Pioneers – Unlocking ideas from youth

SDG Digital GameChangers Award

Special Category: Pioneers – Unlocking ideas from youth

This award recognized a young innovator between the ages of 18 and 29 or a youth organization stepping forward, acting as a trailblazer, and bringing fresh perspectives and creative solutions to build a sustainable future. A USD 2000 award prize was granted to this category to finance the trip to the event in New York.

SDG Digital GameChangers Award Special Category: Pioneers — Special Category: Pioneers

Winner

Runner-up

Finalists

Project Name: Humans in the Loop
Organization: Humans in the Loop, Bulgaria
Stakeholder Type: Private Sector (Social Enterprise)

Humans in the Loop is a social startup promoting the inclusion of conflict-affected and displaced people in the digital labor market. Humans in the loop contributes to AI systems becoming more human-centric through diverse human input for training and monitoring them, while providing vulnerable people with decent work and upskilling opportunities.
The program provides trainings on data annotation, bias in AI, cybersecurity, etc., which help to promote the workers’ data and AI literacy, overcoming the global digital divide faced by many conflict-affected people residing in their country of origin or having left their homes, in particular women migrants.

Impact: they have provided paid online employment opportunities to more than 1000 people across the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa and have further upskilled 500 of them in digital skills and English

Jury members

Regina Valiullina

Academia Relations officer, International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

Aizhan Kapysheva

International development practitioner, Head of Solutions Mapping at the UNDP Accelerator Lab

Hamid Maher

Managing Director & Partner, BCG Casablanca

Hillary Bakrie

Associate Programme Officer on Youth, Innovation, and Technology, United Nations