How Technology Is Being Used For Social Good
Rahul Jalali, SVP and CIO, Union Pacific Railroad.
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Know-how is tightly woven into the material of our lives. All the things we do has a direct or oblique dependency on know-how—whether or not it’s how we work, research, play, talk and join with one another or get from one place to a different. Know-how may also serve the next goal by empowering and enabling those that are underprivileged and dramatically altering their lives for the higher.
There are numerous examples the place know-how has had a optimistic impression on the communities we stay in by addressing the very real-world issues of poverty, starvation, sanitation and clear ingesting water all around the world.
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Poverty
There are innumerable improvements to assist remedy poverty in america in addition to globally. On the monetary accessibility entrance, Harvard-born nonprofit startup Upsolve has relieved greater than $440 million in debt for low-income households by offering a free platform for households to file for chapter. Grameen Financial institution of Bangladesh gives cellular banking that can provide everybody all over the place entry to banking, particularly financial savings and microcredit (small loans prolonged to poor debtors who wouldn’t in any other case qualify for loans). Cellular healthcare can present much-needed healthcare info on cheap gadgets to those that are underprivileged and should not in any other case search medical consideration.
Starvation
How can we leverage digitalization to resolve starvation, which impacts over 800 million folks globally? Geospatial remote-sensing know-how reminiscent of satellites and drones can enhance farming gear and strategies, decreasing starvation for tens of millions of individuals. Photo voltaic and hydropower can present entry to power with out the price of constructing energy crops. An instance of how this might help remedy starvation is the invention of fireless cookers, which use saved warmth and lower your expenses that will in any other case should be spent on power. An instance of digitalization in motion at a big scale is the Akshaya Patra Basis, which gives noon meals that attain tens of millions of kids in India. The muse’s gained efficiencies via digitized kitchens allowed it to increase its companies to tens of hundreds extra kids instantly.
Entry To Clear Water
Worldwide, 2 billion folks shouldn’t have entry to secure ingesting water, and three.6 billion folks (nearly half of the world’s inhabitants) have insufficient entry to sanitation. WaterAid gives entry to secure water and good hygiene for everybody by making photo voltaic panels accessible that energy water pumps and by drilling wells and setting up rainwater tanks for households dwelling in areas the place there’s a water disaster. Know-how will also be used to seek out leaks and contamination websites in a water provide, and any such knowledge collected from varied water sources can be utilized for drawback triaging and higher decision-making on how sources are invested.
Transportation
Understandably, I do need to level out how tech is concerned in social good in my favourite trade—transportation. There are a number of corporations enabling shared mobility reminiscent of bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters to scale back congestion, air pollution and bodily inactivity. In lots of components of the world, drones are being piloted to ship giant quantities of drugs and first help to distant areas. WhereIsMyTransport helps city mobility by combining public transport knowledge to make public transportation simply accessible for the tens of millions of people that stay in rising markets in creating international locations worldwide and must get to work and put meals on the desk for his or her households.
Whereas we now have quite a few know-how improvements which can be fueling social good, we now have an extended approach to go; there are nonetheless almost 3 billion folks on this planet who shouldn’t have entry to the web and, consequently, to the tech that might change their lives. We’d like to consider how you can transfer tech for social good to be extra mainstream slightly than area of interest, and we have to have fun and acknowledge it simply as we do business tech. We have to be extra inclusive in our method to innovation going ahead in order that we will increase our attain to rework the lives of the remainder of the world.
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