Open Impact: 10 Organizations that are Changing the World with Open Principles

Iryna Nikolayeva, Product Manager at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research

Iryna about Center for Interdisciplinary Research

The Center for Interdisciplinary Research (CRI) is co-constructing and sharing new ways of learning, teaching, conducting research and mobilizing collective intelligence in the fields of life, learning and digital sciences, in order to face the world's sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Helen Turvey, CEO at the Shuttleworth Foundation

Helen about Shuttleworth Foundation

The Shuttleworth Foundation is a small social investor that provides funding to dynamic leaders who are at the forefront of social change. We look for social innovators who are helping to change the world for the better and could benefit from a social investment model with a difference. We identify amazing people, give them a fellowship grant, and multiply the money they put into their own projects by a factor of ten or more. The Foundation is at its core an experiment in open philanthropy and uses alternative funding methodologies and collaborative ways of working to ensure that every fellow receives the necessary support to succeed.

Prasad (Pram) Ram, Founder & CEO of Gooru

Pram about Gooru

Gooru innovates to accelerate learning for everyone. We developed Navigator, a GPS for learning, that builds a personalized path to guide learners to their destination. The free and open Navigator tool empowers instructors to implement Navigated Learning and give learners agency to meet their learning goals. Navigator brings together research and practice with an extensive curated catalog of standards aligned open education resources and facilitates systemic change by providing real-time actionable insights to learners, instructors, leadership, and all other stakeholders.

Bodo Hoenen, Founder of Dev4X, Open Innovator

Bodo about Dev4X

Dev4X was a side-project that turned into a fulltime mission. Started several years ago to work on developing an open crowd-generated Learning Map to help underserved kids learn. To then include developing a Doing Map, an open learner-generated map that ties everything you can learn to tangible problems you can solve in the real world. Now working together with Gooru on their GPS for learning, and the CRI + UNESCO on their project-based learning initiatives, this work is rapidly developing as a collective global project.

Lluvy Liu, former Global Leadership Fellow at the World Economic Forum

Lluvy about UpLink

Lluvy has recently helped to launch the Trillion Trees Challenge on UpLink, a digital platform to crowdsource innovations to accelerate the delivery of the UN SDGs. She will share her experience with how UpLink is able to surface and galvanize youth, change-makers, entrepreneurs and innovators for a better world, and link them up to the network and ecosystem of world leaders at the Forum.

Bill Young, Co-Founder of Shelter 2.0

Bill about Shelter 2.0

Shelter 2.0 is changing the way homelessness is being addressed. Shelter 2.0 is about sharing designs and ideas. The designs and cut files are offered to anyone who needs them, or has the desire to help those in need. The shelters are digitally fabricated with local manufacturing in mind. They are designed to help democratize the construction of transitional housing, being built using untrained labor and as few tools as possible.

David Simor, Senior Project Manager at 8 80 Cities

David about Open Streets Project / 8 80 Cities

Open Streets are programs that temporarily open streets to people by closing them to cars. We’ve worked in dozens of cities and on dozens of open streets programs around the world. We believe in making available as widely as possible information on open streets programs. The Open Streets Project is part advocacy project, part toolkit, part information database. It’s a one-stop shop for all things open streets related. We believe that every municipality, no matter the size, can benefit from open streets.

Dana Klug, Postdoctoral Research Assistant at University College London School of Pharmacy

Dana about Open Source Malaria

The Open Source Malaria project is trying a different approach to curing malaria. Guided by open source principles, everything is open and anyone can contribute. In open source research all data and ideas are freely shared, anyone may participate as an equal partner and there will be no patents - think "Linux for Malaria Research". Open Source Malaria has collaborators all over the world and has even been featured on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Katharina Elleke, Community nerd at Precious Plastic

Katharina about Precious Plastic

Precious Plastic exists to reduce plastic waste. Sometimes we do it through boosting recycling. Sometimes through new biodegradable materials. Some other time by adopting zero waste lifestyles. Whatever works. Our solutions see people as the key element to fix the plastic mess. Precious Plastic approaches count on people to bring about the necessary change. Small steps, multiplied by millions. That's where we can win our battle. Precious Plastic is a combination of people, machines, platforms and knowledge to create an alternative global recycling system.