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Epidemics and rumors
From a horse ride in the US in the 18th century to a chain of cell phone calls in the 21st century: How information spreads? What can we learn from these cases beyond the technology?
15 year old from Sierra Leone Constructs Radio from Scraps
Fifteen year-old from Sierra Leone has created a community radio station from homemade batteries. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/west-african-teen-invents-gadgets-scrap-metal-visits/story?id=17877827
Speak-to-tweet
In response to the internet black-out during the 2011 Egypt protests, a small group of engineers developed a service which allowed anyone to send messages over twitter without an internet connection
Surgery started and I was not propperly sedated and was awake
I found myself in the surgery room and the sedation started. I fell half asleep but not completely asleep. And all of a sudden I noticed that surgery was starting. And the surgery was in my ear drum so I could not move or else I would damage myself.
Bicycles as an example - Sakaramenta
Peter Meijer's Sakaramenta has featured as an inspiration on an OpenIDEO challenge before, and I believe this bicycle factory can inspire in this one as well.
Sky lanterns for communicating: cheap, highly visible & easy to use
Sky lanterns seem to fulfill some important aspects of communication and shows great potential for communicating in limited access areas. Most importantly they are cheap to buy, easy to make, visible over great distance and impress when many are used
Amber alert like mobile feature
Mobile phone companies must utilize location data to push amber alerts to phones. Could similar push emergency feature be added to phones where user can send alert and needs password to deactivate?
Syria Tracker
Syria tracker is a tool that allows people to report deaths, diseases, food tampering and more. It offers users suggestions on how to keep their reports private using special technologies like Tor and more.
"Operation Grassroots"
Form/mobilize underground volunteers in affected nations to collect-and-distribute proof of atrocities.
Propaganda: The Precursor To Mass Atrocities
Probably every conflict is fought on at least two grounds: (1) the battlefield and (2) the minds of the people via propaganda. Awareness of manipulation via propaganda (an anti-propaganda campaign) is a key to prevention. See also: Rwanda case study.
Riders for Health
Riders (motorbike riders) work to ensure health workers in Africa can access reliable transportation to reach isolated people with regular, predictable health care.
How to Communicate Fear and Pain
Many have trouble communicating their experiences with fear and pain. Not only do we often lack the actual language to express what is going on, but we find barriers to communication at every turn -- barriers to empathy and being understood.
Using Space Observation of Night Time Lights to Track Conflict Outbreaks
The movement of nighttime lights from migrant workers -- observed by satellites -- can be used to track disease outbreaks. Can nighttime lights also be used to track conflict outbreaks? Can such lights be used intentionally to alert others?
Smallest Witnesses
During a visit to a Darfur refugee camp, two Human Rights Watch representatives gave children paper and crayons while their parents were being interviewed. View the video (also in the challenge resources) to see what they drew.
Phone Ladies: A woman per village to spread the word
How to gather information and share it? One needs to understand the local context and find people who have access to information and can share it. The Phone Ladies in villages in Bangladesh is one interesting example...
Learn from history: share the stories again and again
"I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions". Anne Frank wrote this in her diary many years ago. It sounds like it's written today.
Rhythm 0 by Marina Abramović
Marina Abramović is an artist who began her career in 1970s and has been called the "grandmother of performance art." Her work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
Fire
Fire must be one of the earliest media for long-distance communication – as smoke signals, bonfires, fireworks… It's also often a sign of distress, and an attention-getter if ever there was one. If only we knew to use our techy tools to look for it.
Victims May Not Know They Are Victims
In her TED Talk, Kakenya Ntaiya, a Kenyan Maasai, speaks of the cultural practices (including female circumcision) she navigated as a child in order to attend school. Great insight from a victim and her perception of the atrocity during and after.
Shoefiti
Why do people fling shoes to hang over telephone lines?
Google Dengue Trends
Google Dengue Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate current dengue activity around the world in near real-time, this is visualised on the map you can see in the image.
