Tech’s Power for Good

Jen Owen, e-NABLE

Jon Schull started e-NABLE, a fast-growing network of volunteers who use their 3-D printers to create low-cost hand and arm prosthetics for children.

The impact of the printed prosthetics—which some of the kids call “Ironman hands"—is life-changing, says Mr. Schull, a research scientist at the Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

“The most obvious benefit—and it’s huge for them and their parents—is that they go from being that weird kid that the other kids think may be icky to being the coolest kid in the class,” he says.

Too often they go without prosthetics because commercial models are so expensive—often costing tens of thousands of dollars—and need to be replaced frequently as children grow.

E-NABLE’s effort to change that started with a YouTube video.

A South African carpenter who had lost several fingers in an accident posted a video about the prosthetic hand he designed for himself and made on a 3-D printer. In the comments section, parents of children with hand and arm defects wrote asking for more information, and 3-D printing enthusiasts chimed in, offering to help.

Moved by the messages, Mr. Schull created a simple online map where parents and volunteers could post their locations and contact one another—and e-NABLE was born. In less than two years, the volunteers have printed roughly 1,000 low-cost prosthetics.

“The volunteers, in many cases, find this to be one of the most meaningful things they’ve ever done,” says Mr. Schull. “I certainly do.”

Satellite Imagery and Big Data

Advanced technologies that got their start in business, science, or the military—and have captured the public imagination—are finally making their way to the world of social good.

Drones, 3-D printers, satellite imagery, high-tech sensors, and big data are being put to work for a wide array of causes. The early adopters have been mostly groups focused on the environment, human rights, and international development, but other nonprofits are considering applications, too.

In many cases, nonprofits and researchers are leading the charge. But there are also plenty of projects, like e-NABLE, that have been sparked by volunteers and driven by the crowd.[[video url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcPjwq9-sDc” align="right” size="half-width” class="" starttime="68" caption="" credits="e-NABLE”]]

Organizations are just starting to tap into what the advanced technologies can do. Nonprofit experts predict even more ambitious applications on the horizon, things like robotic exoskeletons—essentially bionic suits—to help frail older adults stay active, and unmanned aircraft that provide Wi-Fi after a natural disaster.

“All these technical advances are going to revolutionize what we do in the nonprofit sector,” says Jim Fruchterman, founder of Benetech, a nonprofit technology group in Palo Alto, Calif. “If we just approach it in a sophisticated way, in a way that’s very human-centered, we can make a big difference.”

Drones at Work

Drones are best known as tools of war, but they’re quickly becoming a go-to technology for social good.

Last summer in Bosnia and Herzegovina, floods and landslides displaced tens of thousands of people—and shifted unexploded landmines left over from the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Some of the ordnance traveled several miles, in a few cases ending up nestled in neighborhoods.

Researchers used unmanned aircraft to determine the locations of the mines and collect information that allowed the scientists to predict water flow, reducing the life-threatening risks that disaster responders would have otherwise faced.

The drones were able to gather the water-flow data in two hours, rather than the two or three days it would have taken using traditional methods, says Haris Balta, a research scientist and engineer at the Royal Military Academy of Belgium.

“It’s not just about the effort,” he says. “It’s about several people working a few days in a dangerous zone. The risk that something would happen is high.”

The excitement about the promise of new technologies in charity work is tempered by some daunting challenges. Nonprofits are learning—sometimes painfully—that the tools they need aren’t always available and that building new technology is hard. Information about what’s been tried before isn’t easy to find, and some tech applications with significant benefits could have unintended consequences that end up helping the bad guys.

Take the case of satellite imagery.

Amnesty International uses remote photographs to report on the world’s troublespots, regions that are too dangerous for its analysts to visit in person. In January, the group used images captured by satellite to reveal the scale of attacks by Boko Haram militants in northeastern Nigeria. Amnesty has also used the technology to document wartime atrocities in Syria and prove the existence of prison camps in North Korea.

But calling attention to human-rights abuses while a conflict rages can have unintended consequences.

When organizations release satellite images of conflict, they’re revealing the information for everyone to see, regardless of their motives, says Nathaniel Raymond, director of the Signal Program on Human Security and Technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

Mr. Raymond says the same images that document atrocities and galvanize public awareness could also help combatants target civilians or expose the location of mass grave sites, giving perpetrators a chance to destroy evidence before international authorities can investigate.

“You have to constantly be thinking about, ‘OK, how can this be used?’ " he says. “And there’s a limit to what you can anticipate.”

To get the most out of high tech, sophisticated organizations will have to figure out how to get many tools to work together, says Andrew Zolli, a futurist and the author of Resilience: Why Things Bounce Back. “It’s about the integration of advanced technologies into platforms—what technologists refer to as a stack—layers and layers and layers of technology that interoperate with each other,” he says.

Combating Poachers

The stack approach is already hard at work in South Africa.

Thomas Snitch, a University of Maryland scientist, battles to protect some of the Earth’s most majestic creatures: the elephants and rhinos that wander the African savanna. To thwart the poachers who stalk the animals, Mr. Snitch and his team rely on an arsenal of 21st-century technologies.

They developed a system that allows park officials to fly drones to provide real-time aerial surveillance, and use big data to tell them where poachers are most likely to strike.

The scientists gather and analyze all the information they can find about the movements of the animals, poaching incidents, weather patterns, and dozens of other factors to create a mathematical model to predict the next likely attack. Using radios that can mark GPS locations, park rangers collect additional information to refine the algorithms—anything from a break in the fence to the location of prickly pear, a plant Mr. Snitch says is like “ice cream to rhinos.”

Park officials then use the analysis to decide where to fly the drones and assign wardens to patrol.

The technology helps save animals’ lives. In the past five months, there has been no poaching in the areas where the rangers are using the system. A year earlier, there were eight to 10 rhino killings each month. “There’s one simple question: How do you decide where to fly?” Mr. Snitch says. “Africa’s too big to start throwing drones up in the air at night and hoping to find anything.”

Building From Scratch

But sometimes charities have to do more than figure out how to get different technologies to work together. For some projects, they must develop the tools, which requires expertise and project-management skills that are often in short supply at nonprofits.

A group called Charity: Water is building a system that can monitor the flow of water in the wells it builds and automatically generate a repair request when things go wrong. The nonprofit works in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

At the beginning of the project, the group had every intention of installing off-the-shelf sensor boxes. But when it tested the available options, none were up to the task. Some of the sensor boxes weren’t durable enough, while others ran on batteries that had to be replaced as often as every three weeks, says Robert Lee, the nonprofit’s director of special programs. “Some, believe it or not, weren’t even waterproof,” he says.

So Charity: Water had to build its own sensor boxes, now being manufactured in China. Mr. Lee took the lead on a multitude of tasks: identifying which sensor technology and batteries to use, testing the durability of the plastic that protects the parts from corrosion, even negotiating with Ethiopia’s national telecommunications company.

The charity is working with an engineering company, but the project has still required an enormous amount of time and travel, Mr. Lee says. “Whenever you want something done right, you’ve got to get your hands dirty,” he says.

Enthusiasm for the next wave of advanced technologies is running high. But technology experts warn that the newest, flashiest technology isn’t necessarily the best answer to every problem.

Rainforest Connection combined recycled cellphones and solar panels to create a listening device that detects chainsaw sounds and sends out an alert at the first sound of logging in a protected forest. The group has tested the system in Sumatra and Cameroon, with another test coming soon in Brazil.

Topher White, founder of the Rainforest Connection, based in San Francisco, sees himself as a part of Silicon Valley’s start-up culture. Still, he says, his group prides itself on not being at the cutting edge of technology. “We’re looking to use what’s already there,” he says. “In this case, that means not building a satellite uplink system when there’s pretty good cellphone coverage.”

Charities are always under pressure to keep costs down. For nonprofits to benefit from advanced tech’s promise, frugality remains key.

Rachel Kramer/WWF

The World Wildlife Fund set up a system that combines drones, electronic-tracking devices, sensors, and data to fight poaching in Namibia. Now the charity is recreating the system in Nepal.

With the second project, the organization hopes to modify the approach for a different ecosystem and figure out how to cut the price tag, says Jon Hoekstra, chief scientist at the World Wildlife Fund. To make a real difference, he says, the system needs to be copied widely, which means it has to be affordable.

“It really doesn’t do anybody any good if it’s going to cost $500,000,” says Mr. Hoekstra. “You talk about 100 of them, and that’s $50-million, and there are thousands of national parks and protected areas around the world.”

Charities work to tackle really big issues—climate change, homelessness, educating the next generation—and are just starting to puzzle out the role advanced technologies might play in potential solutions, says Mr. Hoekstra. But for the most part, they’re limited to tools that already exist.

He believes the complexity of the problems that nonprofits confront might be attractive to tech experts, and that joining forces would advance the use of sophisticated technology for good.

“What’s really exciting to me is the prospect of us putting out a problem and the technologist says, ‘I don’t have that technology, but I want to work with you to figure out what technology could be created to do that,’ " Mr. Hoekstra says. “There’s a lot more territory to be explored.”