Can BE

When giving to the less fortunate becomes obvious, poverty becomes a memory.

Comment

Making giving to the less fortunate not only reasonable, but obvious. Eliminating poverty and inequality by providing financial incentive for those with the most to give to the least.

Inspiration

Our team observed there is a vicious cycle of poverty affecting the lives of millions in the developing world. We are inspired by the unused potential within international communities where individuals fail to find and develop their unique skills and capabilities. We have identified a feedback loop between inequality, lack of opportunity and poverty that is reinforced by the lack of access to quality education. These growing issues have sparked excitement in our team to propose a viable solution that improves access to relevant knowledge based on one's search activity trends.

What we are proposing

To undertake this problem, we have developed a service targeting unemployed or underemployed population to leverage untapped skills, provide educational resources and connect these people to demands in the job market. The process would look like this:

  • Give out laptops to the beneficiary population with pre-installed applications;
  • Find data analyzing their history in Chrome (done through an extension we've developed);
  • Based on real-time insight, it will prompt users to ensure their interest in the frequent topics the system find;
  • Upon confirmation, suggest sources for the individual to learn more/ formalize their skill sets/ professionalize;
  • Direct people to courses, schools or universities and work opportunities;
  • After this process, the laptop itself will be a tool for work to the user.

How we built it

We started with a long discussion around how to solve the fundamental economic obstacle of global development — the lack of incentive to contribute. We needed to devise a strategy which renders providing resources for the least fortunate among us an obvious decision. If you can create a world where the most selfish man gives money to the less fortunate for the most selfish reasons, you can create a world without income, job, and education inequality, and you can create a world without poverty.

Challenges we ran into

Changing human nature is hard. Creating technology however is easy. We sought to use this arbitrage as a means to create a system which motivates people to give to the less fortunate out of financial self-interest. But devising such a world is far easier said than done, which is why we came at this problem with a little coffee and a lot of patience. Finding an economically viable solution is the first step. Building it out and proving it works is another matter entirely. We’re proud to have arrived at a solution we truly believe could solve this problem, and we’re looking forward excitedly to sharing it with you.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Saving the world is a banal platitude, overused and under-appreciated to the point of being almost politically incorrect. But when you find a solution to a problem of economics and human nature so grounded in reality that it actually has the potential to meet such a standard, it almost brings chills. We're proud of the basis of our proposal, and we're happy that in 24 hours we came up with a solution that has the potential to change the lives of potentially over a billion people.

What we learned

Don't fight human nature. Harness it to provide a means to motivate socially responsible behavior.

What's next for Can BE

Moving forward Can BE aims to become a mainstream tool to unlock opportunities for employers to search for a qualified workforce directly. Thus it would enable distribution of skills to offer and the demands.

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