We are really excited to announce that Sapelli has been named among the 2014 Nominet Trust 100 (NT100) – a global list of 100 inspiring ventures from around the world. Projects featured on the list are using technology to tackle some of the world’s biggest social problems from education and human rights abuses to climate change and health. Following a global call for nominations earlier this year Sapelli, was selected by an independent steering committee in recognition of its ability to empower the world’s most marginalised communities to take action to protect their local environments and ways of life.
From tropical forests to Arctic sea-ice indigenous peoples are the gatekeepers to key environments on which the future of our planet depends. The knowledge within these communities is vital to sustainably manage these areas. Sapelli was initially developed to map local resources and monitor logging company respect for the rights of indigenous Pygmy populations in the Congo Basin. Now it is being adapted for use anywhere, where local populations face environmental management or environmental justice issues, from the rainforests of Brazil to the ice-floes of Alaska. The app runs on rugged Android smartphones, and can be rendered entirely icon-based. It provides a number of unique features and meets the basic data collection and transmission requirements of our current projects while allowing for reuse in other contexts.
For more details on the Nominet Trust award, see:
http://socialtech.org.uk/nominet-trust-100/2014
http://www.socialtech.org.uk/projects/sapelli/
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