Important Milestone Reached!

Recently DemocracyLab reached an important milestone- we have connected over 10,000 volunteers (UXers, Data Scientists, Devs, and other tech roles) to over 300 nonprofits and tech-for-good projects!

We've worked together through the years and have built DemocracyLab into an impactful nonprofit that has made the world a better place through tech-for-good projects and organizations. And we want to see these numbers continue to grow!

Here are just 3 organizations that have been able to address important problems and improve lives because of their ability to recruit tech talent through DemocracyLab:

PolicyEngine builds free, open-source software that lets anyone design customizable reforms by identifying how society is impacted by governmental financial policies. They were so impressed with one of their DemocracyLab volunteers that they hired them onto their staff!

EnCiv is a web portal for productive democratic discourse at scale- both across the country and within communities. They are looking for help testing the Civil Pursuit app for productive national discourse, asking the question “What’s the right direction for our country?” They need 100’s (and one day millions’) of people to use it and give feedback. You can help at this Civil Pursuit App Link.

Smart City Planning helps city planners with the difficult task of street planning so that citizens can travel safely and efficiently using a variety of transportation modes. They credited their collaboration with DemocracyLab as a factor that helped them win a $1.5 million NSF grant in 2023!

Tech-for-good volunteers have reported that they join organizations for two main reasons: to do good and to develop their professional skills. Having experience that can be added to a job searcher’s LinkedIn, resume, or portfolio is key right now during an especially turbulent time in the tech industry. The demand for professional tech experience is high and tech-for-good organizations are benefiting.

Curious how you can help? Here are three ways:

1. Time- There are around 20 organizations looking for test users so that they can improve their tech for good projects. Consider giving your time to provide feedback to projects that could benefit from your perspective by using this link: Projects that need test users
   
2. Talent- You can volunteer your talent to help any tech-for-good project listed on the DemocracyLab platform. There is a huge need for tech talent, and you could be a part of making the world a better place! Check out the "Find Projects" page.
   
3. Treasure- To increase our tech-for-good impact at scale, in addition to sweat equity we need financial equity. Your one time or monthly financial support will help us reach our goal of addressing the most challenging social, economic, environmental and civic problems while empowering all members of our societies. You can contribute your financial support us here: Donate to DemocracyLab
   

This is only the beginning. We see a future where the tech-for-good space is thriving even more than it is today. You can help DemocracyLab lead the charge to make the world a better place!

If you've ever stood in front of a row of waste bins, wondering where that wrapper in your hand belongs, then you need to check out the Deep Waste app. Founded by Suman Kunwar in 2022, Deep Waste is an AI-powered app designed to identify different types of waste and guide users on proper disposal methods. The app also offers educational resources on waste management and tracks users' progress, helping them build sustainable habits over time.

Growing up in Kathmandu, I witnessed firsthand how poor waste practices led to serious health problems, with people falling ill and even losing their lives due to contamination from landfills. The idea for Deep Waste ignited when I witnessed uncollected trash piling up in my neighborhood. Struggling with confusing recycling guidelines, I realized many others faced similar challenges. Motivated by the urgency to combat climate change, I envisioned an accessible app that simplifies waste management.

Suman’s desire to collaborate with environmentally conscious individuals such as himself led him to DemocracyLab, an online marketplace that helps tech for good projects further their mission with support from skilled volunteers.

Setting up the Deep Waste project on DemocracyLab was seamless. The platform provided clear steps for creating a project profile, detailing our mission, and specifying the skills we needed in volunteers. The recruitment process was equally straightforward, allowing us to attract individuals passionate about sustainability and technology. DemocracyLab’s structure made it easy for us to connect with volunteers who align with our vision for using AI to address waste management challenges.

DemocracyLab connected Deep Waste with two volunteers who have collectively contributed around 240 hours to the project, supporting AI development and app design. Debbie Alvarado Latino, a UX Design volunteer, helped revamp the app to create a smoother user journey. The team also participated in the Earth-a-thon, a hackathon organized by DemocracyLab, where they gained valuable insights into how different projects address diverse challenges.

Effective waste management begins with proper waste segregation—a practice that’s more critical than ever with the rise of online shopping and growing trash accumulation. Deep Waste’s goal is to tackle this challenge head-on. If you’re passionate about climate tech and sustainability, and excited to enable Deep Waste’s mission, consider joining the project! The team is currently working on interesting challenges such as adding plastic identification capabilities and a reward system to the app. They’re looking for dedicated problem solvers eager to leverage advanced technology to make a difference. If that sounds like you, apply here.

Deep Waste is a project driven by the vision of a cleaner, more sustainable world, and volunteers who are genuinely enthusiastic about tackling environmental challenges are incredibly valuable.

Fun fact: As of Oct 2024, Deep Waste has preserved a total of 6,204.59 kg of CO₂ across 128 leaderboard entries! To join the movement & create meaningful impact — download the app here.

About DemocracyLab:

DemocracyLab is an open marketplace that connects Tech-For-Good projects with volunteers.

If you’re looking for an experiential learning opportunity to hone your skills or an avenue to create social impact by sharing your wisdom, explore the 200+ projects listed on our website.

If skilled talent is what you need to further your mission, register your organization on our platform to find volunteers.

Stay connected:

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our work, or join us as a monthly supporter to enable our mission!

DemocracyLab holds its annual Earthathon for a communal fight against the problems facing us today. Earthathon is a free, online event that offers students, project leaders, and volunteers the opportunity to contribute to tech-for-good projects. The event brings together professionals and students who are eager to grow their network, sharpen their skills, and work towards solving the world’s challenges.

Quizzy.news, a web app in development aimed at combating misinformation, participated in the DemocracyLab 2024 Earthathon. This app offers a daily quiz to help users stay informed with reputable information. Emily Lange, the founder of Quizzy.news, discovered DemocracyLab while seeking to connect with online communities to advance her design career. As she became more involved with DemocracyLab’s network, she learned about the 2023 DemocracyLab Earthathon and decided to propose her project. Emily had already designed and user-tested Quizzy.news but needed front-end and back-end developers who shared the app’s mission and were eager to enhance their skills and experience.


“One of the most rewarding things about being a part of the Earthathon was being a part of a community that’s doing exciting things, especially being able to offer my own project as something for folks to participate with.”

Emily Lange, Project Owner of Quizzy.news

After the 2023 Earthathon, a volunteer collaborated with Emily to establish Quizzy.news’ GitHub presence and set up engineering guidelines. This volunteer also connected Emily with others who worked on Quizzy.news for several months, paving the way for additional contributors. During this year’s Earthathon, Emily and a team of engineers added a loading screen, designed a loading page, and implemented other essential engineering and design components for the app to run smoothly. They are currently in the final stages of refining the UI and plan to launch the app soon.

It was fun to be waiting to meet totally brand new volunteers who were eager to help and grow their experiences.I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a part of Earthathon. It helped me grow in totally unexpected ways, helped my project grow, and gave me and many other volunteers a very enriching experience in the intersection of technology and goodwill. Quizzy.news is forever grateful for the jumpstart DemocracyLab gave us!

Emily Lange, Project Owner of Quizzy.news

About DemocracyLab:

DemocracyLab is an open marketplace that connects tech-for-good projects with volunteers.

If you’re looking for an experiential learning opportunity to hone your skills or an avenue to create social impact by sharing your wisdom, explore the 200+ projects listed on our website.

If skilled talent is what you need to further your mission, register your organization on our platform to find volunteers.

Stay connected:

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our work, or join us as a monthly supporter to enable our mission!

Written by: Cornelius Smith

Last month, the University of Washington hosted a "Resilience Hackathon" with support from the National Science Foundation LEAP-HI project. Chuck Wolfe, one of the Hackathon participants, wrote an article for GeekWire detailing how this unique policy hackathon brought together state and local government organizations, students and researchers to co-develop testable "resilience pilot projects" that could help Seattle be better prepared for future disruptions. The project pitches addressed different aspects of urban resilience to be tested against a future earthquake, pandemic, excessive heat event, or massive airline flight grounding.

“Crises don’t allow time to invent responses from scratch. Cities need to be adaptable, and the most adaptable cities are those that have a deep reserve of policies and programs they can draw on to keep themselves vital when normal activities are disrupted.” -  Dr. Dan Abramson, Associate Professor at University of Washington Urban Design & Planning.

DemocracyLab played a crucial role in facilitating the event, in collaboration with University of Washington's Department of Urban Design and Planning. The platform hosted project pitches and relevant resources, and served as one of the recruitment channels for participants. Mark Frischmuth, DemocracyLab’s Executive Director and Founder, expressed his excitement about the event's potential, "This is in many ways the most exciting hackathon we’ve done, given the diversity of participating stakeholders who can make change. We think there's a lot of potential for collaboration between government officials, academic institutions, and community groups to produce innovative solutions to vexing public policy challenges."

If you're interested in exploring how your community can creatively engage stakeholders to catalyze change, please reach out to DemocracyLab for more information.

You can read the full article in GeekWire here.

About DemocracyLab:

DemocracyLab is an open marketplace that connects Tech-For-Good projects with volunteers.

If you’re looking for an experiential learning opportunity to hone your skills or an avenue to create social impact by sharing your wisdom, explore the 200+ projects listed on our website.

If skilled talent is what you need to further your mission, register your organization on our platform to find volunteers.

Stay connected:

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our work, or join us as a monthly supporter to enable our mission!

Model.earth was created to address environmental challenges through innovation by integrating existing business, industry and census data with environmental impact indicators. Through DemocracyLab’s collaborative space, Model.earth has been able to recruit volunteers skilled in machine learning, data analysis and data visualization using tools like Streamlit Python, Open WebUI, Observable Framework, Google Data Commons and the US EPA’s Input-Output visualizations.

Model.earth’s founder and lead software engineer Loren Heyns considers DemocracyLab to be an essential part of their outreach to volunteers.

“The project setup and recruitment on DemocracyLab is straightforward, allowing us to showcase our initiatives and attract skilled volunteers. The recruitment process involves posting project descriptions that promote our vision to attract like-minded programmers passionate about thinking globally and acting locally.”

“DemocracyLab’s impact on our project goes beyond volunteer recruitment. The platform facilitates meaningful connections, knowledge sharing and problem-solving within the open source code community. Their collaborative ecosystem has enabled us to expand our use of Machine Learning AI to help identify local opportunities where new technology and environmentally-focused economic development can reap the greatest returns.”

If you’d like to volunteer with the coding team at Model.Earth, apply here. The team has a broad range of projects matching every skill level.

About DemocracyLab:

DemocracyLab is an open marketplace that connects Tech-For-Good projects with volunteers.

If you’re looking for an experiential learning opportunity to hone your skills or an avenue to create social impact by sharing your wisdom, explore the 200+ projects listed on our website.

If skilled talent is what you need to further your mission, register your organization on our platform to find volunteers.

Stay connected:

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our work, or join us as a monthly supporter to enable our mission!

Written by: Cornelius Smith; Thank you for your feedback, Chloe Cooper and Loren Heyns

Inspired by Gitlab's famous Handbook, the Climate Tech Handbook is an open-source project that aspires to be the "Wikipedia of climate tech", providing resources to anyone using technology to address the climate crisis. The project's website currently features over 90 climate solutions across sectors such as electricity, transportation, agriculture, etc., and includes a comprehensive list of climate tech-focused job boards and Slack communities.

The Handbook officially launched in April 2023 as part of  “Earth-A-Thon”, a DemocracyLab hackathon, where a team of 5 volunteers launched version 1.0. Since then, the project has attracted 40+ volunteers across diverse functional areas, including UX, software development, and marketing, through DemocracyLab's online platform and boot camp partnerships. These volunteers redesigned the Handbook’s homepage, built features including a countdown clock and image cards for navigation, and designed a mini course for those new to Climate Tech.

"I don't think my project would be successful without DemocracyLab because it set the machinery in place to connect volunteers and my project. I don't have to pound the pavement trying to find people and can instead focus my energy on screening the candidates that come through the platform, knowing that they'll want to help. I appreciate that DemocracyLab gives volunteers an on-ramp to prove themselves and project owners the opportunity to easily recruit skilled talent so that matchmaking can turn into something that makes the world better."

A year hence, DemocracyLab continues to connect the project to a steady stream of volunteers.

"My personal philosophy is to learn by doing and to inspire others to do the same. Like DemocracyLab, the climate tech handbook is always willing to support those who want to build a portfolio while helping make the world a better place."

Jacob has partnered with the DemocracyLab community for years, starting with Hey Duwamish and Mapseed. When he’s not busy writing grants for climate tech organizations, he’s hacking on the Handbook. If you would like to volunteer with Jacob's amazing team, apply here.

About DemocracyLab:

DemocracyLab is an open marketplace that connects Tech-For-Good projects with volunteers.

If you’re looking for an experiential learning opportunity to hone your skills or an avenue to create social impact by sharing your wisdom, explore the 200+ projects listed on our website.

If skilled talent is what you need to further your mission, register your organization on our platform to find volunteers.

Stay connected:

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our work, or join us as a monthly supporter to enable our mission!

Written by: Aradhana G; Thank you for your feedback, Chloe C and Mark F.

In September 2022, Michael Hustedde, a professional violinist and former music teacher, graduated from Career Foundry’s User Experience Design boot camp, hoping to transition to product design. Unfortunately, as he started searching for full-time roles, he faced the barrier of employers constantly saying he needed more “on-the-job” experience.

When Michael discovered DemocracyLab through a friend’s LinkedIn profile, he realized that the platform offered him the perfect opportunity to gain real-world design experience and contribute to a worthy cause. While exploring the 50+ design projects across social impact sectors such as education, healthcare, climate, etc., Michael found a role with the DemocracyLab team itself and jumped at the opportunity to learn from the established designers and engineers on the team.

Over eight months, he volunteered part-time with the DemocracyLab Design team to design a project management tool for the organizations hosted on the platform. Throughout this period, Michael collaborated with multiple stakeholders, including other designers, engineers, and product managers, and received feedback on his work during weekly standups.

"I was decent at Figma when I joined the DemocracyLab team, but learning firsthand  how other designers used the tool totally elevated my skills. Exposure to a project management tool like Trello also gave me an edge during job interviews."

Michael’s experience designing a project management tool ultimately helped him land a full-time job at a wealth management platform.

“My DemocracyLab designs and subsequent case study were the perfect vehicles to showcase my abilities as a designer during job interviews. Working on this project gave me the incredibly necessary real-world experience needed to better understand the software development and design processes, collaborate cross-functionally, and design for real-world problems. My experience with DemocracyLab was IMMENSELY beneficial and it was the primary reason that I landed my first full-time product design job.”

Michael, thank you for enabling project owners and volunteers through your work at DemocracyLab. We wish you the best in all endeavors!

Fun Fact: Michael has played the violin for over 25 years and has performed internationally! You can learn more about him here.

About DemocracyLab:

DemocracyLab is an open marketplace that connects Tech-For-Good projects with volunteers. If you’re looking for an experiential learning opportunity to hone your skills or an avenue to create social impact by sharing your wisdom, explore the 200+ projects listed on our website. If creative and diligent talent like Michael is what you need to further your mission, register your organization on our platform to find volunteers.

Stay connected:

Sign up for our newsletter to learn more about our work, or join us as a monthly supporter to enable our mission!

Written by: Aradhana G; Thank you for your feedback, Chloe C, Firdaus F, David F and Mark F.

The Council Data Project was deployed to make Montana's state legislative session more transparent and accessible.

Even with the advancements in technology that have allowed ordinary people to stay up to date with national news, many citizens are still unaware of the changes that happen within their own community. The Council Data Project has been changing this with a creative and groundbreaking open source technology tool.

As an undergraduate student six years ago, Eva Maxfield Brown shared concerns about Seattle City Council decisions with her professor, Nick Weber. Eager for more information, Brown and Weber searched for recordings of City Council meetings, but they were often difficult to find. “We decided, let’s make city council meetings easier to follow”, Brown said. So they created The Council Data Project, which works by scraping videos from government websites, transcribing them, and making them searchable. This makes it possible for citizens to easily stay abreast of action in their city council.

Council Data Project now makes it possible for a person to enter a keyword into the search bar and be moved to any point in the meeting that talks about the keyword topic. Not only does this save time for the user, but the search tool allows for greater engagement between the government and its citizens. The software has proven so useful that it’s been adopted by nineteen cities across the country.

In Missoula, Montana; volunteers set up an instance of the Council Data Project to transcribe local city council meetings, as well as several congressional debates prior to the 2022 elections. These resources were deployed on the Open Montana website, a pilot program of DemocracyLab.

Building on this success, Open Montana volunteers decided to tackle the task of deploying an instance of CDP to transcribe meetings of the Montana State Legislature. This task differed in scale to other applications of CDP, because the Montana Legislature meets only every other year for four months, and in that brief time the legislature generated nearly 8,000 hours of video. This necessitated making changes to improve the efficiency of video ingestion to enhance performance and minimize costs.

The end result was the country’s first interface making it possible to search for a keyword across 8,000 hours of legislative proceedings. This functionality proved useful to citizens, journalists, activists, advocates, and businesses across Montana who had an interest in exercising their “Right to Know”, which is uniquely guaranteed by Montana’s state constitution.

Implementation of the project was sponsored by the Chambers of Commerce from Missoula, Helena, Big Sky, Kalispell, Great Falls, and by the state-wide Montana Chamber. Kim Latrielle, President/CEO of the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce said “We take our Right to Know seriously, and this tool made it much easier for citizens and businesses to understand what’s happening in the legislature and to advocate for their interest.”

The success of this pilot project is a testament to the power of civic technology, open source software, and cross-sector collaboration. It is our hope that programs like these can make governments across the country more accessible, accountable, and efficient, resulting in better public policy and improved quality of life.

The problems facing our planet have never felt more urgent. We need all brains on deck if we’re going to rise to address our global challenges. Code for All and DemocracyLab convened a multi-location tech-for-good hackathon on Earth Day to celebrate our planet and build enthusiasm for grassroots change-making. There were virtual events centered in Japan and Taiwan, and a hybrid event in Seattle. Here’s a sample of what participants had to say:

Every person I talk to has a hidden passion living in the corner of their mind. DemocracyLab gave me the courage and motivation to live that dream while helping others do the greatest good possible.
- Jacob Caggiano, Climate Tech Handbook, Seattle

The most interesting thing I learned during the event was how valuable precise attention to a bespoke website configuration is necessary to achieve optimal outcomes. Our volunteers worked on visualizing and acquiring metadata for artifacts in a 1.9 million artifact collection we had. I really enjoyed all the fantastic, informed, effective volunteers who joined! DemocracyLab did an outstanding job of pulling together competent and engaged volunteers who were ready to deliver real value. Thank you!
- Jamie Joyce, Visualizing Climate Collections, San Francisco

I always enjoy introducing people from different walks of life to our app and hearing their feedback. Our hackathons always start with an invitation to get outside - and try surveying a tree with iSeaTree. Since this was an Earth Day event - this was a particularly meaningful experience for our volunteers. The most interesting thing I learned during the event was the new projects that are kicking off at DemocracyLab! As a parent - and supporter of youth interests - it was really encouraging to see so many new projects aimed at improving our children's futures! I was really impressed by the mission and dedication of 'No School Violence' and 'The Climate Tech Handbook'!
- Arielle Simmons-Steffen, iSeaTree, Illinois

I enjoyed participating in this hackathon: I learned new things, and I got to spend the day with an awesome, motivated team. The project I worked on already has environmental awareness and educational impact. My contribution will possibly have an impact on future decision-making, as we provided valuable feedback to the project lead. I most enjoyed listening to the multiple ideas/projects that were presented.
- Carla Benavides, iSeaTree volunteer,  Seattle

On Earth Day I participated in DemocracyLab's Earth-A-Thon, an event focused on helping tech-for-good projects make progress toward their long-term goals. After 7+ hours of Earth Day 'hacking', my teammates and I made significant contributions to a mobile app called 'iSeaTree'. 'iSeaTree' is an app that was founded by the 'TreeMama.org' - a non-profit website dedicated to youth education, community science, and environmental conservation.
- Oyinade Ademodi, iSeaTree volunteer, New York City

I was a project leader for Orcasound, and we worked on a project that geotag-labeled whale ecotypes in the Salish Sea. Before, there wasn't a way to differentiate the points on the map as different ecotypes of whales, but the volunteer dev did an amazing job of indicating what ecotype of whale was geotagged by using different icons. It was a step in the right direction as we look to provide more detailed data visually in a map interface.
- Brendan Thatcher, Orcasound, Seattle

One of the highlights of the hackathon was being able to decide on our tech stack and internal structuring, which allowed us to work more efficiently as a team. I was also responsible for assigning tasks to the other developers, which was a great opportunity to practice my leadership and communication skills.
- Matthew Seidel, Tech2Live volunteer, Chicago

I was very excited to finally work with a team and see what I could do given a short period of time.This was my first time using NextJS and at first I felt intimidated but quickly realized that this is exactly what I need. An environment with supportive people that will push me and help me grow.
- Lucian Brooks, Tech2Live volunteer, Seattle

Without the Earthathon, I wouldn't have been able to get this project going! - Emily Lange, Quizzy News, Brooklyn, NY

It was an honor to be invited and to participate in this amazing event. We hope we can collaborate again in the near future!
- Saya Kubota, Code for Japan, Tokyo

This project aims to make environmental problems your own personal problems by making an app that calculates the carbon footprint produced by your own personal lifestyle.
- Kota Yatagai - Code for Japan

I worked on the project Know Your Parliament, a project from Fira Tiyasning Tri Utari, Program Director at Sikola Mombine Foundation. I think it'll be a great case of a civic tech project that helps citizens to care more about their MPs. I enjoyed all the brilliant ideas and all the exchanges, as well as networking with the other participants.
- Weichen, Open Culture Foundation, Taiwan

What Next?

Sign up for our newsletter to hear about our future events, or join us as a monthly supporter to keep the tech-for-good goodness flowing!

Hackathons bring people together for a short period of time to work collaboratively on technology projects. They’ve been a part of DemocracyLab’s culture since our launch in 2018. At Hacky New Year 2023 we explored new partnerships and models of collaboration to convene what we believe was the world’s first public, hybrid, multi-location, tech-for-good hackathon.

Connecting across continents and cultures

To kick off 2023, DemocracyLab built on last year’s collaborations with Code for All and Code for America to convene our 5th annual Hacky New Year event. Code for All connected us to the teams at Code for Japan and Code for Africa. Together, this cohort of collaborators convened a trio of hybrid hackathons in Tokyo, Lagos and Seattle. These events engaged 100+ volunteers to contribute in-person and online to more than 20 tech-for-good projects spanning three continents and cultures. It was a fun and collaborative experience for all, and a welcome return to real-life interaction after more than two years of virtual events due to Covid-19.

Tokyo

On Saturday, January 28th, Hacky New Year got started in downtown Tokyo, where participants gathered at the Kambin Hub to work on five tech-for-good projects. This was Code for Japan’s first in-person gathering since the easing of Covid restrictions, and participants welcomed the chance to connect in real life. One participant, Mr. Yoshizawa, said “I was able to directly feel the atmosphere and speed of real communication that is unique to face-to-face interaction, which is different from online. I was inspired by the other participants, so I feel strongly that I would like to participate again.”

The event was conducted in Japanese, and remote participants joined from Okayama and Hokkaido. Projects ranged from Hackdays, an effort to use Web3 technologies to help civic technologists account for the value they create, to an anti-poverty training platform, and a tool to visualize animal shelter locations.

Seattle

It’s been nearly five years since DemocracyLab launched its open source platform connecting tech-for-good projects and skilled volunteers at the 2018 National Day of Civic Hacking in Seattle. It felt great to be back among friends at the Reactor on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond. Seattle has been slow to return to pre-pandemic normal, and more than half of attendees opted to participate virtually. Ten projects and approximately sixty volunteers contributed their talents, tackling everything from homelessness and hunger to sidewalk accessibility and conviction vacation. Teams came from the Seattle area, as well as from Georgia, Arizona, California and Hawaii. Teams were able to effectively blend in-person and online participation to make significant progress in a collaborative format.

Lagos

On Saturday, February 11th, the team at Code for Africa worked with Charter Project Africa to convene teams to combat disinformation in Nigeria. Teams gathered in person at the Impact Hub in Lagos with additional participants from elsewhere in Nigeria and around the world. Participants hacked in a competitive format, working to build tools that address the hackathon’s problem statement: “Nigeria’s elections are being targeted by online extremists, who are trying to polarize and radicalize voters. This ranges from hate speech and incitement to coordinated disinformation or conspiracy claims.”

Six projects participated in the event, each with their own approach to combatting disinformation and strengthening Nigeria’s democracy. Projects were subjected to vigorous, analytical and direct questioning from the event’s judges, characteristic of Nigerian culture. The feedback was useful to all participating projects, helping them refine their approaches and accelerate their development.

The top two teams were awarded prizes. 1st place awarded to ChatVE, an AI powered chatbot that can be integrated into WhatsApp or other platforms as a virtual assistant to educate voters and factcheck online content. 2nd place given to TRULLY.AFRICA, a platform that will allow users to search for information, share links to have their validity assessed, and post content to have it fact-checked.

A successful experiment and future iteration

Things rarely work perfectly the first time they’re attempted, and this event was no exception. Coordinating schedules, venues, technology, and expectations across different continents and cultures proved to be challenging, fun, and rewarding. Though there is much to improve upon, the joy, empowerment, learning, and sense of accomplishment was evident on participants' faces at every location. We’re proud to have been able to work with such excellent partners around the world, and we're looking forward to the next opportunity to explore the boundaries of civic collaboration at Earth-a-thon 2023 on April 22nd!

Many citizens are not in the know of the happenings within their own community. This could be a lack of resources, public transport, or even time. The Council Data Project was deployed in Missoula, Montana to provide a new and innovative way to change this and allows for more accessible civic engagement.

In about 20 hours, Smai Fullerton used pre-existing technology to install an instance of  the Council Data Project for the city of Missoula, Montana. She did this through the encouragement and backing of Open Montana, a new program of DemocracyLab. The Council Data Project transcribes and digitizes city council meetings. In addition it allows individuals to search key terms from the transcript of the meeting themselves so they can find the information that has the most impact on them.

This project allows for more citizen engagement because citizens can stay informed whether people are able to go to the city council meeting or not. When asked the question, “What is the easiest way to get this project all across the country?”,  Smai Fullerton said we need a great story, more immediate use cases, and the ability to provide examples of its utility.

This technology can also be developed further to be more user friendly and allow for a greater impact. The use of voice recognition to be able to search for specific city council members would be a useful addition so citizens are able to see specific opinions from their community leaders. Some other useful additions to the Council Data Project are: seeing how many times people are interrupted or interrupt someone, a minute count of how much time a member of the city council was speaking, and ability to search for keywords/phrases. The latter of these potential improvements could be the most useful. Vernacular used in a city council meeting versus the way individuals talk to each other and various professional settings are vastly different. Therefore, allowing for a related word search would likely help improve the accessibility for individuals.

Key information to highlight regarding the Council Data Project is its relation with Open Montana which is the maintainer for the Missoula Council Data Project. Though this technology is in more locations than Missoula it is also the same basic infrastructure. This means the “data processing pipelines, the web frontend, and data storage systems all share the same infrastructure specification.”

When discussing the features Council Data Project is planning on creating and implementing, Eva Brown had the following to say: “We have a lot of features in development right now. A whole page just for tracking legislation, an audio-based speaker classification model for annotated speaker names in the produced transcripts, a notifications feature that would work a bit like Google Search Alerts (i.e. "a meeting from June 7 discussed 'missing middle housing'"), and some more that are just getting started.”

All these improvements, though important, are more likely to be seen as part of a long-term plan for this technology and the City of Missoula. The technology of the Council Data Project is very important and with time we expect to see more citizen engagement and will be able to gain personal testimony on how this technology has been useful, and through this, be able to implement it in other cities around the country.

Students, faculty, and tech professionals from across the United States recently got together to collaborate on innovative tech-for-good projects as part of A Better Tech-a-thon.

The hands-on virtual event took place on October 14th and 15th, 2021, and was presented by DemocracyLab, Code for America, and New York University, with sponsorship from Amazon.

It was part of the A Better Tech Public Interest Technology Convention and Career Fair —  the first event of its kind in the US to bring together talented students, leading researchers, organizations, and companies passionate about serving public interest through responsible and accountable tech.  The event was convened by New York University (NYU), with support from New America’s Public Interest Technology University Network.

The goal of A Better Tech-a-thon was to provide participants an opportunity to hone their skills while networking and making valuable contributions to numerous tech-for-good projects.  Projects were sourced from the Code for America Brigade Network and DemocracyLab and ranged in missions from educating children about the trees around them, to making it easier to locate food donation sites.

Hana Schank, co-director of the Public Interest Technology program at New America and author of Power to the Public, said that looking at the participating projects was like “taking a spin through people’s hopes and dreams for a better world.”

“The world that you are all envisioning is a beautiful place where technology is used intelligently and thoughtfully to connect people instead of dividing them; to empower people, especially those who have been historically marginalized; and to make not only government, but society work better and more effectively, ”Schank added.

Matt Statler, the Richman Family Director of Business Ethics and Social Impact Programming at NYU Stern said about the hackathon: “To see and hear all of these examples of incredible work and interesting challenges people have selected, public interest challenges that people are bringing technology to bear on, and a clearly vibrant and ongoing network for really great collaborations across geographies and disciplines… and the knowledge of civic infrastructure, government, and political science is really, really super.”

Mona Sloane, Director of the This is Not a Drill (TINAD) program and Future Imagination Collaboratory (FIC) Fellow at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts, applauded the young talented participants for choosing to get involved in public interest technology careers.

“I firmly believe in putting things on the road and translation work between disciplines, between the public, policymakers, technologists, and so on,” said Sloane.

She added, “I really do think that the hackathon work that has happened as part of this event, as well as the other hackathons run by DemocracyLab, are really important in practicing that and getting us to a place where we more routinely can do that work.”

Participating universities included City University of New York; Columbia University; New York University; Pepperdine University; Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Washington.

Collaborating on public interest projects

The exciting two-day hackathon virtually brought together coders, designers, researchers, project managers, subject matter experts, and test users from different time zones to work on 17 unique projects.

For students, the event provided a great opportunity to sharpen their skills, extend their networks, and begin long-term relationships as project contributors.

More experienced tech professionals were also able to further their passions by helping tech-for-good projects make incremental progress toward their long-term goals, as well as work with the next generation of talent.

The participating projects were:

1. 59Boards — Aims to update or rebuild New York City’s system of 59 community board districts to allow the public to better get involved with local politics.
2. Accessibility Ratings — A crowd-sourced application for accessibility ratings that will help users and organizations adopt and use more accessible applications.
3. Banana App — A location-based food donation app system that connects food donors and low-income clients.
4. Council Data Project — An entirely free and open application that makes it easier to follow one’s local municipality’s council action.
5. EnCiv — "A portal for productive democracy online, using processes derived from in-person dialog & deliberation, because social media is like a mob!
6. Full Disclosure Project — Aims to disrupt the culture of secrecy that systematically and pervasively shields law enforcement misconduct.”
7. iSeaTree — A game-play app that helps kids learn, identify, and record trees in the U.S. and Canada and works with US Forest Service’s iTree CO2 calculator.
8. Neighborhood.org — Model.earth Lifecycle Tools for Schools and Communities using US EPA widgets.
9. OutreachApp — An app that streamlines communication between outreach groups providing services and resources to the unsheltered community
10. P4H — An app that empowers education systems in developing countries by facilitating collaboration and certifications for teachers and P4h staff.
11. Pipeline — Fighting unemployment & streamlining the job search by offering a centralized application tracking system and recruiting insights.
12. Proof of Humanity — Many immigrants are undocumented and don't get social services. BrightID approaches this issue with a "Proof-of humanity" tech we'll test.
13. Saving Political Sites — Local political candidate websites disappear post-elections -- this project collects and archives those websites to make them accessible.
14. Smart City Planning — OSM2GMNS aims to enable rapid creation of routable multimodal networks and demand in General Modeling Network Specification.
15. Transpare-NC — Starting with campaign finance data, TRANSPARE-NC plans to offer unprecedented access and insight into North Carolina politics.
16. Vot-ER — An organization at the crossroads of health and democracy that helps patients register to vote in healthcare settings.
17. Yellow Box Disaster Relief — Rapid and local coms and supply chain app for volunteers.

Get involved

Since launching its open-source platform in 2018, DemocracyLab has convened more than 20 tech-for-good hackathons aimed at supporting public interest technology.

The hackathons have allowed projects to execute a narrow scope of work and make incremental progress towards their long term goals, and volunteers to begin long-term relationships with projects that match their skills and interests while upskilling and advancing their careers.

For more information on how you can participate in DemocracyLab’s next tech-for-good event, please visit our events page.

For a list of ongoing volunteer opportunities, make sure to check out DemocracyLab’s project listings.

And if you're a company representative seeking innovative ways to increase employee enthusiasm and retention, take a look at our corporate engagement page.

Searching for a job or navigating a career change can feel ambiguous and overwhelming. That’s why the DemocracyLab marketing team, in partnership with Chocolate Milk Diplomacy has created a 50-minute course to help make this process engaging, with clear and actionable steps. It will help you get started and point you to the resources you need to navigate your career transition.

ABOUT THE COURSE CREATORS

This course was created from the “Career Advancement Workshop” that was organized in partnership with DemocracyLab and led by Alex Berry of Chocolate Milk Diplomacy, an organization that provides career coaching, navigation, and development resources to marginalized and underrepresented communities.

COURSE SUMMARY

Here’s a quick summary of each of the four modules in the course.

Module 1 - CMD believes that storytelling is at the heart of career development. The first module introduces CMD’s Five Step Career Transition Process and walks you through how to identify your own personal career story.

Module 2 - A discussion of why career transitions are often so painful. In this module Berry offers some insights about how to move past some of the fears and confusion that can keep us from making progress.

Module 3 - Progress can be tough if you don't have a goal in mind. The third module focuses on how to identify where you want to go in your career. Berry walks through three categories to consider when deciding on a career that will fit holistically into your life.

Module 4 - Now that you have your career story and your career path, Berry gets into the details of how to identify and create action plans for filling in the gaps in your resume.

MORE RESOURCES

This four-part course will give you a great kickstart to your making your career advancement or career transition goals a reality. For more resources check out the media library on the Chocolate Milk Diplomacy website. Here you'll find workshops, podcasts, one-on-one consulting, and self-led workbooks.

And consider volunteering with DemocracyLab to do good while building your resume and your network. Check out our projects page to find something that interests you today.  

Gun violence in schools is a public health issue affected almost 200,000 students firsthand between the 1999 shooting in Columbine, Colorado and 2018. The following year in 2019, there was an average of one school shooting every school week. But despite the frequency of such tragedies, nothing was done at scale to analyze data from the events to identify patterns and help prevent further catastrophe.

Seeing the forest through the trees

Professor and technology advocate Paul Privateer believes that technology is an intricate part of our social consciousness. In under a year, the world developed and distributed a COVID-19 vaccine, and people immediately went to work building aggregate search tools that allow anyone to find nearby doses. Why, wonders Professor Privateer, do we as a society not have the same response to school violence? With the right resources, parents or teachers could monitor behavioral changes in an individual, correlate them the location and demographics of a school, and see in an instant whether those data predict violent actions. With enough time to intervene, we could potentially prevent more tragedies from happening.

An idea born of tragedy

Throughout his career Paul Privateer has been a professor of technological sciences and digital culture at San Jose State, Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, and MIT. The idea for the Athena Project was born during his tenure at Arizona State University, after two graduate students committed suicide within a few months of each other. As Paul grieved the loss of these young people along with his community, he asked his colleagues to brainstorm ways that they could use technology to understand and analyze the psychological and social factors of violence towards oneself or others. Unable to get federal funding, they decided to proceed on their own. From this starting point Professor Privateer founded his Seattle-based non-profit NoSchoolViolence.org in 2017.

The Athena Project

The Athena project under the NoSchoolViolence umbrella is developing a national school violence database that’s searchable via a user-friendly app. Paul found that data about incidents of school violence were recorded in over 40 separate, local systems in narrative “trend reports.” Using powerful data science software, the team has been able to pull reports from the disparate sites housing the information, run comparative analyses to identify common data points, and organize that data into tables.

The long term goal of this project is to provide the Athena app as a resource for parents, school faculty and administrations, researchers, health professionals, state education departments, and state and federal agencies. The app will help them understand which combinations of behaviors and traits correlate to violence, and will offer tested and effective intervention methods. Through this analysis users will be able to build and sustain successful violence prevention programs.

Current state and next steps

Paul has attended 10 DemocracyLab hack-a-thons where he connected with volunteers skilled in wireframe design, search, machine learning, and natural language processing. At each event, Paul and the volunteers worked to advance the quality of the project’s dataset and the efficiency of its search models. By participating in these events Paul has discovered what improvements will benefit the project most and moved the Athena project forward iteratively. Once the backend data is fully converted, Paul will focus on refining the app's search models.

Get Involved

Currently, this project is still in the development phase, and there are lots of ways to get involved. If you’re a designer, data savvy, or specialize in machine learning, and you want to help create the first national school violence database and search tool this is a great project for you.

The Athena project is looking for volunteers with the following skills:

• Machine learning experience
• Working knowledge of search engines
• Natural language processing
• Data Conversion for structured queries

If you're not yet registered, registering with DemocracyLab is free and easy.

DemocracyLab is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with a mission to empower people who use technology to advance the public good. We are headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA.

On July 10, 2021, DemocracyLab collaborated with Code for America Brigade Network for its Summer Create-a-thon. Ten projects came together with over 60 volunteers to make progress building tech-for-good. There was a diverse mix of causes that benefited, including environmental conservation, civic infrastructure, education, and social services. Each project lead set progress goals and worked with its volunteers to advance their technologies.

Who participated

Volunteers joined in from around the world to contribute their talents and skills to help our participating projects make critical developments. Both first-time volunteers and veterans were drawn by the opportunity to practice or learn new skills in coding, design, research, and project management while addressing concrete civic issues.

By the end of the day our participants felt like they’d made substantial progress toward the goals they’d set, and many volunteers intended to continue contributing to the project they’d worked with that day.

What was accomplished

Project leads came with a variety of tasks and goals. Many projects worked on building new prototypes and developing or expanding new versions of apps, websites, and tools. Volunteers had the opportunity to work in UX design, data analysis, content development, and both frontend and backend development. Some key achievements included building app prototypes, developing or expanding new versions of apps, website development, and onboarding new team members.

Here’s a list of the projects:

1. A/B Street–software that runs traffic simulations to find ways to make cities less reliant on cars–worked on drafting new blog posts for recent proposals for local road changes.
2. Accessibility Ratings–a crowdsourced app that helps users ensure they adopt accessible applications–worked on building prototypes for some newly completed designs using search services and parsing metadata in app stores.
3. CouncilDataProject–an app providing users a way to follow local municipality council activities–worked to expand their coverage to new cities for version 3 launch, including backend web scraping and frontend UX design.
4. EnCiv (Unpoll)–software crowdsourcing political debate questions–worked to create the React components for their Figma prototype.
5. iSeaTree–a citizen science game-play app that lets users ID trees while contributing to the database–worked on selecting new data for their new CO2 and Hydrologics calculator feature. Volunteers reviewed over 300 tree images and tested the new version of the iSeaTree platform.
6. Nonprofit Exchange Hub–an app that helps nonprofits locate and exchange info and goods–made progress in the development of their prototype while refining wireframes for the next batch of development.
7. Orcasound–a website where citizen scientists can study audio recordings of Orcas and help to conserve them–developed a prototype app replicating the website experience.
8. Project Lockdown–an interactive platform providing an overview of the state of human and digital rights around the world–continued development on the MAP and API 2.0 versions, parsing the database and building new API models.
9. ShelterApp–a program that connects outreach workers to homeless encampments and offers real-time supply inventory tracking–worked on designing and developing a new Outreach Tracker app.
10. Turn the Bus–an app providing educational resources to high school students in underdeveloped parts of India–designed prototypes of a flashcard-style learning workflow, building a backend question database and moving the project closer to their Android launch.

What did our participants think?

Volunteering at a DemocracyLab event offers an opportunity to contribute to areas of interest and provides great career-building experiences. All participants found a project with a mission that they're passionate about; both volunteers and project leaders enjoyed the event and found it rewarding. Volunteers had the opportunity to learn by doing while contributing to tech-for-good projects impacting real issues they care about. Project leads saw tangible development and moved their technologies forward towards longer-term goals.

Survey results:

• 85% strongly agreed the experience was excellent
• 70% strongly agreed the quality of projects was excellent
• 70% strongly agreed they were satisfied with their team’s output at the end
• 85% strongly agreed they intend to continue working on the project
• 70% said they gained new experience that will benefit them

Learn more about getting involved

For more information about how you can participate in our next tech-for-good event please visit our events page.

To explore our list of projects with ongoing volunteer opportunities check out our website.

DemocracyLab is a volunteer-based 501(c)3 non-profit organization headquartered in Seattle, WA.