A portable cyber coffee shop manager for rural internet (Project Cybercafe)
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they have not connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, the current project (codenamed: CyberCoffee) aims at providing low-cost Android devices like UNI (https://www.grey-box.ca/uni/) with the ability to share their internet connection (usually through a 4G modem) with a group of users and manage everyone's access with more precision. The goal is to ensure that no individual user can slow down the access of the whole group by using too much bandwidth or monopolizing the available data.
Wikipedia's Content Translation through Machine Learning (Project Symmetry)
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada do not have access to the minimum speed for internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, for the current project (codename: symmetry), we want to translate content from one language in Wikipedia to another (for exemple, improve Molière English Wikipedia article based on content available only on the french page - and vice versa). The idea is to improve the overall Wikipedia content, especially in underrepresented langages.Grey-box is a nonprofit structured under the principle of mobile-first and remote-first. Diversity is not only encouraged, it is an integral part of the strength of the team and its projects
Health in low connectivity environment
WHO: Grey-box is a social innovation startup that is working to bridge the digital gap and accessible educational content in remote areas where the internet and the electricity grid are unreliable.WHY: The current crisis in Ukraine is marked by an unpressed level of support to their population from the international community. The language barrier is too often slowing down the efforts to provide medical equipment in the field quickly. The confusion is exacerbated by variations in naming conventions and local brands for various drugs.HOW: The goal is to provide an accessible and easy-to-use (many health professionals on the ground are using WhatsApp) tool that can be used to translate medical terms and equipment between Ukrainian and various other languages.
International expansion - Social Impact Project
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, our IT worked on a technical solution for connectivity issues in remote areas based on customer interviews. We plan to deploy sales effort in 1) Nord America (with a focus on northern regions and rural areas), 2) Latin America (with local NGOs), and 3) West Africa (with local NGOs). There is already a draft for a marketing strategy that can be used as a base. The scope of the project is to pick one region (out of three) and update the business plan, formalize go to market strategy that will include a list of important stakeholders to contact, key elements in the sales pitch, and communication line. Weekly touchpoints can be made with the CEO as well as with the marketing and IT teams.Grey-box is a nonprofit structured under the principle of mobile-first and remote-first. Diversity is not only encouraged, it is an integral part of the strength of the team and its projects
Commercialization - Social Impact Project
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, we are wrapping up our pilot project in Canada, Madagascar, Congo, Cameroun, Mexico and South Soudain. The mandate is to ensure a solid administrative and financial structure that allows this project to scale since the goal to open our marketplace to allow NGOs and organizations worldwide to purchase directly.
Website Optimisation (Wordpress)
We have a website, and we are looking to optimize it.Why? Our main market is remote communities where internet connectivity is an issue.Take a look: grey-box.ca , we are a social impact organization, so #code4good !So our website has to load fast. We use Wordpress, with a Divi template.The site works in 3 languages, and we have about 10k$ of ads per month on it (Google Grant)
Team lead Agile Development
We are looking for students to act as a Scrum Master/ Team Lead/ Project Manager. You will support the team by ensuring that tasks are clearly defined, documented and followed up on. Regular reviews of the project and communication with the team will allow you to detect task dependencies and allow visibility of your project's priorities.Grey-box is a social innovation startup that is currently incubating on multiple projects; here's a partial list:Project Symmetry- Improve the translation efforts for under-represented languages on Wikipedia by using ML.Project Mesh- Allow low-cost Android devices to connect themselves wirelessly over WiFi or BluetoothProject CyberCafe- Allow an Android device to manage how it shares its hotspot internet connectivity with other devicesProject Web Scraper- A Chrome extension that allows creating an offline copy of a web page or a whole websiteProject Codex- This project aims at translating & finding equivalence for medical data and equipment.See More
Mesh Networking for Low Cost Android Devices (Project Mesh)
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada do not have access to the minimum speed for internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, the current project (codenamed : Mesh) aims at providing low-cost android devices like UNI (https://www.grey-box.ca/uni/) with mesh networking capabilities in order to be able to share storage, communications (IM) and increase their total network range. Grey-box is a nonprofit structured under the principle of mobile-first and remote-first. Diversity is not only encouraged, it is an integral part of the strength of the team and its projects
Customer interview & user stories mapping
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they have not connected to the internet in the last 3 months. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the internet. We are looking to have students that can analyse customer those interviews and highlight specific user stories that will be used by our IT team and our Marketing team to align their tasks with the customer needs.We will provide the customer interview recording & examples to follow.Highlight key customer needs and storiesQualify the customer with existing personasCreate a series of video excerpts (highlights) that will be used in user storiesPresenting the case studies in our Knowledge Management Software (KMS)Following up with the team to share and improve the documentation and key insights.
Web Scraper - Offline ressources for remote communities
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, the current project (codenamed: Web Crawler) takes the shape of a web browser extension (chrome and chromium) that allows scraping individual webpages or even a whole domain (ex: 5 pages deep). The result is a cloned website that can be accessed by remote communities without reliable access to the internet.
Live streaming / Podcast Production
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.We recently started a series of live conversations with social innovation professionals designed to help take non-profits to higher levels. The goal, to share ideas, strategies, tips and use cases to help other non-profits, social enterprises, and B Corps elevate their organizations. We aim to bring in non-profit leaders from a variety of industries and are keen to hear about your challenges and successes that could help others learn and improve.
Medical terms translation tool (for Ukraine)
WHO: Grey-box is a social innovation startup working to bridge the digital gap and accessible educational content in remote areas where the internet and the electricity grid are unreliable.WHY: The current crisis in Ukraine is marked by an unpressed level of support for their population from the international community. The language barrier too often slows down the efforts to provide medical equipment quickly in the field. Variations in naming conventions and local drug brands exacerbate the confusion.HOW: The goal is to provide an accessible and easy-to-use tool (many health professionals on the ground are using WhatsApp) that can be used to translate medical terms and equipment between Ukrainian and various other languages.
Software development - Social Impact Project
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, we are wrapping up our pilot project in Canada, Madagascar, Congo, Cameroun, Mexico and South Soudain. The mandate is to ensure a solid IT infrastructure that allows this project to scale and add additional features related to cybersecurity, speed improvement and better connectivity.
(Archived) Commercialization - Social Impact Project
WHO: Grey-box is a social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada does not have access to the minimum speed for the Internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: The internship will involve working on the financial aspects of 2 of our main projects: UNI, our offline connectivity projects designed for EdTech and MedTech applications and, 2) Project Codex, our medical terms translation tool designed for MedTech uses. Those projects will require a market and financial analysis. The intern will be tasked to estimating revenue, costs, and researching go-to-market strategies in the North American market.
(Archived) Educational Content Translation through Machine Learning
WHO: Grey-box is social innovation startup that is working on providing free wifi access to educational content in areas where internet and electricity access is problematic.WHY: 50% of the world lives offline – they haven’t connected to the internet in the last 3 months. In Africa, the average cost for 1GB of data is 7% of the average monthly salary. Even in North America, 50% of rural Canada do not have access to the minimum speed for internet. We believe that this is a solvable problem.HOW: In a nutshell, for the current project (codename: symmetry), we want to translate content from one language in Wikipedia to another (for example, improve Molière English Wikipedia article based on the content available only on the french page - and vice versa). The idea is to improve the overall Wikipedia content, especially in underrepresented languages.Grey-box is a nonprofit structured under the principle of mobile-first and remote-first.