Nicole was not shy on her gratitude: "The U.S. Department of State decided to fund the TIP hackathon to bring
together people from diverse backgrounds, in order to use technology to prevent trafficking.
As traffickers themselves use technology, we also need to use technology even wiser. The goal
was to create awareness, to foster networking and relationships, and to produce
products to prevent traffickers, which we successfully did.
We hope all the teams will go further and we’ve
already had interest in the products and heard from organisations that want to hear more. Thank
you also to the Estonian government officials that were here all weekend, as the Estonian
government works on this problem and we look forward to co-operate. Thank
you to the experts, who travelled all around the world to be here! Thank you to
Krists Avots, for all the technical help and for being a great host! And special thanks to
Jane Muts, who really pulled the event together over the
coming months and thus really rose to the challenge!"
The whole point of the hackathon was for the teams to get started. As by now they have delivered real working prototypes, they have to work even harder from now on to bring their concept to the world. We hope that everyone is motivated and as the Ministry of the Social Affairs of Estonia already told they will be using JobTraffick, we are confident that all the other products will be put in immediate use as well!
We were fortunate to have 2 guests from the U.S Department of State Nora Dempsey and Renee Huffman, who were impressed with the outcome of the hackathon. Nora Dempsey, the Senior Advisor for Innovation at the Office of e-Diplomacy and our Jury Member at the event, told us that it was very hard to choose the winners, because everyone has potential. "There is a recognition that we need to act with complete consciousness and to find innovative ways to solve the problems of human trafficking. So we were really impressed with Garage48 ability to invite all the interested parties to the event. The
openness and transparency and the connections that Garage48 has nurtured has
paid off," added Nora in hopes that the teams will also benefit from all the connections that they made during the event.
Renee Huffman also told that technology has huge importance in the government's perspective: "Our Office funds a lot of direct organisations that use
technology, such as hotlines to help the victims. Additionally, for example, our offices support the idea of digital payments. People who are being un-empowered, can afford to take care of their families with these payments."
Luckily, thanks to the 48-hours intense work marathon, the victims can benefit from many other services provided by our teams. Thank you to our jury members, who had the very difficult role of choosing the best of the best. So thank you to
Villem Alango - Senior Expert at E-Governance Academy
Hendrik Heinsoo - NodeJS Developer, Senior Software Developer at Signwise
Martin Verrev - Developer, co-founder at Qminder
Jaanus Sakkis - Creative Director / Co-Founder at Aplefly Games
Renee Huffman - Director of Social Services
Nora Dempsey - Senior Advisor for Innovation at the Office of e-Dimplomacy/ U.S. Department of State
Rene Rumberg - Head of Social Media Communications and Strategies at Idea Group
Kaspar Kelder - Director of Development and Partner Relations at Good Deed Foundation
Plus a BIG thank you to all of our members, who gave expert advice throughout the weekend: Jaanus Sakkis, Mihkel Ronk, Krists Avots, Jaan Kruusma, Rene Rumberg, Villem Alango, Ranno Päi, Kaspar Kelder, Calum Cameron, Martin Verrev, Nora Dempsey and Hendrik Heinsoo! Your are all incredible!
Plus, a big thank you to Marek Mühlberg from Tallinn University, who provided us with the lovely venue of the Baltic Film and Media School.
Let's now go to the the winners of Garage48 Trafficking in Persons:
Overall winner
THATO
Team lead: "I love my team - 20 minutes before
we were on, the server went down and you saved it!"
We are creating a platform with tools to help NGOs find and analyse advertisements that are evidence of trafficking. We are developing proof of concept prototypes of two tools during Garage48. The first program is to collect information of vulnerable persons whose services are being advertised on social media sites and create a database so NGOs can act on this information.The second is a program to recognise job adverts from traffickers, aimed at recruiting victims, that have been copy-and-pasted onto social media sites. We think these tools are needing in the race against traffickers and that there this great potential to develop them further into efficient investigative tools that could make a big difference.
Team members: Mhari Lawson - Team Leader, Mike Nelson - Developer/ Marketer, Gary Hess - Back-End Developer, Indrek Lasn - Front-End Developer, Kaisa Jarvpõld - Front-End Developer, Roman Krylov - Estonian Trafficking Specialist, Liudmila Avtutova - Moldovan Trafficking Specialist, Tatiana Vladicescu - Moldovan Trafficking Specialist, Armen Abrahamyan - Armenian Cybercrime Specialist
1st runner-up
Team Lead: "Ideas cost nothing, team costs! Thank you, team!
SafeBox is place for safe store copy of your travel documents and rescue system if trouble occurs. SafeBox is a free and easy-to-use service that provides:
- Opportunity to safely store copies of your documents
- Access to your documents when original documents are not available
- Rescue system for everyone in emergency situation
Team members: Volodymyr - software developer, idea owner, Svetlana - TIP specialist, develop emergency protocol, Maya - TIP specialist, develop alarm triggers, Pranay - Designer, Artem - Front-end dev, privacy policy specialist, Alexander - Marketing guru, Reinis - TIP specialist, marketing, Dora - Visionary, advertising
2nd runner-up
Team lead: "Anyone can do it and YAY to changing
the world!"
A place where job seekers can read and write reviews about employers. This is a community based on open and transparent communication, where honest dialogue between users is encouraged. This could be a great monitoring tool for all, including public, private, and nongovernmental sectors.
Team members: Nina Nikolova - Project Manager/TIP Specialist, Martin Grigors - Engineer, Martine Päi - Designer, Janika Talts - TIP Specialist, Rauno Kullas - Social Media, Robert Grigoryan - TIP Specialist
Thank you also to all our other teams:
EYESONTRAFFICK
Seen something wrong about a person? Report human trafficking NOW! A mobile application connected to a website allowing the general public to report suspicious activities or situations that could be connected to some kind of trafficking in humans, and send as evidence a photo and/or text message and GPS coordinates.
F(r)iend: The Game
F(r)iend is a mobile video game targeted at the audience of children of 11-15 years. It is a project that combines both entertainment and education approaches in order to facilitate the prevention of child-abuse related trafficking by means interactive communication simulation. The game includes the elements of arcade and quest genres and strives to deliver simple, but engaging gameplay. F(r)iend is supposed to be employed as an auxiliary means of extracurricular education in schools and other relevant institutions.
The game is expected to be distributed with the support of NGOs and governmental institutions involved in education process and anti-trafficking activities.
“UNSPOKEN STORY”
Unspokenstory.org is a safe environment, where everyone can anonymously tell about the bad experiences that have happened. We will not reveal, who they are. They are safe with us. We provide them with help from specialists, who know what to do in such situation. We connect them with people, who have been in difficult situation.
