Tag Archives: google.org

How Google volunteers gave me the confidence to get hired

Editor’s note: Every June, Google.org hosts a month-long campaign called GoogleServe to empower Googlers to volunteer in their communities around the world. This year, more than 27,000 Googlers participated in GoogleServe, and Googlers have volunteered over 350,00 hours since the campaign first began in 2007. Today we hear from Brian Evans, a past attendee at one of our GoogleServe & Goodwill resume and interview prep events. 

In June 2018, I was just out of prison. I was looking for a job, but I had a criminal record hanging over my head. I did my time in the eyes of the state and had served my sentence, but others don’t always see it that way. Employers often have a bias against people like me. I needed work, but wasn’t getting it.  

I found Goodwill NOW, a program that works with people who have criminal histories to help them find full-time employment. People with the program suggested I sign up for a GoogleServe event, where Googlers were going to help with resume building and interview practice. 

I remember walking into the event. I was really nervous. I didn’t think it was a group I could fit in with—a bunch of highly educated people who had tech jobs with Google. But my perspective changed soon after I arrived. They started the event with an “ice breaker” where we were invited to simply get to know each other. I asked things like where they were from, what they do in their free time, what they care about. It made them human and relatable. After the ice breaker it didn’t feel as intimidating. It just felt like a bunch of people in a room, with more commonalities than we all knew at the start. 

Then we got to work. We sat down with Googlers and learned about what they were looking for in a resume. Many of us didn’t have a college education and feel that it really sets us back, but the volunteers were able to help us break down our experience and highlight what things stood out to them. Your resume is your first impression, so it really helped to have someone coach us on how to make it stronger and highlight what they found interesting about us. 

Next, we did mock interviews. We pretended as if we were going in to interview at Google. We learned about the handshake, how to make eye contact and how to make a good first impression. We learned about the kinds of questions we should be prepared to answer and what kinds of questions we should be prepared to ask. Before the clinic I didn’t know how important it was to ask the interviewer questions, too. 

After the clinic, I felt inspired. So I signed up for school and studied peer mentorship and criminal justice. Goodwill was impressed by my education pursuit and they invited me to apply to be a resource room coordinator. Before getting the job I had to interview with the VP of Goodwill. Never in my life have I been put in front of someone with so much power. Then I remembered what a Google volunteer said: “Just find a way to relate to your interviewer; find something in common.” 

They hired me. Since then, I’ve been promoted twice in one year and I’m now the lead peer mentor. This year, I helped to organize the same GoogleServe event that helped me when I was looking for a job. 

We can all succeed if we have ambition. I didn’t have schooling and lots of Googlers do, but the most inspiring thing a Google volunteer told me is that I had a chance. I believed them and put one foot in front of the other, made it through school and went into the interview with confidence. And here I am.

Google volunteers gave me the confidence to get hired

Editor’s note: Every June, Google.org hosts—a month-long campaign called GoogleServe to empower Googlers to volunteer in their communities around the world. This year more than 27,000 Googlers participated in GoogleServe, and Googlers have volunteered a total of X hours since the event first began in 2007. Today we hear from Brian Evans, a past attendee at one of our GoogleServe & Goodwill resume and interview prep events. 


In June 2018, I was just out of prison. I was looking for a job, but I had a criminal record hanging over my head. I did my time in the eyes of the state and had served my sentence, but others don’t always see it that way. Employers often have a bias against people like me. I needed work, but wasn’t getting it.  


I found Goodwill NOW, a program that works with people who have criminal histories to help them find full-time employment. People with the program suggested I sign up for a GoogleServe event, where Googlers were going to help with resume building and interview practice. 


I remember walking into the event. I was really nervous. I didn’t think it was a group I could fit in with—a bunch of highly educated people who had tech jobs with Google. But my perspective changed soon after I arrived. They started the event with an “ice breaker” where we were invited to simply get to know each other. I asked things like where they were from, what they do in their free time, what they care about. It made them human and relatable. After the ice breaker it didn’t feel as intimidating. It just felt like a bunch of people in a room, with more commonalities than we all knew at the start. 


Then we got to work. We sat down with Googlers and learned about what they were looking for in a resume. Many of us didn’t have a college education and feel that it really sets us back, but the volunteers were able to help us break down our experience and highlight what things stood out to them. Your resume is your first impression, so it really helped to have someone coach us on how to make it stronger and highlight what they found interesting about us. 


Next, we did mock interviews. We pretended as if we were going in to interview at Google. We learned about the handshake, how to make eye contact and how to make a good first impression. We learned about the kinds of questions we should be prepared to answer and what kinds of questions we should be prepared to ask. Before the clinic I didn’t know how important it was to ask the interviewer questions, too. 


After the clinic, I felt inspired. So I signed up for school and studied peer mentorship and criminal justice. Goodwill was impressed by my education pursuit and they invited me to apply to be a resource room coordinator. Before getting the job I had to interview with the VP of Goodwill. Never in my life have I been put in front of someone with so much power. Then I remembered what a Google volunteer said: “Just find a way to relate to your interviewer; find something in common.” 


They hired me. Since then, I’ve been promoted twice in one year and I’m now the lead peer mentor. This year, I helped to organize the same GoogleServe event that helped me when I was looking for a job. 


We can all succeed if we have ambition. I didn’t have schooling and lots of Googlers do, but the most inspiring thing a Google volunteer told me is that I had a chance. I believed them and put one foot in front of the other, made it through school and went into the interview with confidence. And here I am.


Breaking ground in Nevada

I’m a fourth generation Nevadan on both sides of my family. Even though Google is headquartered in California, my work has brought me back to my home state of Nevada far more than I expected. And recently we’ve been getting to know Nevadans in all corners of the state. Last year, I had the chance to kick off Grow with Google in Reno where we held in-person digital skills trainings for hundreds of Nevadans. And last week, our team returned to host more workshops in East Las Vegas and Carson City. Today, I’m back home in Nevada once more to break ground on our newest data center and Google Cloud region. 

Google is growing at a faster rate outside of the Bay Area than in it—and earlier this year, our CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Google will invest $13 billion to expand data centers and offices across the United States. Recently, we released plans for expansions in two new offices in Michigan, our data centers in Oklahoma and Texas, and now one in Henderson, Nevada. The new data center facility is a $600 million dollar investment, and will create a number of new jobs in the state. Together with our new cloud region, we’re investing to better support our users and our Cloud customers in Nevada.

Data centers power your searches, store your photos, documents and emails, and help you find the fastest route to your destination. They play a vital role in our global operations—and the communities they’re a part of. And it’s our responsibility to be a helpful presence in those communities by creating opportunities for our neighbors to succeed. In addition to the data center groundbreaking, we’re kicking off a $1 million Google.org Impact Challenge in Nevada. Nonprofits from any part of Nevada can submit their biggest and boldest ideas to create economic opportunities for their communities. A panel of judges will select the top five submissions from local nonprofits, who will each be awarded $175,000 to make their idea a reality. From there, the public will vote to select one of the five to be the “People’s Choice” winner and receive an additional $125,000. 

Nevada holds a special place in my heart, and I’m proud to bring the Google.org Impact Challenge to my home state. As we break ground on our newest data center, we’re not only investing in a facility in Nevada, we are investing in Nevadans in all corners of the state. 

Supporting key education projects on World Refugee Day

Editor's Note: Google.org connects nonprofit innovators with Google resources to solve complex human challenges, and to ensure that everyone can participate in the digital economy. Jacqueline Strecker, Connected Education Officer from UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, shares more about the impact our grants and the programs they support have on refugee communities around the world.

I’m in a crowded classroom in Kakuma, Kenya refugee camp. The temperature outside is hovering just above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), but inside this room it feels much hotter. But I barely notice the heat, because I’m transfixed by the people around me. We’re discussing solutions to problems most people don’t fully understand, and despite the challenges, there’s a sense of optimism. My line of work has allowed me to meet and work with countless individuals with exceptional abilities and exceptional stories. Like Jayson.

Jason

Jayson came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, but he was forced to flee his country and halt his pursuit of post-secondary education. He ended up in Kakuma with his only surviving family member, his younger brother. They have spent six years together in the camp. And though his dreams of working in technology are on hold, he’s pursued this passion in a different way, supporting the education of others as both a secondary school teacher and a trainer at a community youth center in the camp.

Since 2015, Google.org has donated $10 million to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and Learning Equality as part of an effort to provide emergency support and access to vital information and education to refugees. The grants have gone towards supporting promising practices, the development of learning materials and adaptation of technologies that can drive  the delivery of quality education for refugee and students from surrounding areas. As part of this initiative, I worked with Jayson in a design workshop, where we came up with ideas to improve on Kolibri, a free, open-source educational platform developed by Learning Equality for low-resource environments like Kakuma.



WRD 3

Kolibri was specially designed to provide offline access to a digital library of resources, curated from thousands of open educational content providers. With funding from Google.org, and in collaboration with Learning Equality, UNHCR has committed to co-designing and testing different models for Kolibri integration in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Jordan together with a range of partners, and most importantly with refugees and the communities that host them.


The program itself aims for an increase in basic STEM skills in lower-secondary school populations, plus improvement in student confidence and motivation,digital literacy and technical skills. “I’m one part of the project, and it has become a passion for me,” Jayson tells me. “Every day, every month, we are learning and giving feedback on how to improve.”


Jayson was one of 28 passionate contributors from 10 different countries who joined the design sprint facilitated by Astrid Weber, Google UX Manager, at UNESCO’s Mobile Learning Week in Paris this past March. Joining remotely, he and his fellow Kolibri coaches helped to work with educationalists, ministries and designers from across the globe to think through how AI could be used to help improve the process of aligning content to different national curricula.

T

The ideas that emerged are helping to shape ten new learning centers launching throughout communities in Jordan. The model has been adapted thanks to not only the vibrant contributions of both Jordanian and refugee communities throughout the country, but also the inspiration and lessons shared from this growing collaborative global community. 

On World Refugee Day, the High Commissioner for Refugees will help to launch a new Connected Learning Center in the Azraq Refugee Camp, further demonstrating UNHCR’s commitment to improving the quality of education for all learners affected by crises. We all have a role to play. Our inspiring colleagues at Learning Equality continue to share and create free educational resources. Philanthropic efforts, like those of Google.org, help to bring people and resources together to test new solutions in the field. People like Jayson lend expertise and time to making sure Kenyans and refugees alike are able to contribute to and benefit from these global digital movements. And our team at UNHCR helps to promote innovation with the community at the heart and in the lead.

$1 billion for 20,000 Bay Area homes

As we work to build a more helpful Google, we know our responsibility to help starts at home. For us, that means being a good neighbor in the place where it all began over 20 years ago: the San Francisco Bay Area.

Today, Google is one of the Bay Area’s largest employers. Across the region, one issue stands out as particularly urgent and complex: housing. The lack of new supply, combined with the rising cost of living, has resulted in a severe shortage of affordable housing options for long-time middle and low income residents. As Google grows throughout the Bay Area—whether it’s in our home town of Mountain View, in San Francisco, or in our future developments in San Jose and Sunnyvale—we’ve invested in developing housing that meets the needs of these communities. But there’s more to do.

Today we’re announcing an additional $1 billion investment in housing across the Bay Area.

First, over the next 10 years, we’ll repurpose at least $750 million of Google’s land, most of which is currently zoned for office or commercial space, as residential housing. This will enable us to support the development of at least 15,000 new homes at all income levels in the Bay Area, including housing options for middle and low-income families. (By way of comparison, 3,000 total homes were built in the South Bay in 2018). We hope this plays a role in addressing the chronic shortage of affordable housing options for long-time middle and low income residents.

Second, we’ll establish a $250 million investment fund so that we can provide incentives to enable developers to build at least 5,000 affordable housing units across the market.

In addition to the increased supply of affordable housing these investments will help create, we will give $50 million in grants through Google.org to nonprofits focused on the issues of homelessness and displacement. This builds on the $18 million in grants we’ve given to help address homelessness over the last five years, including $3 million we gave to the newly openedSF Navigation Center and $1.5 million toaffordable housing for low income veterans and households in Mountain View.

In the coming months, we’ll continue to work with local municipalities to support plans that allow residential developers to build quickly and economically. Our goal is to get housing construction started immediately, and for homes to be available in the next few years. In Mountain View, we’ve already worked with the city to change zoning in the North Bayshore area to free up land for housing, and we’re currently in productive conversations with Sunnyvale and San Jose.

Of course, affordable and quality housing is only one way we’re investing in Bay Area communities. We’re also fundingcommunity spaces that provide free access to co-working areas for nonprofits, improving transit options forthe community and our employees (taking 9,000 cars off the road per day), and supporting programs forcareer development,education andlocal businesses.

Across all of this, our goal is to help communities succeed over the long term, and make sure that everyone has access to opportunity, whether or not they work in tech. Solving a big issue like the housing shortage will take collaboration across business, government and community organizations, and we look forward to working alongside others to make the Bay Area a place where everyone who lives here can thrive.

With 4-H, helping more students learn computer science

As our CEO Sundar Pichai announced today in my home state of Oklahoma, we’re making our largest ever computer science education grant from Google.org to support 4-H, the largest youth development organization in the country. This $6 million grant—made as part of Grow with Google's efforts to ensure that everyone has access to future opportunities—will help provide more than 1 million youth across the country with computer science skills, plus computer science training for their educators.

4-H is a second home for students like Decklan Thomas, a high schooler from Bruceton Mills, West Virginia (population 86). Following three generations in the trucking industry, Decklan was certain that he was on a path to becoming a diesel mechanic. The field was appealing not only because of family tradition, but also because it allowed him to do something he liked: identifying problems and fixing them.

One day, he learned about computer science through his local 4-H chapter. He didn’t even know he was coding at first—it just felt like solving a puzzle on the computer. As he began to do more coding, he quickly saw the parallels between the skills you need to be a mechanic and the computer science he was learning at 4-H. He says, “You see something wrong, then fix it—and end up with something amazing.” Decklan is still enthusiastic about becoming a diesel mechanic, but he’s now also exploring other opportunities like becoming a biomedical engineer or even going into the Navy.

I know the impact of these types of programs because I grew up going to my local 4-H chapter in Oklahoma. I loved learning about animal care, teamwork, and practical farm skills—a hallmark of 4-H. Like Decklan, those skills inspired me to learn how to fix things—I went to the Oklahoma State University and went on to work for Google here in Pryor. And I still fix things: the servers in our data centers that power our internet products for people across the country.


Decklan and I are representative of the many students across the United States who lack access to computer science learning opportunities. It’s estimated that computer science-related jobs are created at nearly four times the rate of other jobs, but students in small towns are less likely to have access to classes and clubs at school compared to suburban students, and their parents are less likely to know about CS opportunities outside of school.


Together with 4-H, we believe in the potential of technology–and youth—to change and improve our lives, industries and communities. Today’s Google.org grant will provide 4-H educators with the resources they need to ensure that students can access the skills they’ll need—both technical and non-technical—to create the technology that may improve our future.

Google for Brazil: expanding access to technology and information

Access is at the core of everything we do at Google, going back to our mission statement. Without access to a decent internet connection or digital skills, people can’t use technology to make their lives easier.

With that in mind, we made a series of announcements today at our annual Google for Brazil event in São Paulo to help Brazilians get more out of the internet, ranging from fast and free Wi-Fi hubs to educational programs. And as part of our commitment to responsible innovation, we also shared how we're building privacy and transparency tools into our products to give people clear, individualized choices around how their data is used.

Google Station arrives in Brazil

Google Station aims to connect people to a fast, free and open internet. We have 80 locations up and running in public squares, parks and train stations across São Paulo already, thanks to our partners America Net and Linktel and our first sponsor, Itaú. We plan to keep working with partners to launch hundreds more Google Station locations across Brazil by the end of 2020.

Google Station

Privacy for everyone

As our technology evolves, so do our privacy protections to ensure that people have control over their data. Today, two new privacy tools went live in Brazil, where people can now use Android phones as security keys, adding an extra layer of protection to their information. They can also check how data is being used in Maps, Search and the Assistant, by accessing the apps menu and choosing the option “Your data in …” There, you can review and delete your location activity in Maps or your search activity in Search. Soon, the same feature will be accessible on YouTube.

Auto-delete controls for Web and Apps Activity are also now available globally, allowing people to easily manage the amount of time their data is saved. Choose a limit—3 or 18 months—and anything older than that will be automatically deleted on an ongoing basis. Auto-delete controls are coming soon to Location History. And Incognito Mode for Maps and Search is coming later this year.

Waa_Rentetion_Flow frame.gif

Strengthening the news ecosystem

To connect people with high-quality information and news, we're working closely with journalists and publishers. Here are three ways we’re helping to fuel innovation in journalism in Brazil and Latin America:

  • Google News Initiative grants will support training programs and events for Brazilian journalism associations, including continued funding for Comprova, a coalition of more than 20 news organizations to combat misinformation online.

  • We put out a call for applications for the first GNI Innovation Challenge in Latin America, an initiative to fund projects that bring new ideas and sustainable business models to digital journalism. We'll fund proposals with up to one million reais. Registration is open until July 22.

  • We’re starting an incubation program for journalism startups, in partnership with Google for Startups Campus São Paulo. The Digital Native News Incubator will support early stage teams with products, tools, and mentorship as they build their organizations.

Voice and helpfulness

Brazilians love using their voices to get things done on their phones. The Assistant in Portuguese has been around for almost two years, and Brazil is already among the top three countries in active users. Brazilians will soon have another way to keep the conversation flowing—local tech company Positivo is set to roll out a smart feature phone running KaiOS, with an Assistant button. It’s an entry-level device that can help you through the day, using voice to search, send messages and much more. Positivo is also introducing a new line of devices like lamps, plugs, cameras and alarms that can be controlled by voice, another example of how the Assistant can serve as the backbone of a smart home.

p70s_pack.png

We’re also partnering with developers and brands to build relevant Actions. One example is Galinha Pintadinha, a popular Brazilian content creator for families, which launched a set of news games that revive our childhood with traditional plays like “freeze dance”. Starting today, experiences like this will also be available on entry-level Android Go phones.

Media literacy, digital skills and more

Navigating the deluge of information online can be challenging. A Google.org grant of 4 million reais is going to Palavra Aberta Institute to create EducaMídia, media literacy program which will help Brazilian teachers and students develop skills to distinguish online misinformation from reliable content.

In addition, a 4.5 million reais grant for Junior Achievement Brazil will fund 2,000 scholarships for the IT Support Professional Certificate, an online training program developed by Google and hosted on Coursera. Through the grant, we will prepare young Brazilians from underrepresented communities to become the next generation of IT Support Specialists, and help connect them with potential local employers upon completion.

Change the Game, a Google Play initiative to support and empower women as game players and creators, is also coming to Brazil. We'll ask women to submit ideas for games, and together with partners we'll help develop and launch two winning projects. We'll also offer training for 500 young women who want to make their mark in the mobile gaming world.

ChangetheGame_Desafio.png

Speaking of games, the Women's World Cup is upon us. Whether you call it soccer, football, futebol or fútbol, you can keep up with all the action in this year's tournament in France using Google tools such as Search and the Assistant.

Last but not least, we pulled back the curtains on a retrospective for one of Brazil's most celebrated artists, Cândido Portinari. After “Faces of Frida,” “Portinari: Painter of the People” is the second-largest collection dedicated to a Latin American artist on Google Arts & Culture.

Mestico_Candido Portinari.png

“Mestiço” (Cândido Portinari - 1934), at Pinacoteca

We feel privileged that people turn to Google for help in their daily lives. We're doing our best to match that trust with responsible innovation that serves people everywhere, wherever they may be.

Stonewall Forever: Honoring LGBTQ+ history through a living monument

Many people have shaped my life—my parents who brought me into the world; Miss Moran, my fifth grade teacher, who pushed me to be a better student; my late mentor Bill McCarthy who helped guide my career early in my professional life. But perhaps the most meaningful people in my life are my husband, whom I have been with for nearly 30 years, and my son, who gives me more joy (and a fair amount of frustration) than I could have ever imagined. For them, I owe thanks in large part to a valiant handful of New Yorkers whom I've never me. Their act of defiance ultimately enabled me to live, love and be who I am.

It was early in the morning on Saturday, June 28, 1969, when the police raided the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, one of the few places at the time where LGBTQ people could gather openly. New Yorkers fought back. This altercation, known as the Stonewall Riots, led to angry protests that lasted for days and sparked the modern fight for LGBTQ rights around the world.

In 2016, President Obama designated Christopher Park, the small triangle of green that sits in front of the Stonewall Inn, as the first national monument dedicated to telling the story of this community’s struggle. The Stonewall National Monument serves as a reminder of the continuing fight for civil and human rights.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Stonewall. To recognize this pivotal moment in history, the LGBT Community Center of New York City (The Center) spearheaded the creation of Stonewall Forever, an interactive “living monument” to 50 years of Pride. Google provided support in the form of a $1.5 million grant from Google.org, and volunteers from Google Creative Lab helped bring the experience to life.

Stonewall Forever connects diverse voices from the Stonewall era to the millions of voices in today’s LGBTQ community. The monument is made up of countless colorful pieces that contain digitized historical artifacts, oral histories capturing the early days of the movement, interviews with new voices of LGBTQ equality, and photos and messages added by people around the world.

Anyone can visit Stonewall Forever on the web, and through an augmented reality app that allows you to experience the Stonewall National Monument in New York’s Christopher Park. Explore the past, present and future of Pride and then add your own piece to the ever-growing monument. You can dive deeper by watching a short documentary, directed by Ro Haber, featuring an inclusive array of activists, from across generations, each giving their own interpretation of the Stonewall legacy.

Beyond our support of Stonewall Forever, we’re launching Pride Forever, a campaign honoring the past, present, and future of the LGBTQ+ community. This theme is rooted in sharing the past 50 years of global LGBTQ+ history with our users. Today’s interactive Google Doodle celebrates 50 years of Pride by taking us through its evolution over the decades, with animated illustrations by Doodler Nate Swinehart.  

Google Arts & Culture is also preserving even more archives and stories from LGBTQ history, in partnership with The Center,GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco, the National Park Service’s Stonewall Monument, and Cyark. The collection includes never-before-seen photos and videos, 3D models of the Stonewall monuments, and a virtual walking tour of LGBTQ sites in the Village.

Here are a few other ways we’re helping people celebrate Pride.

  • Like past years, we’ll identify major Pride parade routes on Google Maps.
  • Later this month, check out Google Play for apps, movies, books, and audiobooks to help the LGBTQ+ community share stories and also learn more about the history of LGBTQ+ rights.
  • And through Google My Business, business owners can mark their businesses as “LGBTQ-friendly” and as a “Transgender Safe Space” on their Google listing to let customers know they’re always welcome. As of today, more than 190,000 businesses have enabled these attributes on their business listing.

Today, Stonewall lives on in images, histories and monuments—old and new. It also lives on in the LGBTQ community and its supporters. The past paves the way for the future, and Stonewall Forever reminds us that alone we’re strong, but together we’re unstoppable. Pride is forever.

Source: Google LatLong


How AI could tackle a problem shared by a billion people

Earlier this month, Google AI Impact Challenge grantees from around the world gathered in San Francisco to start applying artificial intelligence to address some of the world’s toughest problems, from protecting rainforests to improving emergency response times.


In addition to receiving part of the $25 million pool of funding from Google.org, each organization is participating in a six-month program called the Launchpad Accelerator. The accelerator kicked off with a week-long boot camp which included mentorship, workshops, presentations from AI and product experts and an opportunity to connect with other grantees. They also received support and guidance from DataKind, a global non-profit dedicated to harnessing the power of data science and AI in the service of humanity. Throughout the accelerator, grantees will receive ongoing support and coaching from their Google mentors as they complete the first phase of their projects.


We sat down with Rajesh Jain from grantee Wadhwani AI, an Indian organization with a project dedicated to using AI to help farmers with pest control, to learn more about the problem he and his team are setting out to solve, and how support from Google will help them get there.

W2

Rajesh Jain taking a photo of a pest trap

Why is pest control such a big issue?

More than a billion people around the world live in smallholder farmer households. These are farms that support a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. Many of these farmers struggle with pest damage that can wipe out a devastating amount of annual crop yield, despite heavy usage of pesticides. Currently, many farmers track and manage pests by manually identifying and counting them. In India, some send photos of pests to universities for analysis, but the advice often arrives after it’s too late to prevent irreversible damage to their crops. Last season, nearly 1,000 cotton farmers in India committed suicide after a pink bollworm attack destroyed 40% of the cotton yield. At Wadhwani AI, we’re creating technology that will help reduce crop losses.

What will you use the funding and support from Google for?

Before applying for this grant, we had already developed algorithms that detect two major pests, and have successfully tested this in parts of India. We plan to use the mentorship and funding from Google.org to develop a globally scalable pest management solution. This will allow farmers and agriculture program workers to take photos of pest traps and use image classification models on their phones to identify and count the pests and receive timely intervention recommendations, including what pesticides to spray and when. The goal is to provide millions of farmers with timely, localized advice to reduce pesticide usage and improve crop yield.

Going into the Launchpad Accelerator kickoff, what were you hoping to get out of it?

We’ve been working on this for nine months now—and we believe we’ve discovered a solution to this problem. We’re a small team, so funding and collaborations are necessary for us to succeed. We really needed help to scale our whole infrastructure. At first our goal was to get the project working, but we want this to be helpful to people around the globe, not just the subset of people who tested our first prototype. Companies like Google operate at scale so we were excited to get advice on how to do this.

What did you learn? 

We were really impressed with the kind of mentors we met with, especially the AI coach we’ve been assigned to work with in the coming months. He helped us set very concrete goals and we’re excited to continue to have his support in accomplishing them. It was helpful to learn practices that are commonplace at Google that can change how we do our work. For example, we learned and plan to implement right away when we get back is “Stand up Mondays” - it’s important for us to be on the same page - so this is a way to get us focused and connected at the start of the week.

What do you think is going to be the most challenging part of your project?

We have the technology, but scaling it and making it accessible to farmers will be difficult. There are differences in literacy, diversity, cultural differences, climate differences. We need to scale our solution to address all the challenges. We’re really looking to lean on the mentorship from Google to help us design the app so it’s scalable.

What are you most optimistic about?

We have confidence in our technical capabilities - and we got a lot of confirmation from other AI experts that this is a good idea. We’re excited to get to work.

 


Google.org and FII collaborate to empower low-income families

Since 2015, the Family Independence Initiative (FII) has used over $2.5 million in Google.org grants to empower families to escape poverty. Their technology platform UpTogether helps low-income families access small cash investments, connect with each other and share solutions—like how to find childcare or strategies to pay off debt. With the grants last year, FII improved their technology platform and expanded their sites to more cities including Austin and Chicago.

This year, the Family Independence Initiative is embarking on a mission of collaborative research to shift what’s possible for low-income families. And today, we’re expanding our investment in FII with a $1 million grant to support a pilot project called Trust and Invest Collaborative, which aims to guide policy decisions that will increase economic mobility for low-income families and their children. The grant will help FII, the City of Boston and the Department of Transitional Assistance examine learnings and successes from FII, and replicate them in future government services offered to low-income families.


In addition to our original grants to FII, we offered Google’s technical expertise. Over the last six months, six Google.org Fellows have been working full-time with FII to use their engineering and user experience expertise to help improve UpTogether. They used machine learning and natural language processing to make UpTogether’s data more useful in determining what leads to family success and to make it easier for families to share their own solutions with each other. These improvements in data quality will support the research for the pilot in Boston and Cambridge and help FII continue to share learnings from families’ own voices with future collaborators.