Filipinos in the Stockholm Challenge

The Stockholm Challenge is what they term the “global arena for ICT projects.” This is a challenge that focuses on the creative ways of using IT to empower people. There are five projects from the Philippines:

• Art Experience
  Their goal is to have a large venue for experiencing art and using it to express peace. The latest update says that there is currently a registration for those who want to participate in the attempt to make a the world’s longest painting to break the Guinnes record (currently it is Canada).

• Community Health Information Tracking System
  I have heard Dr. Alvin Marcelo and Dr. Cito Maramba in Linux World talk about this. It is a a modular, multilingual, computerized patient record. It’s open source! There have been some training going on using CHITS already and if you want to know how open source software can impact our health care system, check it out.

• Project Ryan (Hot City Wireless)
  Their mission is: “To eradicate the digital divide using WiFi technology and to bolster advanced learning and offering increased economic opportunity to those communities that are in the pockets of extreme poverty.” They also have what they call Wifi on Wheels.

• Rice Knowledge Bank
  Familiar with the acronymn IRRI? It’s the International Rice Research Institute. The goal of the project is to help rice farmers increase their income by giving them access to the information and training they need. The Rice Knowledge Bank is the world’s leading portal for training and extension information on everything about rice.

• Young MDG
  This is a site about the Millenium Development Goal that wants to teach the young. At this time, I could not access the site but maybe you could try clicking on it later on.

It’s interesting what people have been doing. I am particularly interested in CHITS, Project Ryan and the Rice Knowledge Bank.

What I see in CHITS is the potential to making handling of medical records better. Imagine your records in public health centers and hospitals in electronic form and that they can be shared by these health centers and hospitals so the doctors would know your history especially if there are times of emergency and you weren’t brought to the hospital where you have your complete records.

As for Project Ryan, I want to see that in action, you know, making people have access to more information and using the Internet as a communication tool. I would like to know how exactly they would facilitate in the learning.

The Rice Knowledge Bank is something very useful as we have rural areas where farmers abound. They have fact sheets available, information sheets that they could use for observing their crops, etc. Here’s a link to Rice Patents.

I am excited to know what the results of the Stockholm Challenge would be.