facing the difficult challenges facing humanity with technology

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The Telstra Foundation has partnered with Humanitech, an Australian Red Cross initiative and brand, to support research, advocacy and technological innovation that address real-world, social and environmental problems.

Fundamentally, Humanitech aims to ensure that technology serves humanity by putting people at the center and in control and by advocating for humanity-based design. It is about delivering humanitarian outcomes through the use of new and emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and robotics. But the Humanitech team also recognizes that to do this successfully, collaboration is key, so they are bringing together nonprofits, technology companies, government, academics and funding partners to scale technology solutions for the social good together. With the aim of ensuring that technology serves humanity, Humanitech generates insights and amplifies ideas through sharing, collaboration, research and experimentation.

Our funding has enabled Humanitech to enhance its efforts, and the team has achieved a number of milestones to advance humanity-based research, advocacy and technology innovation platforms, including:

the successful pilot of a flagship project to share identity credentials via a blockchain solution the launch of the “Future of Vulnerability: Humanity in the Digital Age” – read the report the inaugural Humanitech Summit, a two-day event with important thinkers and professionals sharing insights into how frontier technology can be used for the benefit of society and the announcement of the first Humanitech Lab cohort that will drive the impact in the areas of disasters and emergencies, equity and justice and climate change.

With the hiring of the Humanitech Lab cohort this month, grants and support from Humantiech will help the following teams scale their “tech4good” solutions in partnership with others:

SOURCE – The world’s first renewable drinking water system that creates sustainable drinking water for communities from sunlight and air. Climasens: climate information that allows communities to assess, analyze and prepare for future heat impacts. FloodMapp – For real-time flood forecasting, flood modeling and emergency management. Desert Lab – Fighting disinformation in remote First Nations communities using artificial intelligence / machine learning. Sonnar – Harnessing the power of audio and speech technologies to open the world to people with accessibility needs. Good Hood: Enable multilingual and culturally safe health communication by providing high quality, culturally informed and translated health information.

“By working with these six organizations we hope to find unique ways to solve some pressing problems. From accessing drinking water in First Nations communities, to mapping the floodwaters’ path so that we can provide immediate alerts to people at risk. We want to turn these ideas into reality and show how frontier technologies can be used to help humanity, ”said Alastair Pryor, Humanitech Lab Manager.

“Language barriers have been an area of ​​concern when it comes to fighting COVID19. How cool would it be if there was an easy way to provide multilingual and culturally safe health information? These are the types of challenges Humanitech Lab will be working on with this year’s cohort, ”added Alistair.

Humanitech Lab participants will have access to industry experts and mentors, connections between sectors and industries along with grants of up to $ 500,000 to validate, pilot and scale the impact.

“This is a unique opportunity that combines funding, innovation, technical and community expertise to ensure that we are harnessing the power of frontier technologies to better serve humanity,” commented Alistair.

Humanitech is an Australian Red Cross approved brand and has $ 4.1 million backing from founding partner, the Telstra Foundation. Read more about Humanitech here and join the Humanitech Summit channel on Slack to stay connected.

By Jackie Coates

Head of the Telstra Foundation – Telstra

An experienced community investment leader, Jackie is passionate about enabling digital-backed social innovation. Defining herself as “analog at birth but digital by design,” Jackie advocates the transformative power of technology to solve social problems. As head of the Telstra Foundation, Jackie manages a multi-million dollar community partner portfolio to improve social inclusion outcomes for youth in the areas of mental health; disability; digital realization; IT security; and remote, regional and indigenous communities. Feminist, mother, geek and financier, Jackie plays with lots of balls and tries hard not to drop the glass ones! Find out more at telstrafoundation.com

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