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.
(Archived) Software Development for Social Innovation (Grey-box's Projects)
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 does not have access to the minimum speed for the Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem. HOW: In a nutshell, we are wrapping up our pilot project in Canada, Madagascar, Congo, Cameroun, Mexico and South Soudain. The mandate is to ensure a solid IT infrastructure that allows this project to scale and add additional features related to cybersecurity, speed improvement and better connectivity.
(Archived) Commercialization - 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: The internship will involve working on the financial aspects of 2 of our main projects: UNI , our offline connectivity projects designed for EdTech and MedTech applications and, 2) Project Codex , our medical terms translation tool designed for MedTech uses. Those projects will require a market and financial analysis. The intern will be tasked to estimating revenue, costs, and researching go-to-market strategies in the North American market.
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.
Commercialization - Social Impact Project
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 does not have access to the minimum speed for the Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem. HOW: In a nutshell, we are wrapping up our pilot project in Canada, Madagascar, Congo, Cameroun, Mexico and South Soudain. The mandate is to ensure a solid administrative and financial structure that allows this project to scale since the goal to open our marketplace to allow NGOs and organizations worldwide to purchase directly.
Team lead Agile Development
We are looking for students to act as a Scrum Master/ Team Lead/ Project Manager. You will support the team by ensuring that tasks are clearly defined, documented and followed up on. Regular reviews of the project and communication with the team will allow you to detect task dependencies and allow visibility of your project's priorities. Grey-box is a social innovation startup that is currently incubating on multiple projects; here's a partial list: Project Symmetry - Improve the translation efforts for under-represented languages on Wikipedia by using ML. Project Mesh - Allow low-cost Android devices to connect themselves wirelessly over WiFi or Bluetooth Project CyberCafe - Allow an Android device to manage how it shares its hotspot internet connectivity with other devices Project Web Scraper - A Chrome extension that allows creating an offline copy of a web page or a whole website Project Codex - This project aims at translating & finding equivalence for medical data and equipment. See More
Website Optimisation (Wordpress)
We have a website, and we are looking to optimize it. Why? Our main market is remote communities where internet connectivity is an issue. Take a look: grey-box.ca , we are a social impact organization, so #code4good ! So our website has to load fast. We use Wordpress, with a Divi template. The site works in 3 languages, and we have about 10k$ of ads per month on it (Google Grant)
Live streaming / Podcast Production
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. We recently started a series of live conversations with social innovation professionals designed to help take non-profits to higher levels. The goal, to share ideas, strategies, tips and use cases to help other non-profits, social enterprises, and B Corps elevate their organizations. We aim to bring in non-profit leaders from a variety of industries and are keen to hear about your challenges and successes that could help others learn and improve.
Open-source medical translation tool for international NGO field work (Project Codex)
WHO: Grey-box is a social innovation startup working to bridge the digital gap and accessible educational content in remote areas where the internet and the electricity grid are unreliable. WHY: Health crises caused by natural or human-made disasters are often met by support from the international community. Too often, the language barrier slows down the efforts to provide medical equipment quickly in the field. As such, variations in naming conventions and local drug brands exacerbate the confusion - as names for pharmaceuticals vary between countries, even if they speak the same language. HOW: The goal is to provide an accessible and easy-to-use tool (many health professionals on the ground are using WhatsApp) that can be used to translate medical terms and equipment between various languages.
Customer interview & user stories mapping
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 have not connected to the internet in the last 3 months. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the internet. We are looking to have students that can analyse customer those interviews and highlight specific user stories that will be used by our IT team and our Marketing team to align their tasks with the customer needs. We will provide the customer interview recording & examples to follow. Highlight key customer needs and stories Qualify the customer with existing personas Create a series of video excerpts (highlights) that will be used in user stories Presenting the case studies in our Knowledge Management Software (KMS) Following up with the team to share and improve the documentation and key insights.
A portable cyber coffee shop manager for rural internet (Project Cybercafe)
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 have not 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 : In a nutshell, the current project (codenamed: CyberCoffee) aims at providing low-cost Android devices like UNI (https://www.grey-box.ca/uni/) with the ability to share their internet connection (usually through a 4G modem) with a group of users and manage everyone's access with more precision. The goal is to ensure that no individual user can slow down the access of the whole group by using too much bandwidth or monopolizing the available data.
Mesh Networking for Android Devices (Project Mesh)
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, the current project (codenamed : Mesh) aims at providing low-cost android devices like UNI (https://www.grey-box.ca/uni/) with mesh networking capabilities in order to be able to share storage, communications (IM) and increase their total network range. 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
Chrome Extension for Offline ressources for remote communities (Project Scraper)
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 does not have access to the minimum speed for internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem. HOW: In a nutshell, the current project (codenamed: Web Crawler) takes the shape of a web browser extension (chrome and chromium) that allows scraping individual webpages or even a whole domain (ex: 5 pages deep). The result is a cloned website that can be accessed by remote communities without reliable access to the internet.
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
(Archived) Educational Content Translation through Machine Learning
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 example, improve Molière English Wikipedia article based on the content available only on the french page - and vice versa). The idea is to improve the overall Wikipedia content, especially in underrepresented languages. Grey-box is a nonprofit structured under the principle of mobile-first and remote-first.