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UNICEF Ventures
UNICEF Ventures helps the organization prepare for the
technologies and changes that are on the 3-5 year horizon and experiments with new approaches to solving the most pressing problems facing children.This
often means creating provocations to industry to show how certain technologies, if built in the right way, could have positive impact on the lives of children, while also opening new research,
markets, and opportunities to UNICEF’s partners.
UNICEF Innovation
Fund
UNICEF Ventures invests in early stage solutions that show great potential to
positively impact children in the one-to-two-year future. This investment comes from theUNICEF Innovation Fund– the first financial vehicle of its kind in the UN.The Venture fund is a $12.6 M investment fund which makes $50-100K investments in
portfolios of emerging technology being developed by companies in UNICEF programme countries. This Fund allows UNICEF to take small risks within particular technology portfolios, and ensure that even
if many of the investments fail the portfolio is a success.
The Fund has invested in companies including
those
In a remote field south of Yangon, Myanmar, tiny mangrove saplings are now roughly 20 inches tall. Last September, the trees were planted
by drones. It’s early proof of technology that could help restore forests at the pace needed to fight climate change.
“We now have a case confirmed of what
species we can plant and in what conditions,” says Irina Fedorenko, cofounder of Biocarbon Engineering, the startup that makes the
drones. The right combination of species and specific environmental conditions made the restoration work. “We are now ready to scale up our planting and replicate this success.”
Based on satellite images, the company hopes aid workers can use it to make their work more efficient (and it’s also good for helping telecom companies spread internet connections).
One of the biggest challenges in humanitarian aid is actually delivering the product to the people who need it most. Vaccines,
disease-battling insecticides, and new advancements in solar technology can all help people in developing countries stay healthier and have better-quality lives. That is, if you can locate them. In
many places, smaller communities are spread out over vast and relatively uncharted terrain.
Facebook is trying to help change that by creating a high-resolution population density map for nearly the entire
continent of Africa. Developed by the company’s Boston-based World.AI team, it’s really a demonstration of the company’s immense computational and processing power (and a play to help telecom
services get internet service to more of the continent faster, which means more Facebook users).
[Image: courtesy
Facebook]
The more immediate hope is to share this information with nonprofit groups and aid organizations working in areas like disease control and disaster preparedness. “Accurate population density forms
arguably the backbone for any public sector or social service intervention you can think of,” says Laura McGorman, a public policy manager with Facebook’s Data for Good division. “The fact that these
exist means that organizations working across a range of foreign assistance and poverty alleviation interventions will now have much more accurate maps to do their work.”
See more
at: https://www.fastcompany.com/90331895/facebook-has-created-an-insanely-detailed-map-of-where-everyone-in-africa-lives
LONDON — In 2017 Bidi Bidi in Uganda became the world's largest
refugee camp, as people fled from neighbouring South Sudan to escape the worsening food crisis and violence in their home country.
New satellite imagery from tech startup Bird.i shows how the camp has grown with the worsening refugee crisis, as
well as how vegetation in the region has changed in response to the influx of people pouring across the Ugandan border.
Satellite technology of this sort allows dwellings in previously unconnected areas of the world to be tracked:
Bird.i said it was possible to pinpoint every house in Bidi Bidi to estimate numbers. Although this is not the startup's main business, Founder Corentin Guillo said such analysis can be used as part
of research and development activities.
One company that has started doing this is Facebook, which is using satellite imagery to trace where in the
world the 4.2 billion people who don't have internet connections are, in enough detail to pick out individual dwellings.
This has allowed them to better map the world's population, and the tech giant has shared its findings with the UN and the World
Bank. Such data is invaluable for planning where to send resources such as medical supplies.
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