2019 Challenge Grant Awards

ConCensus is committed to strategically using data to educate, empower, and mobilize Americans to exercise their right to vote and their right to be well represented in our governing bodies, regardless of their socioeconomic, race, gender, or ideological backgrounds. This project will layer data in an accessible and socially-conscious way to deepen our understanding at the precinct level. It will synthesize data into an interactive civic engagement tool, in the form of a map, to empower the voter to better assess their changing environments and their right to democratic representation, which is essential for demanding targeted public policies that benefit historically underrepresented clusters of our society. From grassroots organizers, to policy makers, political analysts, and social scientist alike, we want to leverage data in a user-friendly way, to mirror the changing nature of our country and prompt action.

Students: Andrés Chong-Qui Torres, Jewel Valentine Conrad, Olivia Camille Haas, Aliya Bhatia

Law of the Land seeks to foster legal-literacy among people by empowering them with intelligible and timely information on relevant laws in a region. With the objective of making dense legislation more accessible, comprehensible and available to citizens, Law of the Land will be proactive and interactive mobile based platform enabling legal and procedural awareness among the users.

Students: Akshara Baru, Urmi Ramchandani, Vasanth Ram, Raghuveer Dinavahi, Soura Sarkar

Morayo provides an open technology platform that provides universal identity and financial resources for refugees. It provides basic identity information, financial profiling tools, business development tools, banking services, investment options and insurance resources, through an easy to use application that can be accessed using a mobile phone or the web. Our idea brings together the fight for refugee rights with business development tools in an interactive, easy to use to platform that incorporates API technology to provide refugee business with the resources and tools needed to run a sustainable business.

Students: Theotis Sharpe, Devina Srivastava, Alexander Dow Febres-Cordero, Shamira Lukomwa, Ashalyn P. Hardy

BTM Solutions is the economic gamechanger of sustainable mobility. Through a digital service, BTM faces the infrastructure limitation of energy supply by leveraging the use of electric vehicle (EV) batteries. BTM provides a new reliability element that reduces energy grid stress, and also, it offers an economic incentive to EV owners. We combine technology, business, and policy to deliver a service that will revolutionize the energy market.

Students: Lara Younes, Camilo Poppe de Figuei  Muñoz, Srujan Routhu, Gabriel Guggisberg

ILAW is a one-stop solution for youth living in urban slums in Manila to find the pathway that best fits their needs towards better livelihoods. Through web and mobile-based applications, youth can access curated internship and job opportunities, develop skills that are in demand, or explore a new venture. By bridging the information gap, ILAW will be able to add both social and economic value to the lives of urban youth staying in slums.

Students: Fernando Armendaris Puente, Natasha Goel, Jimena Vallejos

Project Peach is a non-profit initiative that aims to establish an online platform to rate domestic work employment agencies in Hong Kong, so as to facilitate communication between migrant domestic workers who seek to renew contracts or locate new employers. Through this platform, we hope to provide assistance to foreign domestic workers in Hong Kong in terms of (1) identification of suitable employment agencies and (2) promotion of information exchange about agencies amongst domestic workers. Ultimately, we hope that this initiative would be a positive step forward in addressing the “lemon market problem” and resolving the problem of labor exploitation of migrant domestic workers.

Students: Ryosuke Takemura,  Pricilla Tay, Sarah AlZaabi

SVB Intest aims to create a decentralized investment Platform as a Service (PaaS) utilizing digital tokens structured as bonds or other fixed income investment instruments to connect socio-environmentally conscious investors with like minded investment projects.

Students: Harry (Shichao) Hou, Armando Hechavarria, Dongxin (Kevin) Yang, Mingzhao (Rick) Zhu, Hironobu Mita

Tan(sun)ia aims to build, promote and distribute small-scale Solar-Home-System in off-grid, rural Tanzania. Portable, solar-powered batteries transform sunlight into energy to power cell phones, household lights, televisions, and other small household appliances. Through overlaying geographic data of energy demand, smartphone and mobile finance access, Tan(sun)nia will locate customers with both the highest need and highest potential for conversion, and solve three critical pain points of the industry: customer acquisition, smartphone access, and transaction costs.

Students: Jingxin (Cindy) Zhang, Brice Lee, Xinli Guo, Ryan Ballard, Samir Jagdish

TIE is an online educational platform and app that provides didactic material aligned to the Peruvian school curriculum. It is oriented to students who require reinforcement or seek advanced levels of learning. Additionally, it will serve to connect parents and teachers, so that they can achieve common learning goals for students. TIE seeks to reduce the Peruvian educational gap in primary and secondary school, which has almost a 3-year delay in contrast to the average for OECD countries.

Students: Luigi Burtron Calderon, Lizbeth Tinoco Esquivel, Fatima Uriarte Caceres