Nonprofit organizations may push for political or societal change with a variety of tactics. They could collect signatures on petitions, ask for donations, or raise awareness via literature, web pages, etc. Others may send volunteers to help people in need.

A newer type of NPO may bring the very people it serves into its own operations. Not only does it help them; they help the organization in return. Advanced data-science technology and widely available smart phones enable this collaborative new approach to humanitarianism.

Founded in 2011, Humanitarian Tracker is a technology- and citizen-powered NPO. It combines crowd sourcing, citizen reporting, data mining and artificial intelligence to aid people in distressed regions of the world. It employs these methods to bring relief to populations facing humanitarian disasters, conflicts, human-rights violations, disease outbreaks, etc.

Importantly, it does not simply aggregate statistics or other structured data. It relies on unstructured data from real people — photographs, first-person accounts and the like — for a richer, holistic picture of scenes on the ground.

“We see our job as really elevating the otherwise marginalized voice,” said Hend Alhinnawi (pictured), chief executive officer of Humanitarian Tracker.

The organization’s data scientists process the data it collects from citizens, organizations, researchers, etc. The insights they derive inform the organization’s decisions about where to concentrate its efforts. It also makes its data and intelligence available to the public, journalists, students, government officials, and others.

“We’re not just about collecting the data; we want to make sure it’s meaningful, and we want to derive insights. We want to know: What is the data actually telling us?” Alhinnawi said.

Alhinnawi spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Imagine conference in Seattle. They discussed Humanitarian Tracker’s tech-powered mission and its work with the United Nations (see the full interview with transcript here).

This week, theCUBE spotlights Humanitarian Tracker in its Startup of the Week feature.

Big tech tackles big problems

Diverse nonprofits — whether fighting crime or reconnecting the homeless with family — are leveraging new technology to help execute their missions. Analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence can make time-consuming tasks involving vast amounts of data much simpler. And some of the most successful tech companies including Amazon Web Services Inc. and Splunk Inc. seem eager to pick up nonprofit customers.

AWS is increasingly invested in enabling NPOs to tackle major global issues like population migrations and healthcare. “We’re trying to help them deliver on their mission with our technology,” Dave Levy, vice president, federal government, at AWS, told theCUBE earlier this month.

Humanitarian Tracker is using technology to enable content and information-sharing online. One may ask if collecting and reporting facts about urgent world issues is not already performed by the press. The answer is complex; the power and positioning of the press varies vastly from one nation to another. Reporters Without Borders annually scores countries around the world on press freedom and transparency. Of the 180 countries studied in 2019, about 76% — 137 countries — achieved a less-than-satisfactory score. Sixty-five countries — including the United States — had a situation deemed “problematic”; 51 countries were rated “bad”; and 18 were “very bad.”

Nations without a free and open press often lack a means to hold those in power accountable for their actions. Also, calling out corruption or publicizing evidence of government officials acting can put whistle blowers in peril. Khaled Mohamed Saeed was a young Egyptian man who happened to possess video implicating police in a drug deal. In 2010, Saeed was accosted in public and beaten to death by police in Alexandria. Photos of his corpse went viral and incited the Egyptian Revolution of the following year.

Saeed’s tragic death is a tale of two potentials inherent in modern technology. One is the potential for citizens to use smart phones and the internet to capture and report incidents of corruption; the other is the chance that these technologies could leave tracks for corrupt authorities to follow to innocent citizens.

For Humanitarian Tracker, the first potential is too positive to forgo. Smart phones with cameras and video recorders, social media, and the internet can make practically anyone a reporter. They enable citizens living under oppressive regimes to do what their press can’t or won’t do: shine a light on bad actors used to lying, stealing or manipulating the system with impunity.

Machine learning anonymizes, empowers citizen reporters

Recent advances in machine learning and other technology could be a godsend to citizen reporters seeking anonymity. Humanitarian Tracker runs on the AWS Cloud and leverages its machine learning stack to make its content and data contributors anonymous. It makes it safe for citizens to share their content with the world by “de-identifying” them, according to Alhinnawi. It accomplishes this with machine learning, which extracts important details and information from content. Once cleansed in this way, it has no tracks or traces that could allow someone to identify its creator.

“We take out any information that could be identifiable, that could lead to their arrest or could lead to somebody identifying that it is them that reported,” Alhinnawi said. “We really care that this reporter stays anonymous for their own safety. Privacy and security is of utmost importance to us.”

Instead of a humble Facebook page or Twitter account, Humanitarian Tracker provides a single online base for full display of citizens’ reports. Citizens, journalists, government officials, NPOs, and others can come to the site and freely view what they’ve captured.

“The unique thing about Humanitarian Tracker is it gives people that forum to show the world and to tell them what’s happening to and around them,” Alhinnawi said.

Collective efforts strengthen nonprofits

Humanitarian Tracker data scientists parse data to identify “humanitarian hot spots.” These are areas where aid is urgently needed. The organization prefers to focus on a relatively small number of regions and avoids spreading its resources too thin.

“I like to run the organization like a two-pizza team, so I don’t take on more than I could handle,” Alhinnawi said.

Greater sharing of data and methodologies among NPOs is sorely needed, she added. For example, Humanitarian Tracker once worked with 13 organization working on humanitarian issues in Syria and found that none were sharing data. They were all focused on the same geographic area, while just a few miles off, people in need went unaided. Sharing data can help organizations form a common pool of knowledge, conserve resources, and be more effective, according to Alhinnawi.

In 2016, the United Nations Solutions Summit chose Humanitarian Tracker as a top 10 solution from over 1,000 nominees for its work toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals. People all over the world participate in SDG projects. Alhinnawi wanted to create one such central location for them to share info on their humanitarian projects. So Humanitarian Tracker introduced its Global Action Mosaic where they can showcase their projects and track progress.

Regular citizens can also go to Global Action Mosaic’s site and search for projects, volunteer and see other opportunities. Volunteers can also go to humanitariantracker.org and search opportunities. 

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS Imagine:

Photo: SiliconANGLE