reading fundamentals. The children in Ethiopia had never seen electricity or paper before this study.

Maryanne Wolf, founder and director of Tuft’s Center for Reading and Language Research, visited Ethiopia in 2013 and saw how excited the children were to use the tablets.

“The children learned to be facile so quickly—it was breathtaking,” Wolf said, according to a Tufts Now article.

In the African deployments, students who used the tablets scored much higher than those who did not. The American students also improved their scores dramatically after using the tablets for just four months.

“The whole premise of our project is to harness the best science and innovation to bring education to the world’s most under-resourced children,” associate professor of media arts and sciences at MIT Cynthia Breazeal said, reports an MIT News article.

The main theme of this project is that it is self-starting. The research team purposely did not tell the children what to do with the tablets because if the project expands, they will not be able to bring in coaches to teach the children how to use the apps.

Within minutes of receiving the tablet, one Ethiopian boy figured out how to turn it on. Within a week, the Ethiopian children had the apps up and running.

The research team is currently analyzing the data collected from the trials. They have also created a nonprofit organization called Curious Learning, which is now looking for partners to help launch larger pilot programs in an effort to improve global literacy rates.

– Kerri Whelan

Photo: Flickr

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Gates Foundation Invests $5 Million on Malaria Research

Malaria Research

According to the Gates Foundation, malaria continues to be a major health concern in almost 100 countries, infecting 207 million people and killing 627,000 individuals in 2012 alone. Despite an increase in malaria funding over the past several years, challenges remain in completely eradicating this disease.

However, fighting malaria is one of the Foundation’s main missions and the organization has contributed $2 billion to the cause to date. Notably, the Gates Foundation launched a multi-year strategy known as Accelerate to Zero in 2013 that focuses on making new partnerships for more efficient, affordable drugs.

In addition, this past April, the organization offered the biotechnology innovations firm Amyris an additional $5 million, in the form of a stock buyback, for its malaria research project.

Amyris is a biotechnology innovation firm whose partnership with the Gates Foundation spans roughly ten years. Replacing the relatively expensive and time-consuming method of directly extracting artemisinin from the Chinese Sweet Wormwood plant, Amyris created a new strain of Baker’s yeast microbes that produce artemisinic acid. According to the firm, the result is a “precursor of artemisinin, an effective anti-malarial drug.”

With malaria research grants from the Gates Foundation and partnership with the Institute for OneWorld Health and the University of California, Berkley, the organization has since distributed the microbes to Sanofi for mass manufacture.

In 2015, the company was awarded the United Nations Global Citizen Award for this continued effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Amyris is also expected to develop faster, cheaper methods of manufacturing pharmaceuticals that otherwise require elaborate processes for extraction.

This year’s renewed grant will ensure the application of this technology and the actual reduced cost of malaria medicine.

According to John Melo, the CEO of Amyris, the firm’s goal is the complete eradication of malaria through low-cost and sustainable cures. He further stressed the importance of future cooperation between private and public sectors in battling other epidemics.

– Haena Chu

Photo: Flickr

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Startup Converts Plastic Waste into 3D Printing Material

3D Printing
Reflow, an Amsterdam-based startup, is using 3D printing technology to transform plastic waste into a valuable resource. According to its website, the company converts recyclable plastic into ethical, high-quality 3D print filament, which is the material needed for 3D printing.

Every day, millions of waste collectors in developing countries earn $2 a day sifting through endless masses of garbage. In the developing world, cities are experiencing rapid urbanization, brought about by fast population growth and high immigration rates.

Rapid urban expansion, combined with a lack of infrastructure, leads to the buildup of open waste in low-income neighborhoods, slums and squatter areas. The result is informal waste collection by members of those communities.

Reflow works directly with waste collectors to convert the plastic they pick up into high-quality print filament. The company increases the value of the recycled plastic by up to 20 times, increasing the waste collectors incomes so they earn the wage they deserve.

According to Kickstarter, the Reflow process begins by carefully selecting the plastic needed to make the print filament. The startup then works with local waste collectors to clean PET bottles and shred them into tiny, 6-millimeter plastic flakes.

PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate, which is used in common plastic packaging such as water bottles, soft drink packaging and cosmetics bottles. A report by The Planet Bottle states that PET is popular for its strength, thermo-stability and transparency, while being inexpensive, lightweight and recyclable.

Once the plastic has been shredded, Reflow uses a low-cost, open-source extruder to convert the plastic flakes into 3D print filament. The company partners with universities and their corporate partners to test the filament, before shipping it in recyclable packaging to individuals who use the product for 3D printing.

Of note, 25 percent of Reflow’s profits are invested in local manufacturing and $3 from each roll of filament contributes to waste collectors’ incomes.

According to the Huffington Post, 120 plastic bottles can produce one kilogram of filament. However, Reflow said that the process is not so much about the final product as it is about empowering individual waste collectors and improving their lives.

Typically, waste collectors have to deal with unfair pricing from middle men in the recycling process. Their working conditions are extremely poor, as they collect garbage in toxic areas and must wade through unhygienic environments to find the appropriate waste to recycle.

Reflow also aims to provide the waste collectors with necessary tools to pick up and carry the plastic, so their health is not at risk.

The company is launching their project in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. According to a report by the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers, there are approximately 1,267 waste pickers in Dar es Salaam, who collect, move and trade 20 kilograms of recyclable waste per day. Most waste pickers that were interviewed for the report stated that the nature of their work was “exhausting”, “dangerous” and “unhealthy.”

“Of fifty waste pickers interviewed, forty-three reported that they had been ‘injured or admitted to a health facility’ in the past twelve months due to their recycling operations,” said the report.

So far, Reflow has raised €2,943 of their €25,000 goal (US$ 28,520). “We know this technology is going to transform our societies and lives,” said the company in a statement on their website. “We want to harness this innovation to create a better and more equal world. We want to ensure the revolution is shared.”

– Michelle Simon

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Surprising Ways Smartphones are Helping Refugees

Aid_refugees

Smartphones can go a long way in helping refugees to stay safe, connected and assimilate into new communities.

According to research conducted by Penn State University, about 86 percent of young Syrian refugees at Zaatari Camp of Jordan own cell phones and more than half access the Internet daily.

During dangerous and long journeys, the luxury of smartphones helps ensure safety by keeping refugees connected with their family members. In addition, something as simple as taking and sharing photos helps to maintain a sense of community.

Navigation applications like Google Maps have also drastically changed the scene by helping refugees to travel without a heavy dependence on guides. When they do need to hire guides, information and reviews on social networking services including Facebook and WhatsApp ensure quality of service and prevent trafficking related crimes.

Some applications specifically target refugees and their needs. Google’s Crisis Info Hub lists travel information for those entering Europe through the island of Lesbos, with hotline Red Cross contacts and lodgings.

Gherbtna (“exile” or “loneliness” in Arabic), developed by Mojahed Akil who is himself a Syrian refugee, provides resettlement advice and guidelines. On the other side of the border, countries accommodating refugees have established similar information services such as Germany’s Refugee Welcome.

Another way that smartphone use is helping refugees is through increased accessibility to educational tools. In a situation where access to a formal education is near impossible, the Internet provides ubiquitous access to educational material.

The Guardian notes that there are “more than 80,000 education apps in Apple’s App Store, ranging from phonics to physics.”

The nonprofit organization Aiim develops education apps for refugees between the ages of 12 and 16 that are available offline, even in areas without Internet connection. The organization hopes to reach 10,000 Syrian refugees  by the end of next year through pilot programs in Jordan and Lebanon.

– Haena Chu

Photo: Flickr

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“Africa Code Week” Seeks to Make a Sustainable Impact

Africa_computer Africa Code Week

In October 2015 nearly 89,000 African youth in 17 countries took part in “Africa Code Week” where they had the opportunity to attend free online sessions and coding workshops. The event was created to empower African youth to become fluent in the language of the digital age and stimulate the continent’s economic development.

For some of the youth who took part in the week-long celebration of digital literacy, Africa Code Week marked the first time they had ever written a single line of code. For others, it was their first time using a computer.

“Africa Code Week gives us an opportunity to marvel at what the future holds,” said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP, in an article for Forbes. “It’s true that today less than one percent of African children leave school with basic coding skills. I’m confident that figure is about to rise dramatically, just as Africa prepares to claim its rightful place as a soaring economic power in this new digital economy.”

Throughout the world, coding is becoming an increasingly critical skill for those entering the workforce. Over the next 10 years, it is estimated that there will be 1.4 million jobs in computer sciences but only around 400,000 graduates qualified to do them, according to International Business Times.

As we wind our way deeper into the 21st century, individuals with coding skills will become more and more valuable in the workplace. Digital literacy could become a key strategy for strengthening economic infrastructure in developing countries.

“Digital literacy has the power to put millions of young Africans on the path to successful careers,” Moroccan Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Rachid Belmokhtar, said to IT News Africa. “Trained, tech savvy graduates are needed to improve Africa’s position in the globally competitive knowledge economy. Everyone from governments and educational institutions all the way to NGOs and corporations has a role to play to spread digital literacy across Africa.”

It was foundations like Ampion, SAP, Simplon.co and more that saw the need and came to help. They founded Africa Code Week to bestow young Africans with a set of useful skills through hands-on teaching.

Despite the fact that the event is the largest digital literacy initiative ever held on the African continent, SAP and its partners are not satisfied. Next year, the Africa Code Week team hopes to reach 150,000 youth in at least 30 countries.

“The digital economy is here and the opportunities it presents are manifold,” said Pfungwa Serima, Executive Chairman, SAP Africa. “If we equip young Africans with the best technology, give them skills that make them relevant to the job market and empower them to be bold and innovative, we’ll see them do amazing things.”

– Jen Diamond

Photo: Flickr