Resource

VIDEO

Resource

VIDEO

Jake Porway: Want to Save the World? There's an App for That

Jake Porway: Want to Save the World? There's an App for That

National Geographic Emerging Explorer Jake Porway is connecting nonprofits with data scientists eager to use their skills with numbers and stats to help solve community and environmental problems.

Grades

5 - 12+

Subjects

Arts and Music, Social Studies

Program
NG Live

This video was filmed on Wednesday, June 13th at the 2012 National Geographic Explorers Symposium at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C., United States.


Introduction
National Geographic Emerging Explorer Jake Porway is a matchmaker. He sees social change organizations working hard to make the world a better place, collecting mountains of data, but lacking skills and resources to understand and use that wealth of information to advance their mission. He sees data scientists with amazing skills and cutting-edge tools eager to use their talent to accomplish something meaningful yet cut off from channels that would allow them to do so. He sees governments ready to make unprecedented amounts of data open and available but disconnected from people who need it. For Porway, it's a match waiting to happen and exactly why he founded DataKind (formerly Data Without Borders.)


Outline

  • From paper road atlases to the digital world: a data revolution (start-02:35 min.)
  • The potential: solving real problems instead of making first-world lives more comfortable (02:35-03:27 min.)
  • Meet the data scientists and the apps they design (03:28-04:46 min.)
  • Government: making data available (04:47-06:01 min.)
  • Social sector: has the data, but no resources to use it (06:02-06:50 min.)
  • DataKind: connecting data scientists with government social organizations (06:51-08:17 min.)
  • Real-world example: does the NYPD use racial discrimination? (08:18-09:23 min.)
  • Real-world example: where are neediest children in Washington, D.C.? (09:24-10:12 min.)
  • Real-world example: how happy are you in your country? (10:13-11:09 min.)
  • Transforming the way data is used and shared (11:10-13:13 min.)
  • Part of a data-driven world: breaking down boundaries and changing the way we do science (13:14-16:14 min.)


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Page Producers
Nina Page, National Geographic Society
Samantha Zuhlke, National Geographic Society
other
Last Updated

October 13, 2022

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