pandoras's noBox

pandora's noBox is a digital platform that allows people to connect, learn from and with each other, and collaborate based on common interests. it is intergenerational. and it centers cis and trans girls and women, and non-binary people. nevertheless, it is open to anyone who desires to enter an anti-sexist and anti-bigotry platform in order to encounter collocutors - colleagues who share news, ideas, topics, knowledge, and interests. it is also designed to be easily accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills. 

pandora's noBox is turned to cis and trans girls and women and non-binary people, and the themes of their concerns. 
it aims people with different levels of (digital-)literacy lack of access to technology, role model lack of provision, and knowledge stratification, to cite a few. 
the platform's objective is to solve social, intellectual, and subjective alienation and shortage of mutual networking. connection, intercommunication, and visibility of/from/between (trans and cis) girls,  women, and non-binary people are to be encouraged and practiced in the platform.
in 2019, 331 transgender and gender diverse people were acknowledgedly killed. the country with more cases, 133, was Brazil. there were more than 1200 femicides and 66000 incidents of sexual violence, in the same country, in 2018. enabling the creation and strengthening of social ties of our target population reduces the probability of their participation as a target of violence in the other scenes.
whence, globally, the whole planet would benefit from the platform, whether being in the sense of getting more knowledge, and therefore comprehension, of (trans and cis) girls,  women, and non-binary people perspectives, and so, reducing prejudice, whether being in the sense of assisting these people to attain broader perspectives by means of human connections.

our solution is a new kind of social dispositive - nonprofit, non-hierarchical, and open - with a focus on girls, women and trans women, and non-binary people.
a digital platform that: 

1. allows people to connect, learn from, and with each other and collaborate based on common interests;

2. designed to be easily accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills;

3. whose navigation relies less on written language;

4. supports several forms of content and encourages groups formed within it to consider producing material that is accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills;

5. has a system to provide safe access to children;

6. is a dedicated chat tool, with the functionalities listed above, developed using standard and well-known web frameworks as Python/Django/Kivy or an equivalent framework depending on the development team skills pool at the moment of the assembly;

7. also aims to support digital and/or on-site events or poles, if necessary in partnership with organizations, to allow either internet access or access to physical versions of content produced within the platform, from which people with limited reliable access to the internet would benefit.

our solution serves cis and trans girls and women and non-binary people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills. the team proposing this solution is formed members of the target population itself.
the pandemic accentuated, the already increasing contemporary, physical and ideological isolation. in order to handle it, the platform enables connection and visibility of narratives, experiences, and interests between different generations committed with a feminist, antiracist e anti-bigotry knowledge sharing. and we understand knowledge is not only about intellectual/rational constructions and skills but also about corazonar, feelings, and emotions concerned with singular subjectivities and their non-fixed identities.
aligned to MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, pandora's noBox is a platform in which "people and computers can be connected so that collectively they act more intelligently than any one person, group, or computer has ever before".

pandora's noBox aligns with all the Challenge's dimensions. according to the platform's concept, it would:

• provide an extra path to "increase the number of girls and young women participating in (...) learning and training", once the idea is to make learning content available. 
• be able to "strengthen competencies" by means of personal connections and content access. 

its navigation relies less on written language in order to strengthen competencies in digital literacy while avoiding that digital illiterates would not access it. therefore, reducing barriers that prevent people from reaching key learning milestones. 

target population itself is described in the selected dimension.

the theories that ground our solution - “learn from and with each other and collaborate based on common interests [...] designed to be easily accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills ”- are not new, remounting to Paulo Freire and bell hooks among many others.
nevertheless, according to our understanding, although the digital/technological/online tools are more than suitable for this purpose there are no digital media that:

• allows people to connect, in the sense of creating new connections as well, learn from and with each other and collaborate based on common interests; 
• while having in consideration to be easily accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills.

from a philosophical perspective, we are supported by concepts as corazonar, mutualty (bell), care (Held), micropolitics (Foucault), pedagogy of freedom (Freire), proximal space (Vigotsky), paragogy, artivism.
pandora's noBox, if it is not creating, is participating in the construction of an Internet for People in contrast to an Internet of People.
the platform combines these concepts and ideas as ingredients whose reaction, catalyzed by the internet and open-source resources frameworks for web, enables non-segregated transversal and non-hierarchical connections empowering learning.
pandora's noBox is not about the technology newness itself. it’s about a new approach, giving new use and purpose to well-known technologies, updating the meaning of the word ‘social’ in 'social network'.

"Social capital lies in the persistent social ties that enable a group to constitute, maintain and reproduce itself. Such ties establish reasonably clear boundaries through mutual recognition and obligation. They also allow group members, potential access to resources held by others in the group, thus enabling an individual to increase financial capital through loans or information from another group member; expand embodied cultural or informational capital through connections to experts and connoisseurs; or enhance institutionalised cultural capital by ties to organisations that bestow valued credentials and honorifics. Social capital is not an individual possession, as are other types of capital, but it is instead the collective possession of those who are connected by social ties. [...] Bourdieu regarded social capital as purposive, a resource facilitating individual action by virtue of the individual's location within social networks and groups".¹

"Until recently, it would not have made much sense to worry about changing social networks in the context of discussions about learning. The dominant models of learning tend to be highly individualistic, and somewhat depoliticised. [...] Nevertheless, [...] learning can be viewed as the property of groups and not simply as individuals".²

Concisely articulating the previous excerpts: creating human connections according to common interests with the purpose of learning, impacts positively the people's social capital.

¹Glover, T., & Hemingway, J., (2005) Locating leisure in the social capital literature. Journal of Leisure Research, 37(4), 387-401.

²Field, J., (2005) Social capital and lifelong learning. Great Britain: The Policy Press, University of Bristol.

we consider that a feminist or an anti-sexist thought on the ongoing context involves an ethics of care and a sense of participation/exchange, in which “a vision of mutualty is the ethos shaping our interaction”¹.
we can, by means of the platform, connect socially distant - geographically close, but not only - people according to their common interests, and then they will become socially related. instead of intensifying segregated groups, we intensify the possibility of creating new connections, allowing people to reach richer interactions, broader networks, and an environment that favors mutual transversal development. that is the reason we mentioned the concept of the Internet for People.
the so-called users, within the platform, are understood as contributors. this is a horizontal community. pandora's noBox is the digital place where they can go to encounter partnerships in order to develop their ideas or getting closer to their ideals. within it, people can connect with other people they did not know yet to share experiences, to learn a (non-)academical topic provided with tools and navigation that favors the enhancement of (digital-)literacy, to build an online library or bibliography, to create content to help other contributors, to find partnership for a new business, to get professional advice from other contributors, etc.
these richer connections enable contributors' feelings of adequacy and care to increase, favor learning, and strengthen social capital. therefore impacting their lives irreversibly.
Noticing that social networks, digital or not, can be understood as graphs and that: "[...] Centrally positioned individuals definitely enjoy a position of privilege over those relegated to the circumference. They are hubs, where we can reasonably expect power to concentrate. Numerous studies agree that centrality is bound up with power, both in organizations and in more informal networks [...]
Centrality in networks operates somewhat like inequality in social stratification"² we propose a highly connected social network in order to overcome social stratification while favoring learning.

¹hooks, bell, (2000). Feminism is for everybody : passionate politics. Cambridge, MA :South End Press.

²Degenne, A., Forsé, M., (1999). Introducing Social Network. Translated by Borges A. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications.

in a broader sense, once launched,  pandora's noBox will serve every interested person with internet access - about 4.56 billion people this year. as it will be initially operating in Portuguese and English, there would be the language restriction to written material access - that could reach 2.270 billion people. 
on the other hand, as the aim is to allow access to illiterate people, as well, the language barrier would not be a problem for those who would use the platform as a meaning of overcoming (digital-)illiteracy.
3.24 billion people lack access to the internet. among them, we have the most severely socially damaged population and, within this group girls and (cis and trans) women and non-binary people still face greater cultural problems in many circumstances. it is of our great interest to be able to reach them as well. strategies as on-site events with, at least, internet totems sponsored by us or partners are kept in mind as the step further once the platform is launched.

in a pragmatic sense, the platform is going to be launched with 20-50 initial guest users/contributors and we will arrange the platform capacity progressively, as the number of users increases, so we are able to provide a reliable platform and minimizing costs.
the on-site events location range will depend on its viability due to the pandemic. then again, starting with small groups of interested people in those cities that we are already located, namely Campinas, Natal, Santos and São Paulo in Brazil, Lisbon in Portugal, New York in the United States. 
the goal is to reach at least one million people in five years. all the users are actually contributors, therefore, the scalability can be really impressive. and the locations of on-site fixed, or eventual, happenings can spread worldwide.

pandora's noBox is a quite ambitious project with the purpose of overcome ostensive segregations accepted and maintained culturally such as separating people according to their level of knowledge or segregating people according to their age, sex, gender orientation, skin color, religious beliefs. as well as dividing people between those who know and those who need to learn.
we understand that all these types of distancing people are pernicious, that every person can teach and learn in a process that they enroll guided by their desire of learning. therefore we will have a few legal and many cultural barriers in our way.
notwithstanding, we understand that the biggest barriers we will face are technical, and therefore financial; even if we provide the best online platform within our purposes and overcome cultural and legal questions of access, one very large and important group of the target population would be left out of its range unless we find means to support their internet access.

the legal barriers concerning children's access and copyright issues are quite easily handled. the first by making the child's caregiver authorization necessary to enroll sensitive areas of the platform. and the second by respecting the copyright laws and making agreements with authors directly when possible.
to supplant cultural barriers the internet and gadgets play in our favor. the platform will be accessible on mobile phones and to be free of prejudice environment is a premise for pandora's noBox participants.
as mentioned, the technical barriers are actually financial ones. that is the reason why we defend that launching the platform is step one, and it is viable already, but more financial support is needed so we can reach exactly the population that is usually left out of any technological insertion project, after all, this exact population is the one that would benefit from pandora's noBox the most.
at the same time, we plan to enable internet and gadgets access to people that otherwise would not be able to benefit from the platform. for that we have many strategies, ranging from partnerships with local settled institutions, up until internet providers companies, and, depending on financial aid, we could sponsor these services permanently or sporadically. concerning the partnership with internet companies, in many countries, these companies, by providing simple services such as internet totems, would get a governmental tax reduction. in this scenario, no investment, other human resources, would be needed from us.

so far, we are a group of six people tightly related to the project creation, development, and launching. yet we count on a larger network that are involved in it providing theoretical, technical, legal, and creative advice.

our core group is formed by six women, four of them Ph.D.s, one of them getting her Ph.D., and the other getting her Master's degree. our academic degrees lie in knowledge fields such as Anthropology, Applied Mathematics, Arts, Communication, Collective Health,  Linguistics, History, Philosophy, Social Science. 
and we work with education, being on a traditional university, being on a non-school, teaching arts or mathematics; as well as some of us are in the job market working with site development or anthropological based use of data. we are also actually artists, acupuncturists, psychoanalysts, engaged in social enterprises.
we know that ways to evolve and desire for knowledge are a powerful drive to accomplishing meaningful lives. and that in good company these are easier to handle.
then, considering that, in order to provide a solution, is crucial to know well the problem, and since the group is formed by women that had to deal with many of the barriers that the Challenge addresses, we understand that we spent most of our lives getting a clearer and clearer sight of which conditions undermine and, wich potentialize, our development individually and collectively, being in the sense of academic accomplishments being in the sense of emotional and personal widening.
also, the group is deeply aligned in its ideals and methods to deliver to girls, cis and trans women, and non-binary people means of reaching the knowledge they want, the knowledge they need, and connections other than only to the internet: personal ones.

we do not partner with any organizations, yet.

as we are proposing an online platform, our business model is the platform one. nevertheless, we have no intention of selling data. or advertising products other than those that fit our view of creating ethical solutions that address the four dimensions of this Challenge.
words as ‘product’ and ‘service’ certainly are not frequent in our jargon. nevertheless, restricted to this lexical profile: we would primarily provide services directly to individuals. as we would put it originally, we would provide a prejudice-free meeting place made by different people for different people. a truly democratic space or, as we have been saying, a truly social platform.
still, we keep in mind, with a great deal of affection, the idea of developing partnerships, in the sense of providing designed content and/or assistance and/or consulting advice to established physical learning/creative spaces.
in this sense, we would also be providing services.

the platform will accept financial and/or material contributions from personal or institutional supporters that believe in the project, online and in physical events.
the assistance we plan to provide could be retributed financially or with assistance/consulting advice in return, directly to the platform or to a group of contributors, the so-called users.
also, we could sell, exchange, or donate physical content singularly designed to interested groups. as well as we can promote learning/creative events with variable enroll prices depending on each interested person's specific financial situation.
as one of the platform's objectives is to have a library, but not all of the content would be copyright free, we also could act as an intermediary, connecting cis and trans women and non-binary authors and the public. therefore getting smaller costs to our contributors, higher sales to the authors we support, and being able to further sustain the platform.
and, yet, we can also monetize, with a symbolic percentual or as a donation, from living groups' - active within the platform - services to be exchanged within the platform, as well.

"we understand that, even if we provide the best online platform within our purposes, one very large and important group of the target population would be left out of our range unless we find means to support their internet access." that is the reason why we defend that launching the platform is step one and it is viable already with MIT Solve funding, and, clearly, it would directly benefit of the "nine months of personalized support from Solve staff and Members of Solve’s cross-sector community". as well as it is doable, but in a longer time framework, without it.

more financial support and/or good partnership is needed so we can reach exactly the population that is usually left out of any technological insertion project, after all, these exact populations are those that would benefit from it the most. in order to be clear: the online platform has no use for those who have no internet access and, in order to reach these populations as soon as possible, the platform needs to be readily launched and extra financial support for initial on-site events and internet's totems, when possible, and providing access to the needed gadgets is basic.

initially, our ideas are pretty well aligned with the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, making the center a more than welcome partner to propel our project. 
also, Internet providers such as Vivo, in Brazil, and  Vodafone, around the world, could, by providing internet access, would be perfect partnerships.
as well as technology companies that provide gadgets necessary for internet access and have an ethical vision about their social responsibility and potential. 

one of our project's needs in order to reach the maximal number of girls, cis and trans women, and non-binary people is internet and gadgets access in one hand. in the other hand our aim of reaching another great group people, therefore particularly girls, cis and trans women, and non-binary people, the (digital-) illiterates, rely on creating a platform whose navigation relies less on written language and supports other forms of content to be shared (graphics, video and audio content), encouraging groups to consider producing material that is accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills.
we believe that being able to communicate, to talk and to listen, no matter how physically distant, is crucial for creating connections and strengthening the existing ones, sharing experiences, and learning.
therefore, pandora's noBox is actually perfectly suitable to promote a world where women’s voices can be celebrated, and more, used by them and for them and for their own benefit.

pandora's noBox is an online platform designed to be easily accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skills. the platform navigation will, therefore, rely less on written language and non written forms of content and graphics, video, and audio files are to be shared. it encourages groups created within the platform to consider producing material that is accessible to people with different levels of literacy and digital literacy skill, as well.
the lack of (digital-)skills we address can be due to age, therefore reaching young children and seniors, or due to social restrictions that people faced.
we also propose digital and/or on-site, sporadical and/or fixed, events in partnership with spaces such as museums, libraries, community centers, non-profit organizations, parks, etc or sponsored by us:

1. focused on the production of girls, cis and trans women and, non-binary people;

2. allowing internet access; 

3. enabling:

• skillshares;
  

• digital literacy training;

• storytelling/oral history;

• access to physical versions of content produced within the platform for people with limited reliable access to the internet.
  

with The Gulbenkian Foundation Award, presential fixed spaces would be made possible as soon as the platform is launched, and the three first countries where they would be placed are the countries where the team's current components live: Portugal, Brazil and United States. and the whole team is formed by native Portuguese speakers, therefore, Portuguese, sided by English, will be our first two operating languages benefiting directly their speakers.