Lebanon's refugees use technology to fight food insecurity

Student organizers across the US are developing peer-led programs (including phone-free campus events, student-designed phone policies, and digital wellness education advocacy) to address the root causes of screen addiction that school phone bans alone fail to tackle.

“For many tiny, endangered languages, digital technology has become a lifeline.” Phones, the web, software systems, these are all technologies being employed to keep heritage languages alive.

CARE Nigeria created a WhatsApp chatbot in 2022 to combat vaccine misinformation. The chatbot provides parents with real-time answers about childhood immunizations, nearby clinic locations, vaccine schedules and side effects, available 24/7 without judgment. To drive awareness, CARE ran a Facebook advertising campaign from December 2022 to February 2023, reaching 3.6 million people.

In an effort to address online violence children face in the digital age, initiatives across several countries, including Spain, Romania, and Ukraine, are getting creative using theatre, media literacy training on AI and algorithms, anonymous reporting hotlines and classroom phone bans, among other strategies to help youth cope. The various initiatives have proven successful. For example, the school-wide phone ban in one Spain region resulted in a 27.42% decrease in cyberharassment cases between 2023-2024.

The HeyKiddo app and educational curriculum allow parents and teachers to access information and activities that help develop students’ social and emotional health and empathy, teach them how to make responsible decisions and maintain healthy relationships. Over 500 families currently use the app and the portion for teachers, called The Huddle, is used in a handful of schools in California, with plans to expand.

Maternal Expert Thinking Analyzer is a pilot project to prevent maternal mortality that uses a mobile diagnostic, training, and outreach application to help midwives assess the risk of their patients in rural areas. Midwives input data collected from pregnant mothers into the app and generate an automated risk-based assessment score. The pregnant mother then receives a text with advice based on her risk level. A total of 33 midwives across 14 regions are trained to use the app. Initial results indicate that the app has had positive results preventing maternal mortality and even increasing antenatal care.

The city of Detroit is offering business services to entrepreneurs who want to bring their business online in the aftermath of the pandemic. Digital Detroit is the name of the program offering content creation and website development completely free of charge for a variety of businesses. Over 100 businesses were selected for the five-week program, helping the entrepreneurs to move their services online, creating, and launching websites as well as establishing social media presence, all of which has gone a long way in increasing sales and profits.

The use of mobile phone technology can aid in contact tracing and the collection of public health data. In Israel, the government’s use of GPS phone locations to trace cases of COVID-19 raised scrutiny regarding privacy and accountability. Instead, a newer, open-source app called Hamagen invites users to download and voluntarily participate in contact tracing. Other measures put in place to safeguard personal privacy concerns include parliamentary oversight of governmental tracing programs.

Data-driven transport can improve access and efficiency if properly implemented. In Shanghai, China, users benefit from customized bus routes designed by artificial intelligence software. Other countries, however, have discontinued pilots of programs similar to the one implemented in China. Elsewhere, in Innisfil, Ontario, a different kind of program helps to fill the gap in public transport--namely, subsidized Uber rides.

Mobile phone apps allow NGOs to track public health threats. In Honduras, the medical charity, Medicine Sans Frontiers (MSF) uses GIS technology and mobile phone apps to assist in their efforts against dengue fever outbreaks. Apps allow residents to report outbreaks, which helps the charity apply its efforts where they are most needed. MSF also uses apps to learn about conditions in the communities it serves.