Software Development for Social Impact (Grey-Box's Projects)

WHO : Grey-box is a social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic. WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem. HOW : Over the last 2 years and based on field research and work, we have developed an array of mostly open-source social innovation projects. Each of those projects has a dedicated page on Riipen, but this listing serves as a quick summary: UNI is a low-cost device (and soon an Android application) that allows Wi-Fi access to everyone, everywhere, even in areas without reliable or safe internet. With a simple click to upload, Slides, PDFs, videos, Moodle, databases, or even copies of entire websites can be made available offline for free. Project Codex uses AI to translate medical databases in several languages and regions to facilitate international operations. It can be accessed via a mobile site or a tool such as WhatsApp. The Medical Codex project aims to provide an easy-to-use tool that can help coordinate medical equipment between countries and to quickly translate medical terms across multiple languages while accounting for local variations such as brands and generics. Project Symmetry is an application using AI to accelerate Wikipedia's translation efforts in less-represented languages (less than 1 million articles) by building a semantic understanding of similar articles in various Wikipedia languages and providing relevant translations for missing information Project Scraper is a Google Chrome extension that enables offline access to a web page or an entire website with just a few clicks. Project Mesh is an application that enables Android devices to connect and send files and messages over long distances without requiring internet connectivity. Project Cybercafe is software that runs on an Android device, enabling smart hotspot functionality for the sharing of internet connectivity with other Wi-Fi devices. Recognizing costs and other restrictions that may exist in our targeted regions, several controls are in place to allow a high level of control over how a user’s hotspot device is used for internet access.

International expansion - Social Impact Project

WHO : Grey-box is a social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic. WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem. HOW : Over the last 2 years and based on field research and work, we have developed an array of mostly open-source social innovation projects. Each of those projects has a dedicated page on Riipen, but this listing serves as a quick summary: UNI  is a low-cost device (and soon an Android application) that allows Wi-Fi access to everyone, everywhere, even in areas without reliable or safe internet. With a simple click to upload, Slides, PDFs, videos, Moodle, databases, or even copies of entire websites can be made available offline for free. Project Codex  uses AI to translate medical databases in several languages and regions to facilitate international operations. It can be accessed via a mobile site or a tool such as WhatsApp. The Medical Codex project aims to provide an easy-to-use tool that can help coordinate medical equipment between countries and to quickly translate medical terms across multiple languages while accounting for local variations such as brands and generics. Project   Symmetry  is an application using AI to accelerate Wikipedia's translation efforts in less-represented languages (less than 1 million articles) by building a semantic understanding of similar articles in various Wikipedia languages and providing relevant translations for missing information Project Scraper  is a Google Chrome extension that enables offline access to a web page or an entire website with just a few clicks. Project Mesh  is an application that enables Android devices to connect and send files and messages over long distances without requiring internet connectivity. Project Cybercafe  is software that runs on an Android device, enabling smart hotspot functionality for the sharing of internet connectivity with other Wi-Fi devices. Recognizing costs and other restrictions that may exist in our targeted regions, several controls are in place to allow a high level of control over how a user’s hotspot device is used for internet access.

Accessible health knowledge in low connectivity environments (UNI)

WHO: Grey-box is a social innovation startup that is working to bridge the digital gap and accessible educational content in remote areas where the internet and the electricity grid are unreliable. WHY: The current crisis in Ukraine is marked by an unpressed level of support to their population from the international community. The language barrier is too often slowing down the efforts to provide medical equipment in the field quickly. The confusion is exacerbated by variations in naming conventions and local brands for various drugs. HOW: The goal is to provide an accessible and easy-to-use (many health professionals on the ground are using WhatsApp) tool that can be used to translate medical terms and equipment between Ukrainian and various other languages.

Wikipedia's Content Translation through Machine Learning (Project Symmetry)

WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic. WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada do not have access to the minimum speed for internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem. HOW: In a nutshell, for the current project (codename: symmetry), we want to translate content from one language in Wikipedia to another (for exemple, improve Molière English Wikipedia article based on content available only on the french page - and vice versa). The idea is to improve the overall Wikipedia content, especially in underrepresented langages. Grey-box is a nonprofit structured under the principle of mobile-first and remote-first. Diversity is not only encouraged, it is an integral part of the strength of the team and its projects