Making All Voices Count’s #Tech4Resilience pitching competition took place in the Philippines last week amid a typhoon that rattled the 2015 ‘Map the Philippines Unconference’ as well as the windows in the conference centre.

In June, we launched an online call for ideas that worked on either strengthening community resiliency or improving planning and budgeting for disaster resiliency and response.

Submissions were assessed by the Making All Voices Count team, and the 12 finalists with the best ideas were invited to pitch in front of the jury at the event in Manila. In the end, three winners were selected by a jury including representatives from Mozilla, the reAMB Disaster Response Operations Monitoring and Information Center, the WWF and the Affiliated Network for Social Accountability. The winners will all work with our South to South Lab to connect with mentors and experts who can help make their ideas into effective projects.

Winners

• Open Garden’s ‘Firechat and Greenstone’ project helps to answer some of the most challenging questions about network availability and communication in disaster response, ensuring that interlinked and portable Bluetooth devices can relay key information in emergencies.
• Code-NGO’s winning idea adapts free, existing tools to make sure that local funds for disaster management are being used properly, working with citizen monitors and CSO networks to strengthen the Philippines disaster response and resilience planning and organisation.
• Finally, the Government of the Philippines’ Isaac Linatoc, who works in theDepartment of Health also won with an app that captures information on drug availability and expiry for up to date and effective tracking during disasters and emergencies.

Pitching Competitions

#Tech4Resilience is one of a series of pitching competitions that Making All Voices Count is holding, using competitive approaches to finding the best technology and innovation-based ideas to fight corruption, improve transparency and empower marginalised communities.

See what teams at #Tech4Gov Pakistan, #EdTech and #IncYOUbateIt have been pitching over the last year, and keep watching our twitter feed for the next competition and how to submit your ideas.