Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University

Between September 2006 and June 2007, kiwanja.net worked with the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University as a Collaboration Fellow, helping fourteen other Fellows develop their projects.

These projects covered a wide range of geographical and technical areas, and included:

Hernan Carvajal (Columbia)
Women’s World Banking Project
Hernan’s project will employ a needs-based approach to design, develop and deploy a simple system to allow micro-entrepreneurs to register their business transactions, generate reports and communicate directly with micro-finance institutions.

Shashank Garg (India)
Mobile, Integrated Disease Surveillance System
MIDS will utilize a mobile device to collect and transmit data to a server where experts can identify trends and make informed decisions. Garg is an award winning innovator – he won India’s prestigious Dewang Mehta Award for being one of the seven co-developers of the Simputer.

Marvin Hall (Jamaica)
Robotics Stimul-I
Robotics competitions have been used to improve the math, science, and creative thinking skills of youth in the US for more than a decade. Marvin uses this technique to capture the imagination of at-risk youth in inner cities in small, developing countries.

Edgardo Herbosa (Philippines)
E-Commerce for Farmers Program
b2bpricenow.com is “the Official e-marketplace of the Philippines for Agriculture and Fisheries Sector”. It provides both content – free commodity pricing information to all members of the agricultural supply chain – and connectivity – within the co-operative centres.

John Kuner (USA)
Project VIEW
Project VIEW partners youth advocates and journalists with technology companies, creating opportunities for youth education in technology, mass communications and journalism. Youth advocates will digitally document their communities and lives, for publication on the web.

Adam Tolney (Romania)
Youth Financial Literacy
Y-Fi (Youth Financial Literacy) aims to communicate the basics of personal financial management to youth in marginal areas via the use of fun, interactive, multi-player, multiple-turn simulation games delivered on mobile devices.

Fabiana Valente (Brazil)
Digital Inclusion Center Sustainability Project
The Digital Inclusion Center Sustainability Project will broaden the financial support given to existing Digital Centers that bridge the digital divide for thousands of poor Brazilians, adding social entrepreneurship to the current non-profit funding model.

Steve Vosloo (South Africa)
The Digital Hero Book Project
A hero book is a low-cost, simple and effective form of psychosocial support where a child is the author, illustrator, main character (hero) and editor of a paper-based book designed to help them deal with life’s challenges. Steve’s project will introduce ICTs into the hero book-making process


About the Digital Vision Program

The Digital Vision Program (DVP) was a Stanford centre for social entrepreneurship that applied the principles of high-tech innovation to create product and service concepts that empower communities worldwide.

Each year the DVP hosted an elite group of seasoned professionals – DVP Fellows – from around the world at Stanford. These Fellows worked on interdisciplinary projects that utilised digital technologies to address real needs in underserved communities. DVP Fellows brought a unique understanding of the realities of a particular emerging market or sector to the Program. During their nine-months on campus they collaborated with Stanford faculty and students, leading firms, non-profit organisations and governments to translate their market insights into culturally relevant and sustainable solutions.

Since its inception in 2001, Stanford has hosted 54 DVP Fellows who worked on forty projects in twenty countries. More than 50% of DVP projects were sustained after the Fellowship period, at least 25% of DVP projects have received significant funding and three have received more than one million dollars in funding. Several DVP projects have received international recognition and awards including the Stockholm Challenge, the Development Marketplace Award, Ashoka Fellowships and the Tech Museum’s Awards for Technology for Humanity (Tech Laureate).

Sadly, the Reuters Digital Vision Program ended in 2007 and the official website is no longer available.