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The Global Digital Transformation Clinic (GDT Clinic) is a program of the Frugal Innovation Hub that specializes in helping social enterprises, non-profit organizations, and government programs operating in low-resource settings embrace technology through mobile and web applications. By collaborating closely with partner organizations, the GDT Clinic assesses their digital technology needs and explores free, readily available tools. When necessary, it also develops custom solutions from scratch to help these organizations reach more beneficiaries through mobile technology, scale their operations, or improve internal processes by leveraging digital technologies.
If your organization could use our help or if you would like to help us in any way, email us at fih@scu.edu.
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The GalápaGo! team teamed up with the Galapagos Chamber of Tourism to develop a tourist-friendly application that encourages visitors to explore local businesses, respect sustainability efforts, and learn social customs.
Organization: Chamber Of Tourism
Advisor: Silvia Figueira PhD
Students: Kristina Andersen, Kat Hibbert, Mariah Manzano, Catrina Nguyen, Jilian Coveney, Junhan Deng, Abhilash Harish and Briana McGovern
Smallholder farmers worldwide are highly vulnerable to climatic variations as most depend on rain-fed agriculture. Additionally, the farmers cultivate marginal areas susceptible to climate change and lack critical access to real-time climate forecasting that supports their decision-making process. By utilizing human-centric design and frugal innovation principles, we developed a mobile phone application called NicaAgua with and for our partner organization CII-ASDENIC. Its basic capabilities are: uploading and sharing timely data from a local weather station, broadcasting weather and water information such as flood warnings and visualizing weather forecast data to better prepare farmers for crop planting and harvesting given weather variations and climatic changes.
Click here to learn more about the NicaAgua app.
Organization: ASDENIC
Advisor: Angela Musurlian, Allan A. Báez Morales, Iris Stewart-Frey, Ed Maurer
Students: Alexa Grau, Justin Ling, Greta Setlz, Abhilash Harish, Briana McGovern, Giuliano Silva Zanotti, Gautam Chitnis, Tanmay Singla, Alexander Avila, Turner Uyeda, Sara Wheeler, Briana Guingona
Every year, 11 million metric tons of plastics enter our ocean on top of the estimated 200 million metric tons that currently circulate in our marine environments. Plastic has been found in more than 60% of all seabirds and 100% of sea turtle species. The ECOINS game teaches young kids to prevent plastic, glass, and cartons from reaching the ocean. They also learned that all recyclable items need to be clean, dry, and separated to be disposed of. Moreover, while playing the ECOINS game, kids can win ECOINS (points) that their parents can later exchange for movie tickets, food at restaurants, and many other activities.
ECOINS was in the news in Costa Rica. Check it out!
Click here to play the ECOINS game.
Organization: ECoins
Advisor: Allan Baez Morales, Silvia Figueira PhD
Grad Students: Tanmay Singla, Atharva Viraj Kukade, Gautam Chitnis
UNICEF estimates that there are 7,000 street children in Rwanda while close to 300,000 live in families where a minor is the head of the household. Sheer-Love Rwanda is dedicated to reaching street children to reintegrate them back into their local community through education. The Sheer Love Rwanda app seeks to engage those children in educational activities via mobile phone technology. The Homelga app allows children to do their homework via mobile phone technology. A second application for this organization called TwigeEnglish helps kids improve their English by doing phone exercises on the mobile phone.
Organization: Sheer Love Rwanda
Advisor: Silvia Figueira PhD
Grad Students: Shashikala Mahadevappa, Supraja Sampathkumar, Jagadeesh Marali,
Deep Virag Savla, Jagadeesh Marali, Rani Rajurkar, Vivek Saravanan, Dion DuPree, DeVon DuPree, Brian Burnett, Jillian Coveney, Kristin Tong, Nanki Sekhon
Public elementary and middle schools in the US encounter multiple challenges to better serve their students. From financial problems to a lack of infrastructure to internal information management. The Equation2Success app seeks to provide a technological tool for elementary and middle schools located in disenfranchised areas of L.A., California, USA to identify and keep track of internal cases of students such as bullying, academic deficiencies, or classroom issues. The app will also track and share successful cases where issues got solved so best practices can be shared. The goal of the app is to build a community support network within schools that involves all stakeholders to solve students’ issues.
Organization: Equation2Success
Advisor: Allan Baez Morales, Silvia Figueira PhD
Grad Students: Shashikala Mahadevappa, Jagadeesh Marali, Supraja SampathKumar, Aishwarya Subhlok, Gautam Chitnis, Tejas Potty, Saurabh Thalkari, Nisarg Bhalavat, Akshay Bhandary, Harsh Zota
There are multiple project management tools that are suitable for industry; however, these tools often become too sophisticated and unintuitive for small organizations to follow. TreeVerse is GDT’s Clinic custom project management tool that facilitates collaboration with our partner organizations worldwide, centralizes all project documentation, and streamlines the onboarding process for new students joining a project. TreeVerse is built on more than 10 years of experience developing digital technologies for small and mid-sized organizations.
Organization: Frugal Innovation Hub and worldwide universities
Advisor: Allan Baez Morales, Silvia Figueira PhD
Grad Students: Rahul Dhiman, Suyash Salvi, Rishita Bhatt, Saurabh Thalkari, Sachin Prabhakar and Saurabh Shivkumar
