Next week brings the annual NetHope Global Summit, one of my favorite events in the humanitarian conferences world. This year, like most events, the Summit is going virtual. I will be speaking at two sessions. One, the first day of the conference (26 October) is a 45 minute slot where Sofie Blakstad (hiveonline) and I will discuss the new humanitarian blockchain initiative. Here’s the teaser for that event:
The Danish Red Cross and partners, including hiveonline and Mercy Corps, have initiated a research project to identify or build a platform suitable for use by NGOs and Social Enterprises, to benefit the next billion. The research is identifying recommendations for governance, business model(s) and targeted use cases. The project brings together NGOs, IFIs, commercial organisations and domain experts, to identify the optimal approach and drive forward the practical implementation of the project. The initial research will be published in September 2020. This presentation will explore that research and help lay the groundwork for the next stages to design and build the stack to support the key use cases identified.
Then on Thursday morning, Julius Adewopo (Mercy Corps) and I will host a 2.5 hour workshop that takes a deep dive into the data analytics platform we’ve been building across the last several months. Here’s the teaser for that event:
There is an ongoing complex food security crisis in Eastern Africa and it is important to make informed decisions on how, when, and where to respond, ideally before the onset of famine. The emergence of additional threats, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and locust infestations, are already amplifying impacts on the fragile food system in the region. Yet, decision-makers (including donors and stakeholders) have limited access to tools that can harness data from multiple sources and generate non-obvious insights on various indicators of food insecurity at the national or regional level. This presentation will be focused on demonstrating an innovative and data-rich analytical solution that is being developed at Mercy Corps to address this gap. By synthesizing and integrating data from multiple reliable sources (including WHO, FAO, WFP etc), the dashboard provides users with a quick tool to visualize and assess the relationship between several indicators across three major themes (food security, livestock, and markets), from the national to the district level in a region. The session will offer users hands-on guidance to access the tool and test its functionality relative to pre-defined (and possibly new) use-cases.
Reach out if you’re planning to attend or want to connect on either of these topics.