In the hectic few months since we
announced the
Google Impact Challenge for Japan in November, hundreds of nonprofits submitted ideas,
10 finalists were selected and hundreds of thousands of people voted on which projects Japan needs most.
Today, a panel of judges — including First Lady Akie Abe, astronaut Soichi Noguchi and Change.org Japan Director Emmy Suzuki Harris, as well as Miki Iwamura from Google Japan and myself — watched the top 10 teams pitch and chose the winners of a
50 million yen grant, program-management and consulting support from
ETIC and mentoring from Google.
So, without further ado, here are the ideas we hope to help turn into realities:
Winner of the Public Vote
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Nobel - Online network to support single-parent households with a single location to access basic resources such as childcare and affordable housing
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Women Will Award
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Madre Bonita - App to provide postpartum care for new mothers and to enable friends and family to give postpartum classes as a gift
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Judges Award
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Homedoor - App and data analytics to reduce crime and employ the homeless as night-safety patrols in high-crime areas
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Judges Award
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PADM - Crowdsourced accessibility map for Japan to help individuals in wheelchairs more easily navigate their communities by documenting barrier-free locations
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From the start we knew that any meaningful Impact Challenge in Japan should address some of the challenges faced by women,
considering just 38% of women who work, and 28% of those who don’t, believe that society supports them working once they are mothers. We reserved one of the awards specifically for this issue and are delighted that the public seems to agree with us and voted in such a way that we ended up awarding grants to two great ideas for helping women in Japan.
But, well, why stop there? We’re on a roll.
We were so impressed by all the ideas pitched today, that we couldn’t let the other organizations go home empty handed. We told each of the remaining six finalists they’d also get a grant of 25 million yen and the same support from ETIC and mentoring from Google. These include:
- Mission ARM Japan - Low-cost 3D printed prosthetic limbs
- Sodate-Age Net - Digital skills training for disadvantaged youth to increase their employment opportunities
- Fukushima Internet Television - SMS outreach to provide mental-health peer support and improve the accessibility of suicide counseling
- Nijiiro Diversity - Digital outreach campaign to build tolerance for sexual minorities and education on LGBT issues in the workplace through training courses and certification
- Smile Club - Mobile gym and data-driven health coaching for the elderly to encourage active lifestyles and healthy living
- Dot JP - Data analysis and visualization to make political funding flows transparent by leveraging a cloud-information system
Excited to see what they accomplish in the years ahead.
Posted by Jacquelline Fuller, Director of Google.org
1 comment :
AMAZING!
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