---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mia Newman <mnewman@humanityunited.org> Date: Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 7:14 AM Subject: USAID/Humanity United Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention Hello - I'm writing to you on behalf of USAID and Humanity United, who have partnered together to launch the Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention<http://www.thetechchallenge.org/>. The Tech Challenge is a prize-based challenge that hopes to spark new interdisciplinary partnerships and new thinking on the application of technological solutions to daunting problems in conflict situations. I came across your website, and this seems like something that might be of interest you and your network at Nafundi. We do hope you decide to participate. Our second and final round formally launched in early March. Three challenges are now open, soliciting excellent proposals to compete for prizes of up to $10,000. The open challenges are: *Model | *How can we better understand – and predict – which communities are most at risk for mass atrocities? *The challenge<http://www.thetechchallenge.org/#!model> : *Create a predictive algorithmic model to help identify community-level risk factors that make communities more or less likely to experience acts of violence. This challenge will be launched on the TopCoder platform, a community of almost 465,000 software developers, algorithmists and digital designers from around the globe. *Communicate | *During conflicts and crises, vulnerable populations are often left completely isolated, unable to communicate with neighboring communities, much less the outside world. *The challenge<http://www.thetechchallenge.org/#!communicate> :* Create technological innovations to enable better communication with and among conflict-affected communities during a conflict. This challenge will be launched on the InnoCentive platform, a global leader in crowd-sourcing innovative solutions to important business, social, policy, scientific and technical problems. InnoCentive has over 285,000 registered solvers worldwide. *Alert | *The worst atrocities often happen in remote areas, making it incredibly difficult for human rights organizations to gather and verify critical information about what has occurred. *The challenge<http://www.thetechchallenge.org/#!alert> :* Develop simple, affordable, trainable and scalable technologies to allow human rights organizations and others to gather and/or verify information from hard-to-access areas. This challenge will be hosted on OpenIDEO, an open innovation platform for social good that uses a unique, collaborative approach where a broad mix of people create new solutions together – all concepts are openly available, shareable and reusable by anyone. * * Submissions will be evaluated by a distinguished panel<http://www.thetechchallenge.org/judges.html> of technologists, human rights experts, and government policy-makers, including Samantha Power, Ethan Zuckerman, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Alec Ross, and Patrick Meier. The Challenges are open to participants from around the world and from a breadth of disciplines, especially outside the traditional human rights space. It would be great if you could also pass along this email to anyone you think might be interested in participating! We're hoping to spread the word as much as possible. Feel free to contact me with questions or comments, and you can also read our FAQ<http://www.thetechchallenge.org/faqs/Tech_Challenge_for_Atrocity_Prevention_-_FAQ.pdf> for more information. Thanks so much, Mia Mia Newman John Gardner Fellow | Humanity United 1700 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Ste 520| Washington, DC 20006 mnewman@humanityunited.org | 202.503.3212