We are pleased to introduce you to the three winning projects from the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge. We are elated with the caliber of the winners. They are (in alphabetical order):
RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance uses mobile technology solutions to improve the speed and quality of nutrition surveillance data for children in Malawi. The effort is led by a team of six students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), who are working alongside UNICEF to develop an open source mobile phone platform for nutritional data.
Click Diagnostics enables health- care practitioner networks and micro-entrepreneurs to provide advanced medical consultation and to gather health data more efficiently because it connects them to our global health servers via mobile phones.
Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is an open source software that solves communication and visualization challenges during crisis situations through mapping and crowdsourcing, allowing anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone, email or web form.
The USAID Development 2.0 Challenge Awards Ceremony will be held on January 8th at the Newseum's Knight Conference Center where representatives from each team will present their ideas.
Erik Hersman, AfriGadget and Ushahidi
Erik Hersman is the co-founder of Ushahidi and is currently working with a team of mostly-African programmers to create Ushahidi v2, a free and open source engine that makes it easier to crowdsource crisis information and visualize data globally. Raised in Sudan and Kenya, Erik brings unique energy and insight to the world of technology and innovation – bridging the gap between Africa and Silicon Valley. An avid blogger Erik writes two different technology blogs including: AfriGadget and WhiteAfrican. One dedicated to low-tech African ingenuity, and the other to high-tech mobile and web changes happening throughout Africa.
Mridul Chowdhury, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, ClickDiagnostics, Inc.
Mridul Chowdhury’s experience is in development consulting and technology project management in developing countries and has worked for United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Ministry of Planning in Bangladesh, and was part of the Bangladeshi government’s official delegation for the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva. Mridul is a co-founder D.Net, a Bangladeshi NGO that works on using information technologies for addressing rural women’s health concerns. He is also a filmmaker, best known for his film titled Deshantori (The Migrant).
Kirsten Bokenkamp, RapidSMS Child Malnutrition Surveillance
Kirsten Bokenkamp is a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) where she is focusing her studies on economic and political development and human rights, specifically in Latin America. Kirsten has studied and worked in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Venezuela and prior to SIPA, worked at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit nutrition advocacy organization, in Washington, D.C. After SIPA, Kirsten plans to focus her career in the area of international food policy and food security.
If you’re interested in innovation for international development, please join us in congratulating and learning from these budding entrepreneurs. Please RSVP at commons@usaid.gov.
