19/12/2009
Charities Criticize Online Fund-Raising Contest by Chase
JPMorgan Chase & Company is coming under fire for the way it conducted an online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities.
At least three nonprofit groups — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All— say they believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.
The groups say that until Chase made changes to the contest, they appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters.
Paul Higgins: Just shows that you have to be careful when ceding control to voting systems - you need to make sure your comfortable with the outcomes being determined by someone else because the transparency of these systems will cause a backlash if you try and interfere after the fact
13/12/2009
Aid agencies ‘must use new tools’
The “crowd-sourced” data that comes from victims of natural disasters and conflicts is now a crucial part in disaster management, says a new report.
The UN Foundation/Vodafone Foundation Partnership report outlines examples of new technologies that mitigate conflicts and save lives worldwide
14/10/2009
New iPhone App Makes Jobs For Refugees In Dedaab Kenya
It might sound like a pretty outlandish idea that an iPhone application can provide jobs for refugees in Kenya, but the folks behind the Give Work App are dreaming big!
Give Work is a joint effort between Samasource, a non-profit organization working to provide Internet-based jobs for poor people around the world, and CrowdFlower, a San Francisco based company that provides accessible outsourced labor as an online service. Dadaab, Kenya is home to extreme poverty and the largest refugee camp in the world. Through the Give Work system, refugees in Dadaab receive Internet training and well-paying, dignified jobs.
