#TechforGood Building Caribbean Resiliency and Innovation
CGI U students are building projects with meaningful impact to foster social change in their communities and learning how to leverage technology for good.
In the latest Tech for Good virtual series, as part of CGI U and IBM’s partnership on the 2020 Call for Code Global Challenge, participants in the “Caribbean Resiliency & Innovation During COVID-19” webinar were able to learn about the work of the Clinton Global Initiative Action Network and their partners in the Caribbean, including Caribbean Girls Hack. This event centered on the importance of expanding technology and building a community of coders exclusively in the Caribbean.
Minister Kay McConney, Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Barbados; opened the event with comments saying, “Digital and other technologies offer opportunities not only to transform education in the Caribbean, but it also has the potential to help us solve other real problems that we’re experiencing in real life today.”
The event’s “How Technology Can Aid the Caribbean” panel, featured CGI Action Network members such as Frank O’Carroll, Business Development Director, Digicel; Anamita Guha, Global Lead of Product Management, IBM Quantum; Sydney Paul, Manager of Business Intelligence and Marketing, UVI Research and Technology Park; and Jorge Valentine, STEM Education Program Manager, Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Research Trust, who shared their insight and participated in a Q&A, answering questions such as:
How can we use AI to prevent and solve social problems in the Caribbean?
Easy but difficult question to answer. There’s an urgent need for AI in areas such as agriculture for example. We can now use drone technology and AI to assess and characterize terrains and know how healthy these terrains are or what they are lacking for farmers to address. In the Caribbean, AI as prediction models for hurricanes and readiness can be beneficial in determining where the open channels are for mitigation to determine routes or emergency pathways.
The possibilities are endless for establishing contingencies. I think there’s a big opportunity for the Caribbean to develop a workforce and get people trained and excited about AI and technology in general, so we can lower resistance and get folks producing solutions that help everyone.
-Jorge Valentine, STEM Education Program Manager, Puerto Rico Science, Technology & Research Trust
For more on the Q&A, check out the recording below:
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