{"id":4044,"date":"2019-05-22T21:36:42","date_gmt":"2019-05-23T01:36:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/?p=4044"},"modified":"2019-05-22T21:36:42","modified_gmt":"2019-05-23T01:36:42","slug":"digital-champions-for-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/?p=4044","title":{"rendered":"Digital Champions for Haiti"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Digital Champions for Hait<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>By Hugh Locke and Atlanta McIlwraith<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>SPECIAL To H-O \u2014 Five Columbia University students who hail from China, India, South Korea and Thailand deserve the designation \u201cdigital champions\u201d for designing a revolutionary new app to help members of Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) in Haiti, and eventually other parts of the world. What makes this app so unique is that it is designed to help small-scale family farmers become more productive at the same time as measuring the precise impact of each farmer\u2019s crops on increasing food security, improving the status of women, and combatting climate change.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were honored to have a chance to help improve the lives of smallholders in Haiti,\u201d said Jimmy Lee, who is graduating with a Master\u2019s degree in Public Administration, \u201cand we welcomed the challenge to create something innovative and impactful for SFA. The result, we believe, is quite amazing and we\u2019re proud to have been part of this initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The students took part in this project through Columbia University\u2019s Capstone Workshop in which graduate students are required to provide a real world consulting service on which they are graded before earning their degrees. The \u201cclient\u201d in this case was the <strong>Smallholder Farmers&rsquo; Alliance,<\/strong> which has partnered with the global outdoor Brand <strong>Timberland<\/strong> to reintroduce commercial cotton to Haiti after a 30-year absence. The first crop being measured is organic cotton, but the app, which began to take shape with last year\u2019s team of Columbia Capstone students, is ultimately designed to track and measure any crop that farmers grow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have now field-tested a beta version of the app with 38 of our farmer members,\u201dexplained Timot\u00e9 Georges, Executive Director of the SFA, \u201cand we will continue to refine and test it. While not yet in its final form, it is clear this is a breakthrough innovation for agricultural data management in Haiti.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While the final design won\u2019t be completed until next year, the data gathered using the app will feed in???? Into a digital dashboard that is currently being tested. This dashboard will give precise and real-time information on how individual smallholders and their families are benefiting from any given crop. It will also track the impact of that crop on food security, women\u2019s empowerment and contribution to climate change for any combination from a single crop in one field to thousands of farmers growing that crop and spread out around Haiti.<\/p>\n<p>The next step in the design process is to integrate the \u201ctree currency\u201d model used by the SFA. \u201cIn our system, farmers plant trees to earn credits they cash in for seed, tools and agricultural training to improve their yields and income,\u201d said Georges, \u201cand we are going to integrate that tree currency concept into the new app so we can track the connection between growing crops and combatting climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>SFA and Timberland are also making sure that the app is ready to incorporate block chain technology, provided block chain remains the gold standard for building trust in the information that is collected using the app.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany in my generation want more information in order to make informed purchases,\u201d said Numwa Srimontha, another of the capstone students, who added, \u201cAnd this app can potentially help consumers of cotton or food items from Haiti know exactly what the impact of a given item is.\u201d She ventured to say. \u201cMaybe the best way to describe it is as a kind of \u2018radical transparency\u2019 that will let consumers be part of changing the world for the better.\u201d Good news, indeed, to originate from Haiti that will be a guinea pig for a technological breakthrough !<\/p>\n<p>Hugh Locke is President of the Smallholder Farmers&rsquo; Alliance in Haiti. Atlanta McIlwraith is Senior Manager, Community Engagement &amp; Communications for Timberland.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>cet article est publi\u00e9 par l&rsquo;hebdomadaire Ha\u00efti-Observateur No. 21, \u00e9dition du 22 mai 2019 et se trouve en <strong>P. 14<\/strong> \u00e0 :\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/H-O-22-mai-2019.pdf\">http:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/H-O-22-mai-2019.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Digital Champions for Hait By Hugh Locke and Atlanta McIlwraith SPECIAL To H-O \u2014 Five Columbia University students who hail from China, India, South Korea and Thailand deserve the designation \u201cdigital champions\u201d for designing a revolutionary new app to help&#8230; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,25,51],"tags":[200,407,536,876,1088,1145,2165,2277,2278,2422],"class_list":["post-4044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglais","category-haiti","category-usa","tag-atlanta-mcllwraith","tag-capstone","tag-columbia","tag-farmes","tag-haiti-observateur","tag-hugh-locke","tag-sfa","tag-timberland","tag-timote-georges","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}