2017 Challenge Grant Awards

CiteMe is a mobile application that uses standard smartphone technologies to involve citizens in carefully tailored, results-driven field data collection. Our vision is to help citizens find and engage in projects that they want to contribute to—and to give them the tools they need to do it. When you join the CiteMe community and participate in a Challenge, you'll gain experience in different fields, collect data in the field using the photographs, GPS, and audio/visual capabilities of your smartphone, and peer-review data logged by other participants. All of the data collected in-app will be made publicly available (though the research organization that posted the challenge gets the first crack at it). At the conclusion of the challenge, all of the data that meet a set confidence threshold (driven by community review) are compiled and delivered to the organization that posted the challenge. When that organization uses those data in their research or other official operations, you’ll earn experience that builds your reputation in the community as well as real-time updates on the project you contributed to. You’ll also get a formal citation on your public CiteMe profile. 

Students: Alexei Gittelson, Johnathon de Villier

Demoperate is an online social platform for citizens to collaborate, network, and engage with one another and with their local governments to create, showcase, and comment on community projects, local infrastructure needs and improvement ideas. We will leverage a Kickstarter approach to crowdsource community project proposals and apply a Change.org e-participation model on a hyperlocal platform to champion local community improvement ideas.  Demoperate’s unique social network model encourages citizens to garner support from neighbors, friends, and community members in an open and transparent environment that can signal to public office holders of the real needs of the community. Local governments will also be able to use this platform to seek public feedback on existing project proposals and identify the projects with the highest measured social return on investment. Demoperate is the leading force for the next stage of citizen-government e-collaboration initiatives that will turn citizen-driven ideas into reality.

Students: Andy Chen Wang, Srujan Routhu, Shreemathi Tumkur, Andrea Venzon, Moritz Wussow

SunCommunity is a matchmaking platform that connects potential consumers and suppliers of solar technology in developing countries. SunCommunity aggregates high-end urban consumers to strengthen their negotiation capacity and thereby reduce the selling price of solar technology. Further, SunCommunity will lever these transactions to bring electrification to rural communities through an innovative financial model.

Students: Gabriel Guggisberg, Anders Enghild

Beyond the Board is a dual-component professional development resource for teachers in developing and remote areas, as well as in emergency and post-emergency situations. Our teacher training resources include pre-developed modules that focus on pedagogy rather than content — on “how” to teach, instead of “what” to teach. Beyond the Board’s platform also offers ongoing support to teachers through a web and mobile platform. This platform enables teachers to connect with mentor or partner teachers who provide support as they implement new teaching methods. We believe that all children should have access to quality education, and that quality education starts with quality teaching.

Students: Daniele Selby, Tabatha Pilgrim Thompson, Alexandra Wilcox

By Your Side is a remote parenting tool aimed to improve the frequency and quality of communication between migrant workers residing in cities and their children left behind in rural areas in China, with the hope to improve mental well-being of migrant worker families. Over 60 million children in China (1/5 of all Chinese child population) face long-term separation from their parents due to the country's rapid urbanization; similar phenomenon are also observed in other developing countries. As a result of parent absence, left-behind children are at higher risk of developing mental health issues (even suicidal tendencies), school drop-out and human trafficking. By Your Side will educate, prompt and enable migrant worker parents to gather crucial information of their children on a regular basis, facilitate two-way communication and provide overall emotional support, potentially through a combination of mobile app and wearable device technologies. 

Students: Rui Zhang, Rui Huang, Zhenyi Stephanie Shi, Alexandrea Logan, Yingxin Ye, Akshit Mehta

The Hyperlocal platform will connect you with people living in your building, to share or rent the things you need instead of buying them. Cities drive massive production of manufactured and perishable goods. Many of these products are rarely used and eventually thrown out, resulting in unnecessary carbon emissions, resource depletion and landfill. By allowing city-dwellers to communicate and share things, HyperLocal will enable more sustainable consumption patterns.

Students: Jay Bhankharia, Kunal Mahajan, Benjamin Jai-Ming Tan, Mihir Prakash

Schools' Voice is an online platform (app and website) that will empower Brazilian teachers and students by enabling them to share their views on the educational system they are part of. The basic idea is to collect inputs from schools, such as complaints and suggestions, and allow civil society to pressure government for change and government itself to have on-the-ground geo-referenced data about the day to day of its educational units. On one hand, the platform will allow teachers and students to share, anonimously or not, aspects of the schools that impact the quality of education: violence, infrastructure, parents participation, adequacy of curriculum, students' learning, need for their psychological monitoring and others. On the other hand, Schools' Voice will deliver this time-referenced data to the public through maps, graphs and tables -- allowing for better and more targeted policies. It will allow both teachers and students to communicate their needs and suggestions without intermediaries. Additionally, this intervention could also have the effect of motivating teachers, since one of the great causes for their dissatisfaction is the feeling that their views on the educational system were not being listened to, as shown by a study conducted by the Lemann Foundation in Brazilian public schools in 2014.

Students: Alessandro Passos, Daniel Barros, Yusuf Yavu

Trust Psychology aims at providing access to a trust-based online international psychological community, specifically designed at Chinese college students, between the ages of 18-25. This online platform will provide access to mental health resources, as well as the added benefit of confidentiality and anonymity. In the long run, Trust Psychology plans to work cooperatively with Chinese university mental health care system, and be efficiently engaged in youth mental counseling and therapy based on psychology-related big data.

Students: Shan Huang, Shanqing Tan, Mei Wang, Joshua Elder