Jasky Foundation, the family foundation of Stax Payments co-founder Jacques Fu, has partnered with the global nonprofit DataKind to assemble and guide volunteers to use their tech skills to solve a persistent problem: food insecurity.
Fu believes technology can help solve the problem, and that’s why he engaged DataKind's help. Area data scientists have been invited to participate in a weekend "data dive” that begins Friday, Oct. 13. The event will be held at Credo Conduit at 1001 N. Orange Ave., kicking off at 6 p.m.
Like a hackathon — where computer programmers come together for a social coding event to improve upon or build a new software program — a data dive organizes technical experts specializing in data to find and use data. In this case, volunteer teams will build and showcase data-driven applications aimed at benefiting society.
Data science already has been proven to address food insecurity successfully by fostering precision agriculture which maximizes crop yields, improving drought predictions to save crops and preventing food waste, according to an article on the University of Texas website.
In this instance, data will be harnessed to address hyper-local issues.
“We're bringing everyone to hack on the same social impact problem,” said Caitlin Augustin, DataKind vice president of product and programs. “They’ll use their collective knowledge and collective power to build a data and technology solution that can solve benefits access problems here in Central Florida."
She explained that barriers to accessing benefits means there’s money left on the table — some funds the government has designated for social services never gets spent on that because of challenges residents have getting to it.
“We want to shift from the passive mode, which is that services like food benefits are available, to something active where we go find the people who would benefit most from these services and get them enrolled. Data can help with that,” she said.
More than 500,000 metro Orlando residents are living with food insecurity, Second Harvest Food Bank’s 2020 numbers showed. The problem likely has worsened since then.
Even in a region with 625 local nonprofit feeding programs, where hundreds of thousands of free meals are served daily, the problem persists. More than one in seven local residents lack access to enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle for all household members, or lack access to nutritionally adequate foods, according to the 2022 Community Health Needs Assessment created by the Central Florida Collaborative — a group of local organizations that work to meet health and community needs.
DataKind events take place all over the world and Orlando groups have hosted events before. Augustin is an Orlando native and still lives here, as DataKind is 100% virtual.
At the event, volunteers will be organized into teams in a large space with breakout areas in case a team needs more private space to have a video call. There will be three work blocks on Saturday and one on Sunday. Some community experts will be in the room to answer questions and others will be virtual. The idea is to provide the right resources for the volunteers.
DataKind was founded in 2012 in New York City by Jake Porway, a data scientist who went on to work in the New York Times research and development lab and now writes on responsible use of technology for The Rockefeller Foundation. Established during the first “data for good” movement, DataKind has gone on to establish itself globally, with staff and volunteers in San Francisco; Washington, DC; London; Bengaluru, India; and Singapore.
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