What’s really cool is that we can see

[jrineakter]

In "Building a data-driven culture for a sustainable tomorrow," I interviewed Brett Jenks, the CEO of Rare. Rare is a global conservation NGO on the forefront of using technology and data to protect the most vulnerable ecosystems around the world. Here’s an excerpt, and I’m quoting Brett Jenks below:

“Our goal in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Honduras, Brazil, and Mozambique is to help coastal communities restore their fish populations, boost their incomes, protect the coral reefs and mangroves on which their economies depend. These are the outcome data and we are literally measuring fish populations underwater, changes in household economics, and the total area under new protection as a result of our work. But to manage the growth of our impact, we need to collect output data as well. So we are tracking funding raised, the volume of fish sold, the number of fishermen registered to fish legally, the number of coastal mayors who have signed on to adopt the Fish Forever model.


in real-time how these millions of dollars are moving through remote coastal fishing communities, which were never before considered in national economic models. We can track the signing by local mayors of a global commitment to restore coastal fisheries as each signs up in countries around the globe. (...)



I loved the day our fisheries team rolled out a new dashboard to the Executive Team. They said, ‘Okay, click here and you can start tracking progress across all our major canada whatsapp number data measures in real-time.’ That was something I had dreamed about a decade ago. The desire was there, but we were missing a few key tech-savvy scientists and a platform that makes data sharing so compelling.



Today, we have a system established that not only allows us to house our often-disparate datasets under one roof, but also helps us discuss and share program insights, and, crucially, it provides simple, powerful ways of linking and summarizing datasets. The ability to quickly make sense of data from a wide range of sources and forgo the time and effort of managing numerous file formats is critical for accurate interpretation and efficient data-driven decision-making. The ease of integrating data with a number of other platforms, whilst maintaining a live connection to data.world, provides us with a powerful method of dissemination. Data is available in real-time in a comprehensible and accessible format to those who need it, when they need it.”

Social Responsibility
One of the very first communities that was active on data.world was Data for Democracy. While individual members continue to have a strong presence on our platform, we have worked hard to foster other similar organizations in the Data for Good or Data for Social Responsibility efforts. We feel that data is a great equalizer, whether you are a giant corporation or a single user working to make the world a better place, and want to ensure that our tools are available to all. We continue to work closely with Data Ethics efforts as well as being a prominent sponsor and data repository for events like Code for America's Civic Camp.

One of our newest communities is DXC’s Open Badge Academy. DXC is using data.world as the backbone of one of their AI certification badges. DXC exists as an organization on data.world and the majority of the students operate under free public licenses.

In addition to the support we’re providing to coastal fisheries, we’re also working with Rare in another way through the US-based branch of Rare called Make It Personal. We’re creating an app that calculates an individual's carbon offset based on credit card statements and provides a simplified, no-brainer option to purchase carbon offsets. The team includes some amazing organization and brands, including Rare, data.world, Visa, Yale, and Aceable. This kicked off at SXSW, where I was proud to secure a speaking slot for Brett Jenks at Capital Factory and a meeting with our Mayor, Steve Adler.

We love to watch people change the world through data, and want to make sure those who are performing the change have as much support as possible.