Modern life comes with many changes and most of them are driven by technology. Some of these changes are good, some of them are bad. We blame technology while putting aside the human factor and the awareness that technology is just a tool.
Here are 3 companies developing #techforgood:
1. Google – Grow with Google
The latest research on digital skills done by the European Commission shows there’s a digital skills gap which affects 44% of Europeans between 16 and 74 years – that’s 169 million people. In the future, 9 out of 10 jobs will require digital skills. Google set out to support people acquire and develop their digital skills by launching Grow with Google in 2015.
Grow with Google is a free programme with the purpose of helping people find jobs, advance their career or grow their businesses.
Grow with Google management’s goal was to teach one million Europeans within a year. The programme did so well that it exceeded all hopes and dreams management had starting out.
Four years later, here are some statistics:
- 10 million people trained: 5 million in Europe and 5 million people across Africa and the Middle East;
more than 80 countries around the world; - In Europe, 315,000+ people have found a job or started a new business, 86,000+ people have grown their career and 730,000+ businesses reported growth in revenue and customers;
- Women accounted for 48% of the people trained;
- ⅓ of the trainees were unemployed;
- 90% of business trainees came from small businesses.
The programme offers free online training courses for personal growth and for business development where trainees learn how to use Google Ads, improve their advertising skills, self-promote, grow their business etc.
The programme caters to the needs of people looking to improve their digital skills, startup founders, business owners, teachers, YouTube creators, Android developers, non-profits and cultural organizations.
2. Facebook – CodeFWD
In September 2018, Facebook announced the launch of CodeFWD, a free online education program to inspire underrepresented and female students to pursue computer programming.
CodeFWD by Facebook is a three-step program where educators and organizations introduce computer programming to 4th through 8th-grade students.
The program helps educators introduce the basics of computer programming to their students and supports students to practice their new skills.
The program is created in partnership with Sphero Edu, an education hub which nurtures creative play while building robots.
3. Microsoft – Child Growth Monitor
According to UNICEF, nearly half of all deaths occurring in children under 5 are caused by under-nutrition – a loss of roughly 3 million lives a year.
Jochen Moninger, innovation director at Welthungerhilfe, a nonprofit based in Bonn spent 12 years working in African countries like Yemen and Sudan and knows first-hand what child hunger looks like. He says the solution to end malnutrition is to accurately measure it one child at a time. To this end, his organization developed Child Growth Monitor.
Child Growth Monitor is a cloud-based, smartphone app that can scan children and instantly detect malnutrition.
The app uses an infrared sensor available in some smartphones to capture 3D measurements of a child’s height, body volume and weight ratio, as well as head and upper arm circumferences down to the millimetre.
Nutritionists and IT specialists then evaluate the scans by using Microsoft artificial intelligence solutions, pinpointing a child’s dietary health.
The experts later pump that data back into the app, training the algorithm to get smarter with each measurement.
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