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What Happens When Brazil's Favelas Take On The World Of Online Gaming?

Anna Fleck

November 23, 2021 |

World of Us |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Brazil, Rio de Janeiro

AfroGames offers young people aged 12 and over with classes in game programming, bringing the world of gaming to the lower-income communities in Brazil, or favelas, allowing youth to explore their culture, technology and potential job opportunities through game design.

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Technology gives critical assist to firefighting efforts

Victoria Franco

October 28, 2021 |

Local News Matters |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, California

In California, first responders have implemented technology to assist with wildfires and evacuations. The two tools are ALERTWildfire and Zonehaven. ALERTWildfire is a system of cameras that help firefighters locate, confirm, and detect the size of the wildfire before they even leave the station. There are 900 cameras installed throughout the state. Zonehaven is a tool that allows first responders to communicate evacuation plans to residents. The program has been used in multiple counties and jurisdictions.

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House hunting apps giving agents a run for their money

Graham Kajilwa

September 16, 2021 |

The Standard |

Text |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: Kenya, Nairobi

xPodd is a real-time service that connects tenants to landlords whose listings match their specifications. The app helps prospective tenants navigate Nairobi’s competitive and fast-moving real estate market. Tenants fill out detailed specifications about what they are looking for and xPodd aims to connect them with at least three matching landlords for a small fee. Once matched, they get photos of the houses, their respective GPS locations, and contact information for the landlord. They also receive a number for a xPodd official who can go with prospective tenants to complete the deal.

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South African Women Are Reclaiming Their Voices in the Media

Tolu Olasoji

August 20, 2021 |

Reasons to be Cheerful |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: South Africa

Quote This Woman+ (QW+) is a database of women experts – as well as other people systematically ignored or misconstrued by mainstream media narratives. QW+ provides an easy way for journalists and news producers to find a vetted expert to speak with. Founders relied on referrals to build the database, with each newly added expert asked to refer at least five other experts in the field. The platform launched right before South Africa’s 2019 election with 40 experts in 25 categories and now has 513 experts across 49 categories and a newsletter subscription list of about a thousand journalists.

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Stop Viewing Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as a Monolith

Amy Yee

August 17, 2021 |

Bloomberg |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Arkansas

Data disaggregation allowed the CDC to quickly recognize the severe impact of Coronavirus on the Marshallese community in Arkansas. This was only possible due to a previous precedent of collecting health data from them specifically. Services to mitigate the spread and its effects were quickly put into place.

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Hey Siri, Learn to Speak Kinyarwanda

Tolu Olasoji

July 13, 2021 |

Reasons to be Cheerful |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Rwanda

Common Voice is an open-source initiative to capture more languages for voice-recognition software. Users “donate” their voices by recording themselves reading text out loud. They can also validate the accuracy of already donated voices. The platform has over 9,000 hours of voice data for 90 languages contributed by more than 166,000 people. The group runs creative campaigns to encourage native speakers to contribute, like “Digital Umuganda” in Rwanda, which is a play on a national holiday when people engage in community service. The campaign gathered over 1,700 hours of Kinyarwanda language from 840 people.

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A New Project Is Bringing the Gay ‘Green Book' Online

Marianne Dhenin

June 29, 2021 |

Next City |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

In 1965 a traveling salesman published a series of travel guides with gay or gay-friendly businesses across the U.S. that became survival guides for the LGBTQ community. “Mapping the Gay Guides” has digitized those collections, allowing users to explore the original descriptions and added historical content written by graduate students. Reasons for why locations appear and disappear from year-to-year are provided, which sometimes intersect with LGBTQ hate crimes. A $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will allow them to continue to preserve and make the forgotten history accessible.

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Chocpocalypse Now! Quarantine and the Future of Food

Nicola Twilley Cynthia Graber Geoff Manaugh

June 22, 2021 |

Gastropod |

Podcast |

Over 15 Minutes

Response Location: Australia, Barrow Island, Western Australia

Off the coast of Australia, the energy company Chevron is experimenting with new quarantine management techniques to ensure that any plants and pests don’t hitchhike to new places, which can devastate the global food economy. They’ve redesigned shipping containers to make it harder for insects to tag along and they’ve created a video game to train workers on how to be better at finding these pests in their inspections. Some creatures and plants can slip through the process, but these tools have been successful and could be used in other ways.

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Local Platforms for Online Food Delivery Are Eating the Big Guys' Lunch

Oscar Perry Abello

June 15, 2021 |

Next City |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Lexington, Kentucky

Locally owned restaurant delivery platforms charge lower commissions than national giants like GrubHub, allow customers to order food on smart-phone apps, and have found ways to be profitable while also keeping money in local economies. While platforms differ by locale, cooperative models are increasingly popular. For example, Delivery Co-op in Lexington, KY provides customers with unlimited deliveries for a monthly fee, charges participating restaurants a flat monthly fee, and pays drivers a base salary plus tips, with benefits kicking after three months of full-time work and profit-sharing after one year.

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Both lost jobs. She got paid. He waits. Where they live may be the reason why.

Shannon Lilly

June 01, 2021 |

WTVR-TV |

Broadcast TV News |

5-15 Minutes

Response Location: United States, South Carolina

Four years before the pandemic caused unemployment compensation claims to spike, South Carolina took advantage of a federal grant to modernize its claims processing systems. That upgrade saved thousands of hours of time once claims rose sharply, which meant that people making legitimate claims got paid relatively quickly. That stands in contrast with the Virginia Employment Commission's huge backlog, which must be run through a decades-old system. The state was finally upgrading its systems when the pandemic put that work on hold, leaving some laid-off people in financial limbo for several months.

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