Copy
Our 4th Newsletter
Together, we are building a brighter future for all.

A Letter From SciFY

January  2015

2014: the seeds of growth for 2015

2014 has come to an end. This has been a challenging and exciting year! Why? Well, where should we start?
For starters, because we have sowed the seeds for three more innovative solutions for real life problems. As you will see below, we started working on two projects to strengthen e-Democracy and citizen participation and another one to h
elp blind children play. (So excited!)


Then, because for the first time in our (short) history, we have full-time employees. Since we took on more big projects, we need to have more than our precious volunteers working on them.

And last, because we have started looking to fund our most promising projects, so that they have maximum social impact. Some people say we should have done this earlier on, that these solutions are much needed. But the first 2 years of our life we wanted to build credibility, to show we are a real non-profit that wants to build a brighter, more open future for all. And so we did. Thank you all for your support! Now, we'll need you more, to support our funding efforts
.

 

The latest news

Well, since we last wrote to you, we kept our hands busy. See for yourself below our innovative projects on e-democracy, our initiatives on pluralism in news and our results on assistive technologies for disabled people.
We want to have you with us along the way.
Only together can we grow.

 
Have a wonderful 2015!

The latest news

Games
for blind children

We like breakthroughs, especially when they help solve real-life problems. And it was painful to learn that blind children practically do not have games to play with. So we decided to do something about it: The LEAP* project.


We are working on developing computer games for blind children, using high tech to do it. Games that will use an auditive interface and that are being designed using input from the kids themselves. The goals are clear: Help them enjoy play time, create solutions that are open and inclusive. Actually, the path to building the solutions is a learning process for us all! Learn more here or follow the project on Facebook

Remote control for handicapped people


We have worked on building FeIRd, an adaptive remote control for people with disabilties for some time now. One that would help them use basic home appliances such as the TV or the stereo by themselves. One that would offer them some more independency. People form Elpis Philanthropy advisors checked it, were convinced that it is useful and helped us get financial support to build the first 100 devices and offer them to people with disabilities.

Well, we were happy to offer the first devices to ELEPAP foundation, that supports handicapped children.
Read more here.
 

Youth Investigative Journalism Contest

Young journalists using high tech to collect facts and stats, investigate and write their stories based on the findings? Yes, we think it is cool, too!

So, in line with our commitment to strengthen pluralism in news coverage and democracy, we have collaborated with CafeBabel, Oikomedia and NCSR Demokritos to establish an Investigative Journalism Award, which will encourage young professionals to get deeply involved with investigative journalism and technological advances.
Learn more at the site of the contest.

Strengthening eDemocracy with innovative projects

We are excited we started working on two projects that aim to strengthen democracy. Funded by the "We are all citizens" programme, we work on:
1. Strengthening public consultations of draft laws with DemocracIT project*. We aspire to make public consultations productive, reinforce citizen participation and give lawmakers actionable data to work on.
Check out the project site for more or
follow on Facebook.

2. Strengthening the institutional role and effectiveness of Civil Society with PPI Project*. Learn more at the project site.

 
 

NewSum @ Innovathens

You probably know NewSum by now. It is the only app in the world that summarizes news form many sources to bring you pluralistic news at a glance.

We were happy we met at Innovathens to talk about it and its role in journalism. Thank you all for your participation!

(Download it for your android device).



See some of the media coverage here
 

Sharing knowledge:
SciFY Academy

SciFY Academy
Each one of us and people in our communities have knowledge they are willing to share. So, this is what we do with SciFY Academy: we freely share this knowledge with all of you.
Every other Thursday we are discussing issues on informatics management and more. Thanks for your interest and feedback! We are planning to make this bigger in 2015.
Check out a short list of issues recently covered and follow us on Facebook to learn about the next topics!
Informatics
Meteor (2 presentations)
Intro to Scrum (Agile software development methodology)
Apache Giraph: Fast, Scalable graph processing

Management & Marketing
Google Analytics
Focusing on Action: The Asana Project Management System
Presenting how to present presentations in public
The Innovation Blind Spot

Open Data & FOSS contribution

- All our projects are offered under free open source licences on GitHub.
- We talked about opensource licences at Innovathens
- We closely collaborate with Greek Open Source Community; so we took part in various FOSS events

e talked at
Embedded image permalink

Internships


This summer, 7 students did their internships in SciFY; 2 of them came from abroad!

We were glad we had the opportunity to help them grow, so we gave them challenging tasks they could complete with our help.

We are happy they still contact us and want to support us!

*Key Projects Funding

DemocracIT, LEAP and PPI projects are funded by the Greek NGO Programme “We are all Citizens” which is part of the EEA & Norway Grants for Greece.

The Bodossaki Foundation is the Fund Operator of this Programme.

The Programme aims to strengthen civil society and enhance the contribution of NGOs to social justice, democracy and sustainable development.

Work in SciFY

Working in SciFY has always been a pleasure and a learning experience. Where can we start talking about it?

When we focus on results and share knowledge during the scrum meetings every day? When we make popcorn or cotton candies? Or when we celebrate victories playing bouzouki?

Thank you all for the great teamwork!

 
Follow on Twitter    Friend on Facebook    +1 on Google+ 
SciFY
Our mailing address is:
17, Amphiktyonos str., Thissio, 118 51 Athens - Greece
unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences 
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp