Tag: Nick Martin

We’re excited, honored, and humbled to be featured in Fast Company as one of the “best learning resources for aspiring social entrepreneurs”, with recognition for the “hybrid” online/offline learning category!

Here are some highlights from the article:

  • “Their open courses draw an international audience of participants, interested in social media and social change. They also create custom courses in partnership with organizations such as the United Nations, World Bank, USAID, UNICEF, Red Cross, US State Department, training student leaders in Pakistan, civil society leaders in Sudan, or international aid workers.”
  • “Nick Martin, one of the founders of Techchange, saw a growing need in his field for continuing professional education. “We took dozens of online courses from all kinds of providers and found that most of them were pretty awful. So we set out to build a model that was more social, interactive, scalable, and suited to the needs of the social change community.”

See the full article on Fast Company here.Fast company logo_blog post

We’re excited that TechChange’s founder and president, Nick Martin, has been selected as one of the 2013 PopTech Social Innovation Fellows. The PopTech Social Innovation Fellowship program supports up-and-coming social entrepreneurs in scaling their solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems including human rights and healthcare.

Nick will be joining 10 other Social Innovation Fellows along with the Science Fellows this October at the ”Sparks of Brilliance” PopTech 2013 event in Camden, Maine. During this event, Nick will be receiving intensive training and mentorship from experts and peers that will ultimately help him make a greater impact in the online learning social enterprise arena.

Congratulations, Nick! You can follow him on Twitter @ncmart.

 

TechChange takes fun seriouslyWe’re excited to join the Tech Cocktail DC Startup Showcase tomorrow evening at the headquarters of 1776. If you’re attending this Tech Cocktail DC event, you’ll hear from TechChange Founder & CEO, Nick Martin, who has just returned from his travels in Amsterdam and Nairobi.

Nick will speak briefly on what makes TechChange unique among other startups and social enterprises in the DC area. You’ll also be able to check out some of TechChange’s latest online professional courses that are training leading organizations in international development including the World Bank, the U.S. Department of State, and USAID.

Hope to see you there! If you can’t make it, we’ll be live-tweeting the event @TechChange.

Also, don’t forget to vote TechChange for DC’s Hottest Showcasing Startup in the Tech Cocktail DC poll here.

Interested in learning about Mobile Phones for International Development? Early bird registration for our next class ends on February 25, 2013! Apply Now.

Last week, the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) published an article by Linda Raftree and TechChange Founder Nick Martin about challenges we saw upcoming in this field around mobile education (What’s Holding Back Mobile Phones for Education? (2/11/2013)).  But last week also marked the announcement of the winners for The Tech Challenge for Atrocity on “Capture.” What both of these events have in common is that they are entirely about the possibility of mobile phones to address global challenges.

According to the website, the Tech Challenge “sought new and innovative ways to enable the documentation of relevant evidence that may be used to deter or hold perpetrators accountable, while minimizing the risk posed to those collecting this information. These winning submissions were chosen on the basis of impact, innovation, scalability and feasibility.” Not surprisingly, the top three awards all went to mobile applications: MediCapt, Silent Lens, and International Evidence Locker.

If you haven’t learned about these innovative projects, we recommend that you head over to the USAID Blog or Humanity United and check them out. In particular, we’d like to congratulate our partners and friends on the Magpi team for their role in InformaCam, which claimed first prize in partnership with Physicians for Human Rights and InformaCam for developing MediCapt. According to Humanity United blog, “[t]his mobile app will equip doctors and nurses with critical tools for collecting, documenting and preserving court-admissible forensic evidence of mass atrocities including sexual violence and torture.”

But while these exciting tools promise new capabilities in atrocity prevention, the SSIR article we wrote also cautions not to take a tech-centric approach to problem solving. The success these tools will have once they are out of development don’t just depend on the latest features, but being in the hands of those who can skillfully apply their potential to the problems at hand. Sooner or later, all technology problems become education problems.

Shameless plug: For those who are unfamiliar with Magpi, please check out our blog post on Goodbye Episurveyor: Hello Magpi!, which lays out more detail on this tool. Or you can check out our video below: