Geeks Without Bounds

Geeks Without Bounds is an accelerator for humanitarian projects. We take teams through a six month mentorship cycle to bring good intentions to a state of deployment. Humanitarian response is a long-standing community with a diverse ecosystem of organizations and methods. Recent focus on crowd sourcing and crisis mapping has brought an influx of technology volunteers and digital humanitarians to this already complex system. Contributing to response efforts without unnecessarily complicating this ecosystem is a difficult task. One way of guiding this surge of attention has been through hackathons, where developers come together with experts to address stated problems. However, this model lacks a key component: a way for people to continue development after the event. Our solution is an accelerator for humanitarian initiatives. We propose a solution to connect developers with an expanded and ever more able global community of responders who can aid in tool learning, maintenance, and further development. We take teams through a process of acceleration which builds upon the best parts of current humanitarian response, and then feeds back into that community. With your support, Geeks Without Bounds will create better tools and the transition necessary to integrate them more effectively into both global response awareness and affected populations.