Interview with Vineet Singal — Co-Founder and Executive Director of Anjna Patient Education

August 8, 2011 in Blog, Education, Good Groups, Humanitarian, Innovation, Media, Mobile, Philanthropy, Technology, Video | 1 comment


I had the good fortune to recently interview inspiring Stanford student Vineet Singal who is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Anjna Patient Education — a rising healthcare nonprofit that aims to use technology to create health education programs at free clinics — enjoy and thank you Vineet!

Who are you and what is Anjna Patient Education?

My name is Vineet Singal and I am a Stanford University student majoring in Biological Sciences. I want to use my skills as a student social entrepreneur to fight for greater access to quality and affordable healthcare for under-served communities. My resolve solidified in Galveston, TX during the fall of 2009, when I took a leave of absence from Stanford to volunteer full time at St. Vincent’s free clinic. Galveston then was a community ravaged by Hurricane Ike and the failing economy. At this under-resourced clinic, I started a health education program and motivated patients by sharing my own battle overcoming obesity. Back at Stanford, I co-founded Anjna Patient Education with my good friend Donovan Barfield, a national nonprofit organization that aims to utilize technology to create health education programs at free clinics.

How are you planning to use Technology for Good?

Interactive online education shows promise, but has not been attempted in free clinic environments beyond a few exploratory studies. Studies show that using interactive online learning modules in low-income environments is a highly effective education tool. Patients waiting in clinics are already primed to willingly address their health needs. The waiting period (often up to three hours in some free clinics) is a prime opportunity to educate patients.

Computers equipped with headphones can be installed at waiting room kiosks, with instructions on how to access specific modules. By devising a method for patients to take interactive quizzes, become informed about the health issues that concern them, and then print their surveys for their appointments, doctors may begin to recognize chronic disease concerns that may not be identified in a standard, rushed visit.  These modules will be designed to maximize their impact on unique cultural groups. Specialized wording and images will be utilized and translated so both culture and language barriers are addressed. This tool is empowering for the patient, efficient for the health care practitioner and cost-effective for the health care provider as it leads to more accurate diagnosis and more effective treatment.

To empower free clinics with an effective follow-up system for their patients, we aim to implement a mobile-outreach program utilizing FrontlineSMS, an open-source, highly secure platform already used in healthcare settings worldwide. Some of the principle services that we propose to offer are:

1) Restatement of doctors’ instructions in the patients’ native language

2) Reminders to take medication as directed

3) Reminders for follow-up appointments

4) Reminders to record blood sugar/blood pressure readings, among others.

These specific functionalities are the outstanding possibilities as of now; we will tailor our functionalities to meet the needs of our partner organizations.

There is persuasive evidence that a venture such as this has potential. Firstly, it is feasible in the low-income population we aim to serve. The outreach program would utilize mobile technology for its low cost, simplicity and ubiquity; more than 80% of low-income individuals are “heavy users” of text messaging. Moreover, successful proofs of concept for mobile-based interventions can be seen through Delaware’s Medicaid program and the CDC’s HEALTH-87000 program, the former utilizing text-messaging outreach to increase the number of patients who adhered to Diabetes self-management from 52.3% to 70.5% over a six-month period.

What is the biggest misconception about the clinics and people you are trying to serve?

I think the biggest misconception is that people who go to free clinics do not want to learn. I think that couldn’t be further from the truth. When we were prototyping our depression module in free clinics, a lot of patients responded that they wanted more information, and they liked the detailed explanations about the different categories of antidepressants. That just goes to show you how willing patients are to learn about their disease and fight it, and all they need are the right resources.

Why focus on technology for supporting Free Clinics?

I feel that technology is the next best thing to having a live human being explaining or quizzing patients about different diseases. Often times free clinics are already constrained by resources (not enough volunteers, etc.) to make sure that they can see every patient, let alone allocate people to sit in waiting rooms and explain different diseases. Further, a lot of people just prefer technology because they can learn at their own pace. For example, there was a study done by Timothy Bickmore and Laura Pfeifer from Northeastern University in which they used a virtual nurse to explain to patients their outpatient procedure. One of the patients commented, “Sometimes doctors just talk and assume you understand what they’re saying. With a computer you can go slow, go over things again and she checks that you understand” Plus, our technology is interactive and requires direct user-interaction, which is much more engaging than hearing a person talk for fifteen minutes straight!

What new idea or innovation is having the most significant impact in your mission?

Using the intuitive touch-screen platform afforded by iPad technology, we will be able to present crucial aspects of health education to patients in an interface that is both highly accessible and more entertaining than standard scientific fact sheets.  Additionally, the electronic format will provide a means for accessing improvements in knowledge by offering interactive games that test a patient’s knowledge about the particular disease that is relevant to their lives.  Our pilot clinic, Schuman-Liles, will benefit immensely from these kiosks by providing a useful activity for patients to engage as they wait to see a physician. We are also creating a series of short videos for access on the kiosks and our website about chronic disease.  Entitled “Not Alone”, these videos will help patients seek out treatment for chronic diseases and will also help simplify the application process for low-cost health insurance and Medicaid.

What’s an emerging trend in tech you see that could drastically change the nonprofit sector?

I think Cloud Computing is a novel trend that can definitely change the nonprofit sector. By having the ability to access software from anywhere, it will make collaborations and work-flow much easier since files are accessible from anywhere. It will also make communication much easier since everyone will have access to the same set of files and will thus be on the “same page.”  I’m excited to see the future of cloud computing, and excited to use it within my own nonprofit organization.

What do you think it would take to get more young people to engage in social action?

I think a lot of young people don’t think they have what it takes to create real change. I think organizations like DOSomething.org are great in that they inspire teenagers to create change by showcasing those who already are creating change. I feel that providing teenagers with examples, and telling them that yes, you too can create change, will encourage more to engage in social action.

Vineet Singal’s TED Talk:

 

Portrait of Vineet Singal:

A Conversation with Cameron Sinclair — CEO of Architecture for Humanity — by Daniel Fromson of The Atlantic (and Sinclair’s TED talk)

April 11, 2011 in Architecture, Design, Good Groups, Humanitarian, Innovation, Philanthropy, Technology, Video | 1 comment


A good conversation was posted recently by Daniel Fromson of The Atlantic with Cameron Sinclair,  CEO of Architecture for Humanity — “bringing design, construction and development services where they are most critically needed” — full piece and Sinclair’s TED talk on “Open-source architecture to house the world” are below.

A Conversation with Cameron Sinclair, CEO of Architecture for Humanity

By: Daniel Fromson March 21, 2011

Immediately after the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Cameron Sinclair, “chief eternal optimist” (CEO) and co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, began raising money to support the design and construction of temporary housing, health clinics, schools, and other community structures. What’s especially impressive, though, is that his network of more than 40,000 people is also operating everywhere from Haiti to Rwanda, providing pro bono architecture and design solutions to communities in need.

Sinclair is also a co-founder of the Open Architecture Network (an online resource providing open-source architectural solutions), a 2006 Ted Prize recipient, and the co-editor of Design Like You Give a Damn. In this interview, he discusses the democratization of architecture, how design is reshaping the Swat Valley, and Twitter.

What do you say when people ask, “What do you do?”

I build community. However I do it wearing a number of hats. (There may be a reason I spent time answering these questions at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning.)

What new idea or innovation is having the most significant impact on the architecture world?

The Web. The Internet has created an incredible democratization of the architecture industry. The realm of the pre-determined geniuses of the profession is no longer dictated by the number of inches in a broadsheet, an appearance on Charlie Rose, or the weight of a coffee table book. Our interconnected society has allowed young professionals to find new design heroes to follow and new ways of working collaboratively. Right now Architecture for Humanity is responding to the five current natural disasters (Haiti, Chile, Pakistan, New Zealand, and Japan) through our online network. Each of these programs is being led on the ground by local professionals. The Web has allowed us to act locally and act globally simultaneously.

What’s something that most people just don’t understand about your field?

Most folks think we design for ourselves, not the client or community. That is the exception, not the norm. Ego gets you inches but it doesn’t get you impact. A true architect is not an artist but an optimistic realist. They take a diverse number of stakeholders, extract needs, concerns, and dreams, then create a beautiful yet tangible solution that is loved by the users and the community at large. We create vessels in which life happens.

What’s an emerging trend you think will shake up the architecture world?

Population growth. If you design for a few clients in one of the big Western cities—New York, Los Angeles, or London—then your days are numbered. The real area that architects need is to move into is figuring out how to access the billions of clients living in growing markets in Asia and Latin America. I expect the Pritzker Prize, the profession’s highest honor, to be won by a South Asian or African architect by the end of the decade.

What’s an architecture or design trend that you wish would go away?

I don’t have an issue with any aesthetic style, but I do get extremely irked by paper architecture in areas of crisis. While a vision of the future needs to be designed, if it isn’t built it doesn’t exist. You cannot elevate the hopes of a community, then say you are done. It would be more beneficial that you didn’t show up in the first place.

To ideate is to be a designer but to build is to be an architect. Intellectually, there is a need for paper architecture for push the boundaries of what we can build, but the most important question is, “Why?”

What’s an idea you became fascinated with but that ended up taking you off track?

The business of humanitarian aid. I have become obsessed with transparency and accountability of infrastructure and community-related aid. There is a massive black hole between what is being donated and the quality of what is built. Rather than shying away from this issue or falling into a pit of trying to drive policy change, we have been working on a world-changing idea that might be able to compare real “apples to apples” impact and allow for transparency, especially of taxpayer-funded projects.

Sometimes you need to get off the track to understand what train you are really driving and how to drive it better.

Who are three people you’d put in a Hall of Fame of architects and designers?

Yasmeen Lari, first female licensed architect in Pakistan. Trained in the West but moved back home to practice. Went into retirement only to found the Heritage Foundation, a non-profit that trains locals to build self-help housing using natural building technologies. She has been doing fearless work in the Swat Valley.

Oscar Niemeyer, not as much for the architecture but the ability to be working well past 100 and put us all to shame.

Sergio Palleroni, the elder statesman of the humanitarian design movement, who has inspired thousands of students to look away from the allure of glass and steel towers and to the physicality of the earth.

What other field or occupation did you consider going into?

When I was 16 I wanted to be a war photographer. I was fascinated by the ability of exposing critical issues. Then I became determined to solve them. I almost entered international politics but luckily I drew better than I debated.

What website or app most helps you do your job on a daily basis?

In terms of apps it’s a tossup between Twitter and PayPal. With one I can find out the pulse of what’s going on while the other gives me exact numbers on what I have available to make swift decisions on building solutions. In terms of websites it has to be the Open Architecture Network, as we use it to manage all of our projects in 22 countries and host a series of complex international competitions online.

What song’s been stuck in your head lately?

A couple of Nick Drake tracks, “Fake Empire” by The National, and “Devil’s Spoke” by Laura Marling. In a few days I’m speaking at an event called Summit at Sea , so I’ve been listening to Zee Avi and Imogen Heap, who are both playing.

Read more installments of “Nine and a Half Questions.“

Click here to donate to Architecture for Humanity, and here to learn about how students can get involved through its Paper Cranes for Japan project.

Sinclair’s TED Talk on “Open-source architecture to house the world”

Interview with Hayley Berlent — Senior Brand Strategist at Siegel + Gale

April 5, 2011 in Design, Digital, Education, Funding, Good Groups, Good Jobs, Humanitarian, Innovation, Media, Philanthropy, Technology, Video | 2 comments


I recently spoke with my friend, mentor and Columbia alum Hayley Berlent, Senior Brand Strategist at Siegel + Gale — we discussed her thoughts on non-profit and education branding, using technology for good, the call for accountability and transparency, storytelling in the digital age, fusing  “the why” with “the how”, and more, as seen in the iPhone clip and summary below.

Enjoy our discussion — and thank you Hayley.

Question 1: WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT DO YOU DO?

I am a Senior Brand Strategist at Siegel +Gale — I specialize in working with non-profit and higher education organizations, and help these organizations define their cause and bring it life across media and experiences, on-line, off-line, and to their various target audiences.

Question 2: IS THERE AN ORGANIZATION YOU’VE WORKED WITH THAT HAS IMPRESSED YOU BY HOW THEY USE TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD?

I have just spend two years working with the Y to revitalize their brand — since their contributions to the greater good were not being recognized, so we helped them crystalized their story, harness social media as well as traditional and online media. Specifically, we designed their website to present them, not as a service provider, but rather a cause driven organization. We helped them elevated their areas of focus, with youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility.

Other organizations that I admire but have not worked with directly — City Harvest, who does a great job using technology for good to demonstrate “the how”. Today, with so many non-profits, all have noble causes, and donors need to know “how” their donations are being used is key, and the call for accountability and transparency is higher today. Those that are using technology to demonstrate impact — are those that are going to stand out. City Harvest does a great job contextualizing where your money goes.

Another example is Robin Hood, who does a great job harnessing social media and video in particular to dimentionalize the impact you are having through giving and is being very transparent — Donors Choose and Charity:water are two additional examples of non-profits using technology and the dynamism of new media to tell their stories and motivate engagement — and finally, Jumo, who is building an online and social community of people who are driven by causes and want to give back and connect with others like them.

Question 3: IF YOU COULD CREATE/SPREAD A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

When I look at organizations like Kiva I am really inspired. They are using new mediums and media to connect donors with impact directly, so they can see where their monies are going and track progress — accountability and transparency are always important, and are key drivers other than personal relevance.

With the current economic context, the volume of niche causes, the need to stand out, and the heightened call for transparency — those organizations that can connect you directly, and start a conversation with the people your impacting are going to be the ones that stand out, and especially in such a dynamic media environment.

Kiva brought in their official report card data from Charity Navigator as a third-party neutral data provider. They also connect you with a broader picture of the people you are funding, so you can understand your progress, through their website and regular email updates — it is about an ongoing transparency versus the traditional “adopt a child” annual letter in the mail. Kiva is adding dimension to the typical approach, and giving you a story that’s about the numbers and a balance of rational with the emotional, and no other medium than technology can do it as well.

The critical differentiator going forward is about storytelling.

Question 4: ARE ONLY THE NON-PROFITS WHO HARNESS SOCIAL MEDIA AND TECHNOLOGY AND DIMENTIONALIZE THEIR VALUE AND MISSION DIGITALLY ARE THE ONLY ONES WHO WILL SUCCEED?

Having a great cause is no longer good enough — to continue to stand out, “the why” needs to be accompanied with “the how”.

Just having the emotional story, while compelling and needed — must be accompanied with some hard data. And, updating and engaging people in an ongoing way will keep people hooked, and have an ongoing conversation.

That’s why these mediums are so powerful, and much more powerful than a printed static letter or one-sided communication.

Question 5: IS THERE SOMEONE ELSE YOU KNOW/KNOW OF THAT I COULD INTERVIEW OR PEOPLE SHOULD EXPERIENCE ONLINE?

1) Kiva

2) Charity:water

3) Donors Choose

I like these three brands because they were started by entrepreneurs — who are all taking the non-profit sector,  turning it on its head and doing something really different.

For those organizations who have been around for years, it is really a challenge today. That is why I respect what the Y has done — deciding to re-visit their positioning, look at a different ways to tell their story, and make a new case for volunteers and donors in an increasingly competitive and loud marketplace.

Hayley Berlent Portrait

Good Article — “Neo-Humanitarians: Technology and the Future of Humanitarian Aid” — from John Crowley of the Huffington Post

April 3, 2011 in Digital, Education, Good Groups, Humanitarian, Innovation, Mobile, Philanthropy, Technology, Uncategorized | Leave a comment


Good article from John Crowley of the Huffington Post — entitled “Neo-Humanitarians: Technology and the Future of Humanitarian Aid” — about the individuals “that are bringing the principles from open-source software and open data to humanitarian operations. Composed of experts that specialize in imagery, mapping, crowd-sourcing, they have demonstrated a power to bring change to the humanitarian space.”

Crowley closes with his thoughts on the UN, Vodaphone and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative‘s recently released report Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies that “analyzes how the humanitarian community and the emerging volunteer and technical communities worked together in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and recommends ways to improve coordination between these two groups in future emergencies” — powerful piece.

Neo-Humanitarians: Technology and the Future of Humanitarian Aid

Posted by John Crowley: 03/28/11 12:14 PM ET

The quiet heroes of humanitarian operations rarely make the news. While reports from Japan and Libya flow across the headlines, field staff in South Sudan is now helping survivors of renewed village burnings. Logisticians in Liberia are planning for a major influx of refugees from Cote d’Ivoire. And NGOs and UN agencies in Haiti continue to aid one of the poorest countries on earth.

Their work is more complex than most know. Good intentions are no guarantee of good outcomes. The complicated interactions of politics, environment, and international aid often create unexpected results. Seasoned professionals therefore rely on wisdom amassed from decades of field operations. But new communication technologies just made that equation more complicated.

While reports from Twitter and SMS make sexy headlines, verifying reports of violence and needs is difficult. One must work across language as well as the intentions of the tweeter and re-tweeters. Because most humanitarians already work 20-hour days, they lack time to analyze thousands of messages or to map them, which is why a new form of humanitarian is becoming so important: the volunteer humanitarian technologist.

From Cairo to Benghazi and Sendai, volunteer humanitarian technologists are connecting the informal realm of social media with the formal systems by which UN agencies and NGOs deliver aid. Some are working from their homes and offices; some are traveling into the field. Almost all are volunteers who operate without official support or funding.

These individuals — perhaps numbering 5000 — are members of communities that are bringing the principles from open-source software and open data to humanitarian operations. Composed of experts that specialize in imagery, mapping, crowd-sourcing, they have demonstrated a power to bring change to the humanitarian space.

Connected by a growing global network of cell phones and Internet devices, these neo-humanitarians coordinate through loose hierarchies and rough consensus. Like ants, they swarm around challenges, building on the notion that a collective intelligence can emerge from collective action — that given any problem and a sufficiently large pool of minds, the solution will be obvious to someone. As a result, they have come to be seen as problem solvers who can work at tempi that bureaucracies cannot muster.

During the past year, they mapped the country of Haiti in 2.5 weeks — a task that many cartographers think might have taken a more traditional organization more than a year to do. They worked with the Haitian diaspora to translate tens of thousands of pleas for help from Creole to English in near real time, and geo-located these translated messages on maps that search-and-rescue teams could use to plan their operations.

For all the power that these new humanitarian communities bring to crisis response, they are still outside the formal system by which the United Nations coordinates emergency operations. Most volunteer organizations lack resources to do more than provide a surge capacity of two weeks (after that time, volunteers generally must return to spouses, children, and employers.) Many are still building the processes by which they verify reports that arrive from the affected population. And all lack the protections afforded to organizations that work under the official humanitarian system, including the shield of neutrality enshrined in the laws of armed conflict.

The United Nations just took a step to tackle these issues. Working with the UN Foundation and Vodafone Foundation, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs commissioned the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to reflect on the operations of 2010 and devise a framework by which stakeholders could approach their differences as a design challenge. The report proposes an initial interface between the formal humanitarian system and these new volunteer communities. It suggests creating a neutral space where the neo-humanitarians might align their efforts with existing international protocols governing humanitarian operations. And it creates frameworks to push venerable response systems to make needed adaptations. The report will be released by Baroness Valerie Amos, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator on 28 March.

For humanitarians, it is a time of great hope and great challenge. If this new interface succeeds, a new generation will work within a more open system where it is normal for affected populations to communicate with donors, NGOs, and the United Nations through Facebook, OpenStreetMap, YouTube, Ushahidi, Twitter, and their successors. Humanitarians will still be quiet heroes, but they will be giving voice to the vulnerable in more effective ways.

Interview with Nader Akhnoukh — Founder and CTO of Kapost.com

April 2, 2011 in Art, Design, Digital, Education, Funding, Good Groups, Innovation, Media, Technology, Video | Leave a comment


I recently spoke with my inspiring friend Nader Akhnoukh, founder and CTO of Kapost.com who “provides virtual newsrooms that enable publishers to manage and generate content from large networks of contributors” — we discussed his thoughts on technologies for good, the future of the publishing industry, creative project venture-finance, education and more, as seen in the Skype clip and summary below.

Enjoy our discussion — and thank you Nader.

Question 1: WHO ARE YOU, WHAT IS KAPOST AND WHAT DO YOU DO?

I am the founder and CTO of Kapost and what we are doing is trying to save the publishing industry.

The publishing industry is going through major upheavals right now, with the stalwarts like the New York Times loosing tons of money and subscribers, as they are trying to bridge the transition to being online — and what we think is the model of the future — is to open up your newsroom to the whole world of contributers that are out there.

Essentially, what we do is enable editors to more effectively and efficiently manage online newsrooms.

Question 2: WHAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF A TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD THAT INSPIRES YOU?

Kickstarter.com — they took the micro-financing technology/platform and made it available to anyone who is seeking funding for a creative project.

Question 3: IF YOU COULD CREATE/SPREAD A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

I think a really awesome technology would be a my-life-dot-com — or life-tracker site.

Each of us has stuff all over the internet, and it would be cool to have a personal history of every person online and everything about that person synced in one place — I would like to have this on an individual level, and the aggregate level of information and insight could become very interesting for research, and have broad reaching benefits for good.

Security would be an issue — but it would be an incredible database of the world and people.

Question 4: IS THERE ANOTHER PERSON USING TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD THAT I COULD INTERVIEW?

My wife Allison Akhnoukh, who is an education reformist — and is always telling me about cutting edge stuff going on with technology in education.

We have had the same model of education for over 100 years — where there is one teacher and 20 to 30 students in a physical classroom, and this model is not evolving with our times.

There are schools and programs experimenting with new models using technology in innovative ways, such as one-on-one computer time for half the day where students work at their own personalized pace, then you have a better ratio of teachers to students when they meet in person, and more focused time with these smaller groups of students where the teacher can attend to their specific needs — there are definitely really good ways to use technology in the education space and we are just scratching the surface.

The attitude these days is “turn off your cell phone, don’t use your laptop, no texting” while students are in the classroom — we need to turn that around, and encourage people to use these technologies and make the most out of them. They are awesome tools, we just need to set the right environment for them.

Nader (and Jasper) Akhnoukh Portrait

Interviw with Josh Rubin — Founder/Editor-in-chief of CoolHunting.com

April 1, 2011 in Art, Blog, Design, Digital, Education, Good Groups, Humanitarian, Innovation, Media, Philanthropy, Technology, Video | Leave a comment


I recently visited with my new friend Josh Rubin, founder and editor-in-chief of CoolHunting.com “a global team of editors and contributors who sift through innovations in design, technology, art and culture to create a digital publication of daily updates and weekly mini-documentaries” — we discussed his thoughts on technologies for good, power-strip design, medical and educational innovation, and urban planning, as seen in the FlipVideo clip and summary below.

Enjoy our discussion — and thank you Josh.

Question 1: WHO ARE YOU, WHAT INSPIRED COOL HUNTING, AND WHAT DO YOU DO?

I am the founder and editor-in-chief of CoolHunting.com and I started the site 8 years ago because I am a user-interface designer and the design process always includes looking for inspiration and for reference and I wanted a place to put all of that. So the initial motivation was not to create a publication, that happened a few years later when there were a lot of people reading us, then it turned into a business and we grew.

Today, Cool Hunting is really about bringing a little bit of creativity and inspiration to people that are always looking for something that is new and different or an angle on a story that they did not already think about.

Question 2: WHAT ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF TECHNOLOGIES FOR GOOD OR PEOPLE USING TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD THAT INSPIRED YOU?

1) The power-strip and marker holder right in front of me, which serves both functions effectively, and doesn’t draw any power until clicked on. Efficiency in terms of space, and also green.

2) A TED presentation I saw a few weeks back, by Doctor Anthony Atala, who printed a kidney on stage, and has figured out how to use printing technologies to create and literally print 3-D objects that can be put in a human body and used. In the TED talk, he brought a kid up on stage who has a kidney that Dr. Atala printed 10 years ago. Amazing, inspiring, and interesting, and makes me think of good things to come from these innovations.

3) Another TED presentation I saw was from Salman Khan of Khan Acadamy, who started sending math tutoring videos to his niece and nephew who needed help, and they send these videos to their friends, etc., and now he has an amazing online academy where kids can watch these lessons that are fun, engaging, and are proving to be really impactful in helping kids who are having as hard time learning certain subjects, learn them in a new way.

Question 3: IF YOU COULD CREATE/SPREAD A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

I think a lot about mobility, and the way that we move around the city, and while it is awesome to see all of the ways in which New York City is changing to accommodate bicycles and expand public transit, cars are still here and are not going away soon.

There are new and different innovations underway to make cars more efficient, but in a city like New York we have a huge opportunity  to take this much much further — whether it is about newer and more innovative approaches to car sharing or even dealing with parking, there is so much wasted space with on-street parking.

Thinking about all the different components of urban mobility and how to make that more efficient, more green and more user friendly is a technology for good that I would like to move forward.

Josh Rubin Portrait

Interview with Perla Ni — Founder/CEO of Greatnonprofits.org and Founder/Former Publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review

March 30, 2011 in Digital, Education, Good Groups, Humanitarian, Innovation, Media, Philanthropy, Technology, Video | 1 comment


I recently spoke with my new friend Perla Ni, Founder/CEO of Greatnonprofits.org, Founder/former Publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review and coined a “Top Game Changer” by the Huffington Post — we discussed her thoughts on technologies for good, online reviews for social change, the power of storytelling, transparency and accountability, engagement and community, and more, as seen in the Skype clip and summary below.

Enjoy our discussion — and thank you Perla.

Question 1: WHO ARE YOU, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE AND WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY DOING?

I was co-founder of Grassroots Enterprise which was, at the time, the foremost provider of tools for advocacy for non-profits. Then I went on to found the the Stanford Social Innovation Review where I served as publisher. And I left to start Greatnonprofits.org after hurricane Katrina — to provide an online resource for donors and volunteers who were trying to find the best non-profits to give their time and money to.

I am currently the CEO of Great Nonprofits which is a website that provides reviews and recommendations for people who are looking either to volunteer or to give money to a nonprofit. We are working on getting more recommendations of the best nonprofits that are on the ground in Japan — and we also have recommendations and reviews of nonprofits throughout our country. Over 80,000 reviews have been written to date. So, for those who are interested, they can do a search for the area they live in, or an issue they are passionate about — and find some  tremendous smaller and local nonprofits that they might not have otherwise heard of. In shorthand, we are the Yelp of nonprofits.

The people who write these reviews, first and foremost, are volunteers, and they can share if they have had a great or not-so-great volunteering experience. As well as for donors, who are looking to see the impact of their work. We have a lot of clients who also write reviews, so you will see what do the people being served by an organization say about that organization — lots of compelling personal stories and authentic voices.

Question 2: TELL US ABOUT HOW YOU ARE ACTIVATING THIS CONCEPT OF REVIEWS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE?

If you look at reviews as something that consumers use across the web ubiquitously, with 80% of all shopping websites having reviews — the reason why they have, use and trust reviews is they promote transparency — and they give the consumer confidence that this is a product I am willing to buy, and they provide other useful information for the consumer.

We think that same behavior is going to be useful to them as donors. They are going to want to see what do other donors say? What do other volunteers say? What do other clients say? — it is unfiltered, it is not advertising, it is not a slick brochure — it really is in the unedited voice of people who have experienced that nonprofit. We think this is going to be very helpful to people who are making these kind of important decisions.

Question 3: WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE DIGITAL NONPROFIT COMMUNITY AND WHERE ARE WE HEADED?

I think it is all about stories.

We have learned that the most effective way for social causes to get their messages out — is through stories. Storytelling has always been important for nonprofits, except now we have fantastic web and digital tools to allow these stories to be easily published and distributed. So reviews that are on Great Nonprofits are not only visible on our site but they are also on GuideStar and Charity Navigator, so we want to make these stories ubiquitous.

The other thing that is interesting is how these stories tie into transparency and accountability. These stories are really live feedback from people who are experiencing the work of these non-profits, and provide a platform of transparency and accountability. We have some great local organizations that have fabulous reviews by volunteers and clients — local soup kitchens, animal shelters, veterans organizations, etc. — and it opens a whole world of opportunities to explore really interesting, innovative and effective nonprofits — it is not necessarily the organizations that you have already heard of, the brand names — there are so many more interesting and compelling organizations out there that are doing really cutting edge work.

I would encourage everyone to look around at the really innovative nonprofits that are out there, they are not just the same old brand names — some of the smaller and regional nonprofits are very savvy with social medial; they have very active twitter feeds, they have videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr that really show the breadth of what they do.

When you are looking at technologies and thinking about how do we further push technologies for social good — look at some of these smaller more nimble nonprofits, because they are willing to take some risks and try new tools to engage their people.

Question 4: IS THERE A NONPROFIT YOU KNOW WHO HAS REALLY PUSHED AND USED TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD?

> DC Central Kitchen — who uses food as a tool to strengthen bodies, empower minds, and build communities.

> North Hills Community Outreach – who is an interfaith organization addressing the needs of people in crisis, hardship and poverty.

> Communities in Schools (in Pittsburgh-Allegheny County) — who aims keep children in school so that they can learn, grow and prepare for college, for a career, and for life.

All of these nonprofits are run by leaders who understand the power of listening to the clients they serve — engaging the community as volunteers and donors — and giving the entire community an opportunity to participate in the whole process.

Additionally, they are always looking for new ways and things to try that could help further their missions. And a lot of nonprofits can learn from that — that it is continuous improvement we are all striving for as a sector — that we can not just sit back on our laurels.

Question 5: IF YOU COULD CREATE/SPREAD A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

The holy grail really is engagement — how do we engage our stakeholders in what we do.

Part of that engagement is showing them what we do — so that donors feel like their money is being used wisely, and that they can actually see the effect of their support — so that volunteers can see the clients that benefit from these backpacks which they have stuffed and put together for them — so that clients can see that donors and volunteers care about them enough to support this organization.

So, one idea I have is what if people at non-profits wore a web-cam on their heads, 24 hours a day, to show people — “this is what we do, these are the people we work with, these are the services we offer our clients, etc.” — for many direct service organizations this would prove interesting and informative for their communities to see “here’s a day in the life of this organization, and here are all these different lives that they touch everyday.” — so a kind of radical feedback and transparency, and reporting to give back to the community.

The point of technology is to enhance our humanness. Philanthropy at the core, the Greek word, is about a love of mankind — it is about a human connection, and human compassion and empathy for someone else and their lives — so, if we can enhance that through technology, we are all the more better for accomplishing a whole host of our social ideals, whether it be something as fundamental as this notion of a civil society, or something more specific such as global warming, unemployment and job training, animal issues, etc. — if we can use technology so we can all get a little closer and understand why these issues are important to us collectively, I think it would get us closer to the goal of coming up with solutions, collectively.

Social change is not about me, it is not about you, it is about us — all of us need to participate in order for any kind of social change to happen.

Question 6: IS THERE SOMEONE ELSE OR A PEER NONPROFIT YOU KNOW THAT PEOPLE SHOULD BE AWARE OF?

> Global Giving – who aims to build an efficient, open, thriving marketplace that connects people who have community and world-changing ideas with people who can support them.

> Story Corps — who aims to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.

 

Perla Ni Portrait

Interview with Mark Hannah — PBS MediaShift Blogger

March 28, 2011 in Blog, Conference, Digital, Education, Events, Good Groups, Humanitarian, Innovation, Media, Mobile, Philanthropy, Technology, Video | 2 comments


I recently spoke with my good friend Mark Hannah, fellow Columbia class-mate and PBS MediaShift blogger — we discussed his thoughts on technologies for good, the internet, humanitarian design and more, as seen in the Skype clip and summary below.

Enjoy our discussion — and thank you Mark.

Question 1: WHO ARE YOU, AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

I write for a blog on PBS called MediaShift — and sit on the board of The National Association for Media Literacy Education

As media is evolving, and is more of a revolution than evolution, the mission of the NAMLE is to make sure that students and children are keeping at pace with thinking critically about the media they consume — and are also capable of creating in this new media environment and being informed active participants.

Question 2: IS THERE A GROUP/PERSON USING TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD, YOU KNOW/USE THAT YOU WANT TO SHARE?

The internet itself has enabled a new type of start-up movement, for both non and for-profit companies, whose missions are driven and enabled by online technology. The important point to make is that technology itself is not necessarily good or bad, it is amoral — it enables what we as humans do, so it is really important that we are imposing our value systems on what it is that we are doing online, and through technology.

I recently read an article about Anwar al-Awlaki the “YouTube Osama bin Laden”, and the government working with YouTube to try and sensor some of his more inflammatory video clips — but it is unrealistic for them to expect that they would be able to sensor this kind of speech in this new media environment. So the internet is enabling things that are notorious in a bad way, and at the same, enabling time things that are noteworthy in positive ways.

Question 3: IF YOU COULD CREATE/SPREAD A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Humanitarian design.

Technology is enabling people who work with international aid distribution and other important causes to come up with new innovative solutions to complex and pressing issues.

The New School recently hosted a “Random Hacks of Kindness” conference in coordination with the United Nations Global Pulse Initiative — and today, students have a tremendous amount of imagination about these problems, and are also enabled by using technology in ways that have never been done before, like geo-design, geo-information services, geo-mapping and using these new technologies to increase efficiencies and drive change. Humanitarian design is where the needs are most urgent — and the solutions and opportunities most available.

Question 4: IS THERE SOMEONE ELSE YOU KNOW/KNOW OF THAT I COULD INTERVIEW?

Nigel Snoad who started and leads Random Hacks of Kindness “a community of developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders around the world, working to develop software solutions that respond to the challenges facing humanity.”

Mark Hannah Portrait

Interview with Ian Thomson — Co-founder/Advisor at Cleantechies.com

March 27, 2011 in Architecture, Design, Digital, Energy, Funding, Good Groups, Humanitarian, Innovation, Media, Philanthropy, Technology | 2 comments


I recently spoke with my inspiring friend Ian Thomson, co-founder and advisor at Cleantechies.com and a clean technology consultant — we discussed his thoughts on clean technologies for good, environmental and national security issues, grid efficiency and more, as seen in the Skype clip and summary below.

Enjoy our discussion — and thank you Ian.

Question 1: WHO ARE YOU, AND WHY DID YOU START CLEAN TECHIES AND WHAT DO YOU DO?

I grew up in Saudi Arabia and saw a lot of the impacts of how we interacted with countries based on the energy we wanted from them. Also as a kid I was given a small solar panel that charged my Walkman, which I thought was the coolest thing ever — post college I went into the Marines and was deployed to Iraq, and in a way why we were there was because of an energy concern. As well, I am a lifelong environmentalist.

I noticed there were some really cool technologies coming out that were having a significant impact on sustainability, and looked at how to share that information and bring people together who were working on solving similar problems in different places, through online collaboration — Cleantechies is essentially a web portal that aggregates and produces original content. We aim to be the Huffpost of clean tech.

I brought my wife Ceylan Thomson into the initiative since she is much smarter than me — Ceylan now spearheads most of the work we do today, and she has true grit (like John Wayne).

Question 2: TELL US ABOUT YOUR WORK AS A BOARD MEMBER FOR GRID ALTERNATIVES?

In a lot of ways, the reason I got involved with clean energy from a very practical perspective, was for national and environmental security — and my desire to have a widespread impact on the adoption of clean energy and sustainability technologies, and to get the west to become more self sufficient and environmental stable.

At the end of the day, the communities that are most marginalized by the way we use energy are low-income communities. Grid Alternatives thought what better community to serve with clean energy than those who historically had been marginalized by our bad use of energy — and take it a step further by providing low-income home owners with solar to displace and reduce this large household energy-expense, so these families can re-allocate the saved funds.

My work with Grid Alternatives has been to help develop our market. It turns out that it is actually really hard to give away free solar — because many low-income people don’t know about solar nor how to interact with it, so there is a big education piece. And, helping raise money so we can further develop and spread these systems.

Question 3: IF YOU COULD CREATE/SPREAD A NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR GOOD, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

All technology really is — is how to get more out of our existing stuff. There are a lot of examples of how clean technologies are facilitating business models, take ZipCar for example, who is facilitating the utilization of shared assets.

The most impactful technologies using resources that we already have, specifically, the wind, the sun, and geo-thermal resources is a grid that is much more efficient — if we could have a better way to create and store energy, we’d have a much more efficient and self-sustaining grid.

I would like to develop an incredibly efficient grid — that also integrates the ability to dispatch electricity sustainably or through renewable resources, and I would connect and work with a community of people to make this happen.

Question 4: IS THERE SOMEONE ELSE YOU KNOW/KNOW OF THAT I COULD INTERVIEW?

I would like to focus on policy, and the policy implications of getting clean technologies to market — and introduce you to Sanjay Wagle, who is at the Department of Energy and working for ARPA-E, which is kind of like DARPA but energy focused. He’s working on figuring out ways to create intelligent energy policy beyond the short-term concerns of politicians and corporations.

Ian Thomson Portrait

Good Article — “Simple Genius: Code Diverts Your Website to Disaster Relief” — from John Pavlus of Fastcompany.com

March 26, 2011 in Art, Design, Digital, Events, Funding, Humanitarian, Innovation, Media, Philanthropy, Technology | Leave a comment


A “simple genius” use of technology for good appeared this week from John Pavlus Fastcompany.com writer – about Donatedotcom.com — a coding concept from two designers of the agency Great Works that diverts your website to support disaster relief.

Is this as Slate dubs, another example of “the propaganda of concern”? — or a simple and easy way for people with websites to re-purpose them in times of disaster and help drive donations to worthy organizations? — what do you think?

Some improvement ideas — make the non-profits and donation amounts variable, so people can customize their pages to the groups they prefer to direct funds to, and donors can have more control on how much they give — also could drive to a giving site like Justgive.org vs. iTunes.

With nothing more than a little snippet of javascript, you can place a gigantic, temporary “donate” button over your website.

Everyone – including us — has strong opinions about the right and wrong and everything-in-between ways of using good design to raise awareness and money for relieving humanitarian crises like the one in Japan. Now two designers from ad agency Great Works have come up with yet another clever/awful/naive way of helping out: Donate dot com, a single snippet of javascript code that turns any website into a giant fullscreen link urging visitors to donate money to the American Red Cross. Here’s what it looks like on Great Works’ own site at the moment:

Martin Löfqvist and Isak Burström call this bit of brandjacking-with-a-conscience “donating your dotcom,” and several large agencies in Sweden (including DDB, Garbergs, and Volontaire) have already joined in. It’s easy to dismiss this as a crass manipulation of what Slate astutely dubs “the propaganda of concern” — but look closer and you’ll see it’s not quite that simple. The donation overlay is hardly glossy and sexy-looking; in fact, it’s so spartan that it almost looks amateurish. Unlike most pseudo-stealth marketing stunts, it doesn’t include any logo or text from the site being obscured; in fact, the click-through link (to access the “real” site underneath) is so visually diminished compared to the donation button that a casual visitor might not even notice it. Overall, the effect is so earnestly lumpen that it almost looks like the site has been hacked without its owners’ knowledge–which is probably the designers’ whole point.
And the best part may be what happens when you click that big red button: the site launches an iTunes window with a grid of buttons in various dollar-amounts, all of which (at least to my admittedly un-expert reading of the fine print) appear to be “unrestricted” — that is, the money you donate to the American Red Cross is not earmarked only for the Japan disaster, which, according to Reuters financial blogger Felix Salmon, means that it may do much more good in the long run.

Design and disaster are an explosive mix, that’s a fact. And even well-meaning efforts can backfire or offend as much as they help and inform. But whatever you think of Löfqvist and Burström’s effort, we can probably all agree — just as we said about other designers’ efforts — that the intention is sincere.

[Read more about Donate.com at the official site]

Enter your email address to become a member of Technology for Good

Join 37 other followers

Twitter

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 37 other followers