Humanity Road announced today the selection of the 2013 Choice Awards for disaster response. We’re thrilled to announce recipients for our 2013 Da Vinci award. Significant and noteworthy service or product contribution, this medal is awarded to a Patron or contributor who has added significant value in support of Humanity Road programs. Through donations in kind or contributions they have helped mold shape and support the organization.
Award recipients of the Da Vinci Medal are chosen by the Humanity Road Board of Directors. This year’s recipients are Translator’s without Borders for their support during Typhoon Haiyan and Progeny Systems for their small business innovation partnership dedicated to process improvement. Both organizations provided critical support for Humanity Road disaster response operations for the Philippines.
Translators without Borders: As Typhoon Haiyan approached the coastline of the Philippines, Humanity Road reached out in partnership with Translators without Borders for assistance. Their response to our request was fast and within hours we had our first translation assistance. Lois Goldman and Noemi Katuin were assigned to our team and their support continued for weeks. They helped monitor social media in language and translated text and video messages emerging in social media.
The support provided by Translators without Borders helped save lives and also provided message relay support to reunite families who were rescued. To learn more about the work of Translators without Borders, visit http://translatorswithoutborders.org/
Progeny Systems: In 2013 Humanity Road worked in conjunction with Progeny Systems under The Small Business Innovation Research (or SBIR) program on the development of a tool to help collect and classify actionable data. This project helps support our mission goals by rapidly identifying high priority signal within the noise of social media.
For the Philippines, this involved rapid assessment of more than 1 million tweets which were filtered and classified to just 4,000 potentially actionable messages. Progeny Systems offers a full array of computing systems to support the development, testing and integration of leading edge technology systems. To learn more about the work of Progeny Systems visit https://www.progeny.net/
More than 10,000 people in the Philippines received direct aid as a result of our Philippines response. “Through these kind of global partnerships we help improve the disaster response model.” Said Chris Thompson, President and Chairman of the Board for Humanity Road “Our board is committed to excellence and innovation, and we’re very fortunate to have the opportunity to work with Translators Without Borders and Progeny Systems.
“ It was a great pleasure working with both of them in 2013 and we’re very appreciative for their contributions. Their service has been significant and noteworthy, and we extend our thanks to them for their service in 2013”