OK, I'll go ahead and get started. Um I'm sure some other people will be trickling in. But my name is Lemmy Macar. I largely work in social impact and innovation most at length in the nonprofit sector, but also in social entrepreneurship.Um And my major focus has been on emerging markets, on developing countries. A few of the examples that I give today will come from my work in Haiti specifically where I've been working for 10 years. Um I started first in Haiti with an education nonprofit that my best friend and I co-founded when we were 13 years old. Um And then in terms of like my tech background, I graduated with a Bachelor's in computer Science. And my tech focuses have been largely um MLA I and software engineering. Um For today's presentation, my session is broken up into three main parts. The first one is why tech solutions for impact and what do tech solutions for social impact actually look like. Um The second is considerations that we need to prioritize when we're building tech solutions for social problems. And the third one is what the process of actually building a tech solution for a social problem might actually look like. Um And in particular, I'm gonna introduce the facilitator approach.

Um I'll introduce a key takeaway from each part and I'll return to all three of those takeaways at the end. I definitely do welcome questions. So please feel free to drop them in the chat at any time and time permitting will come back to them at, at the very end. Um I want to start this presentation with a a feeling that I think we've all had before. And it's that desire, right? In the face of injustice. It's that urge to do something to create some kind of change. And sometimes that feeling does translate into action and does translate into impact. But for many reasons, oftentimes it actually fades, right? Often we find it so daunting or inaccessible to act in that desire for change that we scare ourselves out of any action at all. But I think that that actually makes sense, right? We consume this image of change makers and these grand problem solvers. But the images we consume are of one individual, right? Some great hero that invented a new innovative solution. But I believe that this narrative actually hinders us from becoming change makers ourselves. And that's something that I want to break down in today's presentation.

So this leads me to part one, which is what a tech solution for social impact may actually look like. And here I wanna emphasize that yes, there are you know, nano satellites on the Blockchain and drones that people use for agriculture. And all of these other exponential tech solutions that can address societal challenges but very simple technologies can also have very important impact, right? There are existing things that we use every single day, like our phones, our computers, wi fi satellite technology, et cetera that can vastly improve the quality of life for people on a daily basis. And I want you to think of this first globally. There were as many people in 2020 who had access to the internet than had access to education, right? So if we're talking about access to digital technologies and so on, it's about equal to access to education. Um and in some regions, those with the highest rates of education exclusion, there are actually more people with access to technologies than to schools. So for example, in Sub Saharan Africa, 76% of people have access to a mobile phone. Whereas depending on the age bracket, as few as 40% are in grade school, right? So I'm bringing this up to say that in some contexts, right? There are twice as many people who have access to a mobile into a classroom.

And yes, we need to address the lack of education and that's something I'm passionate about as well. But what I'm trying to get across is that we can also be leveraging this internet and technology penetration for social change. Um not just social change in education but in other domains as well. So I'm saying simple tech, I'm saying there are possibilities but what does that actually look like? Um So here are three examples of how very simple technologies can have have and been used for, for social change. Um My examples have an emphasis on education, poverty reduction and entrepreneurship just because those are my fields of focus. Um But there are plenty of other examples as well as well. Um So the first one is in Pisa, which is a company that has dominated the mobile money scene in Kenya and other East African countries. 96% of households have at least one Pisa account. And in Pisa is successful in essentially decreasing the fees of financial transactions and making financial services more easily accessible to a larger a larger audience, right? All it requires is a phone and texting um which is something that people are already familiar with and using.

Now M Pesa has been able to decrease the poverty rate. It has been shown uh to bring it down by 2% in Kenya all through a technology that uses nothing other than a cell phone. A second example is uh Sam Sam source which basically breaks down complex data problems from projects from large companies into small tasks that can be completed by people in developing countries after only a few weeks of training and in doing so, it's providing micro work opportunities to give people a living wage and essentially helps to decrease their economic vulnerability again, just a laptop um and getting access to basic literacy.

The third example is a project I'm working on now. Uh digital, which is essentially a platform that curates entrepreneurship resources for the exploding market of Haitian innovators that are looking to build tangible projects and businesses, right? They have the resources and the ambitions, but they're essentially just lacking the tools to build and scale those projects for social impact in their own markets. Now, all three of these examples use mobile phones and laptops Wi Fi and they operate either via S MS or websites, right?

These are all technologies that people in each market are already exposed to at least at a minimum, right? And it's all very simple technologies, but all have and actually can as we see when leverage effectively fundamentally transform livelihoods globally. So when I'm talking about simple technology and simple tech solutions for social change, I think that this quote really really rings rings true, right? It's that the future is already here. It's just not yet equally distributed. So what I'm trying to say is yes, there is a need to continue developing these exponential technologies and pushing the tech frontier, but also creating impacts for the most people in the world right now comes from leveraging these existing technologies, right. So and now I want to go into some strategies and con considerations for actually using tech for social impact. What are some things that we need to be considering before we do this? Let's start with a quick exercise. So I'm gonna ask you to take a look at this house. It's a house in rural Haiti. And if I were to ask you to improve this house for its inhabitants, just think about it for a second just to how you would improve the house rates inhabitants. What would you say? Now, there are many potential thoughts here. Maybe you said it doesn't look like this house has electricity and maybe we should add electricity.

But what if I told you that this house is actually on the coast and in a very flood susceptible area and that actually electricity would make the residents more susceptible to electric shock. Or what if you said, ok, we need to modernize the exterior. Right, right now, it has this mud exterior with this sort of um triangular roof, but maybe something that you don't know is actually having that mud exterior and that triangular roof is very important for insulation and cooling to make the house livable for its inhabitants. There are many potential things that you could have said. Um and I'm sure you come up with many. But in the short exercise, I essentially wanted to bring up two key things that I want to talk about. Next. The first is about biases and assumptions. So when we're considering social problems and how to use technology to solve those problems. I think it's very important to notice that what we see as a problem or what we consider as an option worth taking, right? Or even what we deem as the right solution for a problem. Right. In this past example, maybe it was electricity, maybe it was modernizing the exterior, maybe it was something else, but all of those things are based on our own background, our own context and our own privileges, right? And that's, I mean, that's totally OK.

It's, it's normal that our frame of reference is shaped by our own past experiences. That isn't even something that happens um consciously. But I do think that we have a responsibility to consider it, right? We must recognize what influences the conclusions that we, we made so that we don't act ineffectively. And I think that the first step to, to not letting your biases and assumptions hinder your impact is accepting that everybody has biases, everybody has assumptions, right? Once you get to accept that fact, then you're able to take the time to recognize what biases and assumptions you might have and constantly find ways to reflect on and challenge them while you're building solutions. There's also something that I've noticed in, in the tech field, both I've noticed from afar but also noticed with myself as well. Right? Sometimes I think when we're developers or designers or someone who works in tech generally who is from a marginalized background ourselves, right, as women or ethnically, culturally, whatever it is. Um Or especially when we share positionality with the people that we're building for oftentimes, we think that we can, like, do no harm with our biases and assumptions. Um But I would say the opposite, right?

Everyone has to consider these things and it might even be more difficult for you to consider them when they're less blatant and harder to identify. But I also think that it's especially important when you're developing technologies in a system that has been de de um defined and designed by those who are in a dominant position. Right? So what I'm talking about biases and assumptions, what I'm trying to get across is it's not just those that you have on a personal level, but it's also those that exist on a structural level, right? Maybe at your company, maybe um maybe at some other position that you hold, but also on a systemic level. Um And in some cases, I think that that's just really important to identify. OK, I have my own, but also what's going on in this level and what's going on in the systemic level as well. Um So some key questions that I ask you to consider yourself when you're building tech solutions for social problem are um what are my own biases and assumptions and how am I actively reflecting on and challenging them in the process of building?

Now, the second key thing from the example I showed um the exercise is the question of context, right? The exercise also shows that sometimes there is context that you just can't assume. Right? For example, I said this example of like, what if the house was in a flood area? That's something you didn't know straight off the bat. So I think it's very important when you're building that you should be finding out what the priorities are for people in your market. I like this concept of, right? Like don't talk about investing in cars when the roads aren't even paved yet, you might have an assumption of what it is that's needed. But go ahead and see what people in that market prioritize. Um But also in terms of context, how do people view those problems and potential solutions and what aspects of the context might shape what a solution might look like? Um So very brief example, right? In um let's use India as an example. India tends to have very long street names if I were developing a mapping system for India and I didn't know that I could incorrectly be leaving a very short character count um for street names without knowing that in reality, I would likely need double of that, right? These are just certain things that I can't know that I don't know. Right?

And this is why I think it's so crucial to be actively listening to people and understand the context behind a problem and a solution, even if it is something that doesn't seem related to what you're doing. So some key questions here are, what do I know? What do I need to find out? But also how am I actively considering and learning about the context during the process of building now your assumptions and contextual understanding, define the usability of your tech solutions. So a very brief example from something I was building in Haiti, we were doing logins essentially log into the platform with email addresses. And what we didn't realize is that most people in our target market don't have an email address. What they do have is social media accounts.

When we switched login from email addresses to social media accounts, the uptake was just, you know, doubled overnight and that might seem like a very basic assumption, right? Log in with your personal information, but it literally defined whether or not our target market had access to what we were building for them or not. Some other very simple examples, right? Um Let me use in some cultures like in Japan and Korea, right? Instead of a checkmark, meaning correct. A checkmark and an X both mean something that is wrong, right? Instead an O is used to indicate something that's right. So if I were building a solution without that kind of a context where it assumes that OK, Checkmark means right? And X means no, that essentially changes the usability. Sorry. Pardon me essentially what I was trying to don't assume anything right? In all of these examples, you need to make sure that you're building with people rather than for them. And by this, I mean, actively asking questions, actively listening and actively learning from your target market and letting their desires, context and visions drive your solutions, not the other way around. And I'll get back to this concept in just one second. But for now, what I'm trying to get across in this point is that people, you're building a solution for need to be actively involved in the process of building.

I like to say that no one is better equipped to build a solution for a problem than the people who face the reality of that problem every day. Chances are there is at least one tech savvy person in most communities that you're trying to benefit, right? So include them. But also people don't necessarily need to be a designer or a developer for you to include them in the design and development process. Everyone's opinions, experiences and context is is very valid and important. So the key takeaway here is we need to be developing inclusive and context informed tech solutions by working with users rather than for them. And this brings me to the third part, right? So in part one, we saw that social change doesn't mean building a big daunting technology, it can be building something very simple. But what technology should it be. And what does that solution actually look like? In part two, we saw the importance of building with people and taking your assumptions and their context into consideration. But how do you actually do that? And how do you make sure that we're building something that's actually effective? These questions can all be answered with my last key point, which is the facilitator approach for, for social impact.

The facilitator approach is how I have come to view and execute on social impact from starting that nonprofit when I was 13 to building another social enterprise in college to developing these different kinds of tech solutions. It essentially defines how I approach social change.

So let's rewind for a minute to 13 year old me who in a very long story short found myself in Haiti in a rural community. My initial urge when I was living in this community was to develop a a waste system, right? There was no waste system in the community. Um People were just chucking wrappers on the side of the road and burning trash in close proximity to kids and and so on. And so I essentially had this feeling that told me that that was a problem that I should try to solve. But as I try to move forward with that solution, I turned to community members to learn more and I was very startled to hear trash. We don't have a trash problem, right? It wasn't until I truly listened to the people that I realized that trash was far from their priority of issues needing to be tackled. The lack of education was what needed to be addressed first in their eyes. So again, it wasn't until I was willing to hear and put my own preconceptions to the side that my initial urge and this feeling that I I was describing earlier um changed and began to evolve away from trash towards education. And I'm telling this story because this was a very important shift from beginning to understand my role in making impact as being an actor to being a facilitator from feeling like I had to come up with a real way system to invent my own solution to create impact that I had to come up with this new innovative thing to truly hearing the solutions that already exist in the minds of community members, right?

So this shifted my strategy towards spending more time listening and less time talking to taking the time to recognize the wealth of knowledge and resources that already existed locally. So all of this to say, how can we collectively change the way that we approach social impact?

I think that we can resist the urge to project or prioritize someone else's needs based on our own background and experience. And instead spend more time listening. I think that we can recognize that no matter how challenging and daunting it might seem to create social impact.

However small or large, we can take the time to step back and we can understand that inventing some new innovative technology is not the only way to be a change maker, right? The innovation can actually be in the strategy or in the connection of resources. And essentially with a facilitator approach, we can transition from being this actor mindset to adopting the role of a facilitator. So here a new actor is this glorified individual who ventured off and started something new, right? A new model that hasn't been seen before. But the fact of the matter is it's not about that individual, right? It shouldn't be, it can't be otherwise, that model doesn't persist beyond that person. So idolizing a hero essentially diminishes the agency and dignity of those who are, who are making a solution happen as we saw in part one, right? It's also not inventing a new technology or a new model of giving that you can have viable impact. I think that solutions already exist in this world, but just need to be more widely accessible. So instead with a facilitator approach, we can transition towards being a facilitator, which is someone who reflects on their intentions and simply recognizes what resources exist locally, identifies what resources they have access to, that can fill existing gaps and facilitates the connection of these resources to have very significant and effective impact.

So essentially a facilitator is a bridge and a connector. And I think that if we understand our role of being a facilitator as being a facilitator, then we realize that anybody has the potential to create impact, right? It's just a matter of learning how to understand others and how they desire to address their needs. I think that, right, we don't choose where we're from, what situation we're born into and what we do and don't have access to as a result. But what we do have access to somebody else doesn't. And I think everyone in this session and in this world has more access to a certain resource compared to somebody else. And anything can serve as a medium of attaining resources or as a valuable resource in itself, right? For you, it could be your personal network, it could be the languages, you speak, your access to social media, your access to higher education, your ability to code if you're in this conference, whatever it is, everyone has something and essentially using that. I then believe that anybody can address social problems and create much needed change. So I wanna end the session by asking you, what did you have access to? How can you better listen to those who express a need? And then how can you facilitate the connection between the, the that resource and that need? And thus, how can you create impact? Thank you very much. These were my three main takeaways. I'd love any questions. If there are any to chat, I'll take a look right now.

Um And I'd love to keep talking. If there are any questions, feel free to drop them. I'll also add my um linkedin information since we're getting to the end here. Um So if you'd like to connect with me and ask me questions over linkedin or just connect there as well, that's, that's a great way to connect to. I'll also put up my email address over here. Thank you very much. I think we have another minute here. If somebody does wanna hop in, that's a great question, Fernanda. I don't know if they're going to cut off our, our session. Um Right at 50 but I can start with Fernandez's question, which was how would you suggest approaching this if you're creating a product that is launching in both first world and third world countries? Um I think that in that context, right, what we were talking about in terms of bias assumptions, context and so on the context that you're launching on in the first world is going to be very different from the third world. And also in terms of which countries in the first world and which countries in the third world, there'll be differentiation between each within those brackets as well. Um So I think in that context, we need to be actively again asking ourselves, what do I know?

What do I not know? But also what do I not know that? I don't know? And that's where I think, actively listening to people and figuring out, hey, maybe there's certain differences that need to be made for each product in each place. Just like, for example, Uber has slightly different platforms, interfaces and services in each country that they operate in. But I'd love to talk more about that on, on linkedin, maybe if you'd like or, or via email. Um Luna as well asked, how do you measure impact in your projects? Um I think that that's very much depends on the project itself as well. Um I personally like this con I think if you're doing something that is relating to social impact, then essentially your job is to make sure that the problem that you're trying to solve no longer exists. And therefore, I think that the most effective way that you can be measuring impact is to see the degree to which you've run out of business. And by that, I mean, right, if you're actively actually solving the problem, then you shouldn't be needed in that community and in that context, you know, forever, right?

It shouldn't be like the kind of nonprofit aid model where you end up staying there for 20 years or, or whatever it is. So I think the degree to which like are you going out of business? Um is my, is my most general take in how I measure impact from my own projects. Um And also how we develop our strategy in each of those contexts. But I think other than that, it's also very important to look on the individual scale. I think oftentimes we're more looking at like numbers, poverty reduction rates and so on. But I think that true social impact can also happen on a very individual scale. Um in terms of how has that person's life been transformed and what are the relaying impacts of, of that transformation? Um So you said, um don't you think that in today's time, the technology is enough in terms of resources, it's more about personal, personal initiative to impact.

Um I'm not sure if I understand the question, but I think you are saying that if there are technologies that exist, it's more about people's initiatives and desires to make an impact. And in that case, I definitely agree and that's why I said there's this, this question of an urge, right? And going back to this earlier quote, of the resources are already exists, the resources to solve the world's problems already exist. It's just not equally distributed yet.

I definitely do think that that's true, right? It's more about how are we being innovative with our desire for change and innovative in the ways in which we're connecting those resources? Um I'm not sure if that answers your question, but yeah, you said, yes, so cool. Um What are the main challenges you face with setting up social impact projects in emerging markets and how have you overcome them? Um Again, definitely depends based on, based on each country. But I think something that took the, the facilitator approach that I was talking about comes very much out of my own experience. And it comes out of me making many errors when I was first starting out. Um And I think that many of the challenges come from not understanding enough. And I think that that's such an important position to, to accept. I think when you're starting something out in a context that's new. Um Even if it is, you know, your home country or where you're originally from or whatever it is, I think it's, it's very crucial to actually start with that understanding that like, hey, I might not know everything and that's OK. So how am I actively gonna be learning from others and actively finding information and actively finding these things as I was saying that you don't know, you don't know, right? These things that are are going to be very crucial to how you build things.

Um So I think in terms of how you overcome them, many of them is with a facilitator approach in terms of just being very clear about OK, this is what I do have access to. These are the resources I have, these are the visions of what people locally have. But how am I actively listening and seeing how I can integrate those into social impact? I know that's a very vague general answer, but I'd love to connect more um about it if you're, if you're interested via linkedin or, or elsewhere. Um I think that's all I'm seeing in terms of questions and I realize now with questions, I'm a few minutes over time, so I'll stop it there. But thank you very much for listening. I'd love to connect. Um As I said, either via email on the slide or, or via linkedin. Thank you very much.