Breaking Barriers With AI
What is the issue we are trying to address?
The gender discrimination issue is huge in South Asia. Women are second class citizens from the moment they are born. The World Health Organisation indicates 1008:1000 as the expected female to male ratio in a population but in parts of India it is as low as 900:1000, sometimes even lower. This is made worse by social evils like the dowry system (or bride money) which leads to the girl child becoming a financial burden for her family, and therefore she is unwanted. If she survives, she is constantly neglected and her needs put below those of her male relatives. As a result, women suffer from bad health and shorter lifespans. It impacts the entire society as women are not able to participate fully in the social and economic life of the country.
How did we get this idea?
Our team members have worked in Bangladesh and India, in remote areas where gender discrimination is especially pronounced. We have witnessed first-hand how gender imbalance has far-reaching impact on a community. We feel that AI and ML are powerful tools that can be harnessed to bring about much-needed social change.
How would we like to use AI to address this issue?
We hope to be able to use AI to analyse census data as well as other data like environmental, economic and agricultural activity, health information, mortality from publicly available sources for different parts of India. We will use that data to understand drivers of women’s birth rates, health and longevity. We will try and understand the factors that lead to their better health and then this will help formulate action plans that can be taken in areas with high gender discrimination and lower lifespans of women and girl children to promote better lives for everyone.
What do we want to do?
We want to build a machine learning model based on various data sets available (mentioned above) to identify patterns. This can be used by an NGO working in this area and then their decisions will be based on how best to address these issues, backed by the patterns they see via our app. This will make their work more effective.
Why is our idea unique?
ML is being used to correlate environmental, economic, agricultural data, however we are unaware if the work is specifically targeted at improving women’s health and longevity. Also none of the results from the ML exercise are publicly available to any user NGO in an app form. Our aim is to make it accessible to everyone promoting open source data, so that effective solutions backed by data can be implemented.
Team members:
Nishka
Hi I’m Nishka. I enjoy coding as it is creative and has the power to transform the way we do things, for instance, through AI. When I was 8 we moved to the UK from India and I started learning Python at our local code club. I joined my school Robotics team as the coder – we went up to the nationals and then to the World Finals in Kentucky! Two years back I was invited to be part of the Young Coders Conference, and this opened up a whole new world for me. I met other young people like me and became part of the young coder community. I started running workshops to teach coding to other young people, especially those who aren’t lucky enough to have easy access – both in the UK and on my summer visits to India, and have so far run 40 workshops teaching around a thousand participants directly. It has taught me so much. In mid-2018 the idea of Young Coders Meet Ups was born and I took part in the development sessions. Other young people were invited and there were monthly meet-ups over the next six months. We learnt new ideas and concepts every time. Our community has grown stronger and we continue to work together, helping and supporting each other, and making a difference to the wider community.
Femi
My name is Femi. I started coding when I was 8 and since then I've run coding workshops to hundreds of young people across the UK and globally. In February 2018 I was part the Young Coders Conference and together with some other young coders have founded the YCM. The YCM is an awesome place for young people to meet up collaborate and develop 21st century skills. The wide variety of topics covered means we get a taste of all aspects of coding, from web design to AR and VR. I love coding as it is really cool when you can make something that helps lots of people so easily. One awesome thing about the YCM is that it is youth-led meaning that we get to choose what we want to learn about. Also the diversity, inclusion and gender parity is amazing and really adds to the diverse young coders community.
Thomas
My name is Thomas and I have a passion for coding and video games. I love coding because of how much it covers. I started coding with my passion for video games, making small games in Scratch. Now I have moved to a game engine called Unity. I love making games in Unity because I can make my ideas a reality. However this keeps my range of things I make very small. The YCM makes this better because I have had the opportunity to try coding much more than I would do otherwise.