TIS Weekly (#110): Social Tech: Empowerment
[July 16th, 2017]
This week one of my colleagues shared a video on a nifty piece of AI tech which empowers the blind and gives them information about the world around them. Inspired by this video (below), I looked for more examples in our Social Innovation section, and believe me, there are plenty! Inspiration only a mouse-click away!
Theme | SOCIAL INNOVATION
Empowering people who are blind
Microsoft’s Seeing AI app uses artificial intelligence and a smartphone camera to recognize different elements around you. Among others: it will describe the things it sees, what a person looks like, read texts out loud and even recognize bank notes and their value. But just because Microsoft comes forward with a cool project, we shouldn’t forget about similar, smaller initiatives like this one from Algeria called Dalil which was already around two years ago.
Theme | SOCIAL INNOVATION
Spreading knowledge to everybody
Wikipedia is a great free service (and collaborative project), but accessing the website on a mobile device will cost you data, thus money. Wikipedia is all about open access and started Wikipedia Zero, a campaign in which they ask providers to wave their costs when people navigate to Wikipedia. Tip: also check out The Story of Wikipedia as told by co-founder Jimmy Wales.
Theme | SOCIAL INNOVATION
Community fire alarms
Simple, yet so effective. In many African slums, people live at close-quarters. In case of a house fire, chances are huge it spreads across nearby shacks. Social enterprise Lumkani, based in Capetown, has developed an innovative fire-detection device which sets off all nearby devices in a 60 meter radius, thus alerting the whole community.
Theme | SOCIAL INNOVATION
Pay by cleaning up
Gamal Albinsaid is an Indonesian doctor and true impact maker. He recognized two major problems in the city of Malang, it was full of garbage that people failed to collect and second he came across a lot of people who couldn’t afford healthcare. He realized a great number of health problems were actually caused by this garbage and decided to take action. He lets the people who cannot afford health insurance pay for his services with bags of collected garbage.
Add your own videos and maybe they will feature in the next TIS Weekly. Questions? Remarks? Ideas? hello@tis.tv is the address! From TIS with love,
Simone de Bruin.
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Interested in more Social Innovation newsletters?
- More About: Social Innovation — Power To The People
- Social Innovation Without The Tech
- Social Innovation: The Power Of Open Source
- Social Innovation Challenge
- What About Non-First World Countries?
- Power To The People
- NGOs, stop talking, start listening
