The D4GX 2023 India Empowerment Challenge

Deadline: 26-Jun-23

Dasra, in partnership with Bloomberg, Societal Thinking, and Stanford PACS are hosting a series of events under the Data for Good Exchange (D4GX) 2023 India with the aim of enabling data agencies for India’s most vulnerable communities.

The pandemic has sparked a heightened sense of urgency among Indian nonprofits, funders and the governments to collaborate and strengthen the data ecosystem for India’s development sector. It is now more crucial than ever to empower communities with access to data, provide mechanisms for them to request new data points, and establish universally recognized service metrics that are relevant to local communities. The D4GX 2023 India Empowerment Challenge seeks to leverage the power of data to drive positive change and promote data-driven and community-driven decision-making in India’s development efforts.

2023 Themes

• Non-profit organizations having early-stage innovations, that fall into the thematic tracks listed:
  • Data to Enable Learning to Livelihood​
    • Marginalized individuals in India are disproportionately affected by poor learning outcomes and insufficient connections between policymakers and employers, hindering youth development. Out of the 15 million youth entering the workforce each year, 75% of them are not job-ready or rather, they are unemployable.
    • How can reliable and dynamic data be made accessible to all as to enable individuals to find better career pathways and enable school-to work transition?
    • Can civil society help improve learning outcomes by defining key performance indicators within the education system, mandated by regulatory action for reporting and review?
    • How can data address employability skill deficits, empowering an individual to build a skillset, increase earned income and eventually break the cycle of​ poverty?
  • Data to Enable Community Resilience​
    • In 2021, India ranked 66th out of 195 on on the Global Health Security Index. The index evaluates various factors, including public health capacity, healthcare access, and emergency preparedness.​Elected local governments, citizens, and technology can work together as they did to tackle the spread of COVID-19, to build resilient communities which are better equipped to handle emergencies. For eg., Women Self Help Groups in 27 States produced around 19.6mn masks & 100k ltrs of sanitizer for their communities during the pandemic. Further, they can also improve access to health information & services, reducing loss of lives across preventable diseases.
    • How can communities take charge of the problems they see and experience?
    • How can data help improve ease of living and quality of life (including safety) in urban and rural areas, and providing better services to citizens?
    • Can common health-research dissemination platforms democratize access to healthcare expertise and reduce the inequity in accessing affordable services, especially for preventable diseases?
    • Can digital and physical platforms improve feedback mechanisms, enabling community interface with elected representatives, fostering a deeper sense of community​ ownership?
  • Data to Enable Climate and Sustainability ​
    • 40% of India’s food demand is met through rainfed agriculture; climate change affects food security leaving the poor and marginalized at huge risk of hunger and malnutrition.  Climate change is the defining crisis of the 21st century. India is the seventh most vulnerable of 180 countries to the effects of climate change, with their poorest and marginalized communities being the most at risk.
    • How can data empower communities to demand implementable smart responses to climate change?
    • Can data help agriculture and boost resilience of crops to climate change
    • Can they anticipate consequences and track vulnerability of communities affected by climate by data and evidence, to help them build resilience?
    • How can they plan cities better to ensure sustainability with adaption and mitigation​ strategies in place?

Benefits

• grant money (worth INR 10L for each of the three  winners; one from each thematic track)
• amplification support across partner platforms & networking opportunities
• mentorship (cohort based or 1-1 mentorship support from data experts)

They are looking for solutions that ​​

• ​Create platforms for easy sharing, usage, analysis and managing of data
• Ensure users have agency to drive data for improving solutions and services
• Build touchpoints to enable multi-stakeholder data interactions
• Strengthen systems for better supply of data

Eligibility Criteria

• The innovation should have passed the idea stage to either ready to deploy, or pilot, or proof of impact stage.​
• The innovation must show potential for scale and financial investment.​
• The core team should have strong organizational experience of scaling and sustaining social innovations in the past, especially those related to data or information technology. ​
• The project/innovation must align with one of the thematic tracks for the D4GX 2023 India Empowerment Challenge.
• Applicant should be a registered Nonprofit organisation in India.​
• The project/innovation must address at least one of the following barriers that impede data-led empowerment and build user-  centricity towards data through the solution:
  • Lack of universally acknowledged actionable metrics
  • Vulnerable communities are not truly empowered
  • Insufficient feedback loops enriching commons
  • Siloed and inaccessible data supply

For more information, visit D4GX 2023 India Empowerment Challenge.