Global

As a young student, Alexander Mtambo was passionate about technology. Graduating with honours in Electronics and Computer Engineering from the University of Malawi, he gained practical experience working with Telkom Networks Malawi Limited in the Radio Access Network department.  Working with the team that installed 4G networks in more than ten…

The UNICEF Innovation Fund is proud to see portfolio member, CIREHA, graduate. They’ve come a long way – from numerous product iterations to deep diving into understanding their ecosystem better, strengthening their business model, and gearing up to take their solution to market. They’re now ready to collaborate at a larger scale – as they find…, Reflections from the CIREHA team, Over the past 15 months,  our team has conducted three iterations of development and field testing of Cboard -- an AAC open source web application for children and adults with speech and language impairments, aiding communication with symbols and text-to-speech. During this time, we have grown our user-base to more than double our projected growth…,  , Open source is the reason why Cboard exists., Quickly after the GitHub project was created, people with different skill sets and backgrounds started to contribute in different areas of expertise. We were able to create a space within the open source community for programmers, designers, translators, users, and parents to collaborate on improving our solution.  , Challenges, Although open source has been integral in forming a large community of contributors to Cboard, maintaining a stable team committed to the long term project goals has been challenging. The infrastructure behind Cboard’s clean and simple interface is rather complex. The application supports a variety of users on multiple devices offering modes…

The UNICEF Innovation Fund is proud to see portfolio member, Yuudee, graduate. They’ve come a long way – from numerous product iterations to deep diving into understanding their ecosystem better, strengthening their business model, and gearing up to take their solution to market. They’re now ready to collaborate at a larger scale – as they find…

Today we’re proud to announce that after a highly competitive process,  CIREHA (Argentina) ,  Daokudai (China)  and  Ninaad Digital Technology (India)  have been selected to join the UNICEF Innovation Fund’s AAC cohort. Read more about our newest portfolio companies and what it means to be part of a UNICEF Innovation Fund Cohort below. In June,…, How We Got Here: Our Strategy, AAC technologies are meant to  help people with communication impairments supplement or replace existing speech, writing or nonverbal communication to express ideas, thoughts, and needs . They primarily consist of PECS (picture exchange communication systems) and text to speech applications to support standard AAC systems. Despite the saturation…,  , Assistive Communication Technologies Cohort:, Beijing Daokoudai UNICEF Innovation   Beijing Daokoudai [China] is developing Yuudee 2, an application being built to help children with autism develop complex sentence structures to express themselves and socially integrate. Find out more about their solution  here . CIREHA (Argentina) UNICEF Innovation   CIREHA [Argentina] is developing Cboard,…, Cultivating an AAC Ecosystem: The “Cohort Model”, The AAC call is the Innovation Fund’s first experiment in designing and launching a “cohort model”. What does this mean to us? By bringing together portfolio companies working in the same technology space, open source solutions are connected early on during their development phase. Companies are creating interoperable solutions that build on each…, Upcoming Cohort Calls, The Innovation Fund has put out a series of calls around different portfolio areas which include  Data Science ,  Virtual Reality  and Blockchain . Please look out for this through our social media channels and newsletter. Visit:  https://www.unicef.org/innovation/venturefund

Last week, the  Global Disability Innovation Hub  held the first ever  Disability Innovation Summit  in London, UK. The sold-out event brought together academics, practitioners, international organizations, corporations, people with disabilities and other actors to explore the potential of design and innovation to shape the future of accessibility…

Approximately one billion people in the world are living with a disability,  80% of which are living in developing countries . 1 in 10 are children and this number is ever growing. People with disabilities face not only social discrimination but also barriers to accessing services such as health, education, employment, and transportation. This …

A scientist’s musings at the Global Innovations for Children and Youth Summit Sean Powell  is a full-time academic at the Queensland University of Technology. He spoke at the “Start Up to Scale Up Summit,” organized by UNICEF and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland on 9-10 November. You can read more about the Summit here .   The weather…

For many of us, digital tools and technologies help us in our daily lives. We use them for fun and for work; to learn and to connect. And some people are also using them to change the world for the better – we call them Digital Champions. Digital Champions are powerful creators, makers, and innovators who are transforming their environment and…