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UNICEF, Silicon Valley join hands to help developing world

Xinhua, May 30, 2015 Adjust font size:

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has paired up with experts and startups in Silicon Valley to work on solutions for some of the direst humanitarian problems in developing countries.

Through CauseTech, an online crowdsourcing platform, UNICEF's Global Innovation Center wants to provide startups, venture capitalists, research labs and tech-related firms and individuals with a space where they can share and compare ideas and projects.

The U.N. organization partnered with Chief Marketing Officer ( CMO) Council and Business Performance Innovation Network, two companies with strong contacts and footprints in Silicon Valley, to capitalize on the tech industry's potential to come up with savvy solutions.

Donovan Nealy-May, CMO Council's Executive Director, told Xinhua that UNICEF is looking for ideas that can address key humanitarian issues that affect children and women, such as clean water, nutrition, education and health. "We launched this pro bono initiative in May after UNICEF asked us to set up a platform that could serve as a link between the tech industry and them."

UNICEF screens all projects and ideas submitted at CauseTech, which are then posted for crowdsourcing on the platform. If the projects are deemed viable, the U.N. organization provides inputs and resources to make them happen.

Some of the most promising ideas being studied and crowdsourced currently are solar-powered street lights that provide Wi-Fi network access and come with built-in plugs, to address the lack of electricity in rural areas, Nealy-May said. Other ideas tackle some of the most serious problems in developing countries, the access to clean water or health issues, like a waterless soap that can help prevent the spread of certain infections.

"We are trying to create awareness of UNICEF's mission and gather intelligent and ingenious people from Silicon Valley and all over the world," he said.

CauseTech provides a second chance to projects previously discarded or startups failed due to financial reasons or bad public relations practice. "Any good humanitarian idea has a place here," Nealy-May said, "UNICEF has over 12,000 staffers on the ground, who know what can work and what can't, and has the means to manufacture at large scale thanks to agreements with factories worldwide."

To expand its area of influence, CauseTech plans to reach out to dozens of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in China, at a national business and innovation conference in September. UNICEF needs Chinese ingenuity and know-how to help manufacture many of the products that will come out of the initiative, Nealy-May said. Endite