Chispa Air Quality Activism

The air people breathe in Cali is significantly worse than the international health recommendations.  This 9 month project will use low cost air quality sensors, 100 volunteer young women to address:

1. Worsening air quality in Cali and low public unawareness of climate change and its impact on health
2. Poor and unequal civic participation in environmental issues
3. Low representation of women in tech sector
4. Poor air quality measurement infrastructure and data standards

In the short term goal we will raise public awareness of the importance of air quality and what can be done about it, and also how the local government can make informed decisions. 

Long term goal is to improve air quality in our city of 2.5 million people, dramatically reduce healthcare costs and improve quality of life.

Worsening air quality in Cali, huge impact on health costs

Air quality causes more deaths in Cali than COVID-19 according to the City Council reports in 2020: 7,281 deaths in 2015 - 2018. This represents health costs of 2.7 billion pesos, equivalent to 5.1% of the GDP of the city.

Low civic participation in environmental issues

Top-down decision making, deep distrust of political entities, and questionable policies have undermined civic participation in Cali. The dramatic increase in the poverty rate (15 % - double the national rate), now more than ever people feel disgruntled and disconnected from decision making.

Low representation of women in tech

5% of leadership positions in the technology sector are held by women, according to PWC in 2015. This is reflected in Cali, where the overall participation of women in the technology sector is very low.

Poor air quality measurement infrastructure

Of the nine official air quality sensors, only three have the capacity to measure the finest particles, PM 2.5 (the most harmful), and none of them comply with the OMS standards (<20 μg/m3 for PM10 and 10 μg/m3 for PM2.5. Our initial studies found intermittent reporting; some stations were offline for weeks at a time.

We will install 100 low cost air quality sensors in the homes of 100 young women (18 to 24 years of age) and build a citizens’  air quality measurement system with open data and reports for everyone in the city of Cali, Colombia. Additionally, and of equal importance, is the work (training workshops in communications, technical course in basic data science) we will conduct with these women, empowering them to become environmental/air activists in order to improve their personal lives, educate those around them and influence local government policies.

Data from these sensors will transmitted to, and aggregated in, a central database, and be made available in user friendly formats (CSV and API) to our target audiences: journalists, researchers, general public, students, open data enthusiasts.

Our data publishing platform (CKAN + Python + React + Datawrapper) is ready to receive the data, transform them into data visualizations see https://cali.chis.pa/

There are two main types of beneficiaries in this project, apart from the general public who will benefit as air quality gets measured and actions are taken to mitigate its effects.

The first group of beneficiaries are the 100 women participants, aged 18 to 24, will be selected to receive and take care of a low cost air quality sensor, and who will be trained in all aspects regarding the sensors, air quality and social mobilization and who will become the real influencers of air quality in the city. These women will be selected from homes in lower 3 income strata (Colombia ranks all households from 1 to 6, one having the worst living conditions and six the best. 83% of all households in Cali are in the 1, 2 and 3 economic strata, which qualify for state subsidies of different kinds due to their penurious living conditions.) 

Women are also vastly under-represented in the technology industry and have suffered most from the devastating consequences of Covid in the local economy, which has forced 3.5 million people across Colombia to fall below the country poverty line with the most dire consequences in Cali of all major cities.

The second group of beneficiaries are organizations (public, private and third sector) and individuals who need information on air quality for their activities. Hospitals, professors, students, journalists, environmentalists and public organizations who need reliable, comprehensive and consistent air quality data that currently do not exist, will benefit tremendously from an air quality measurement system different from the limited existing one. Experience from cities around the world that have built similar systems show concrete action taken by multiple stakeholders that mitigate the causes of bad air quality and improve everyone's health, and contribute to the economy. 

Participation is fundamental to the execution and success of this project. These 100 women will be responsible for the implementation of the sensors, the collection and analysis of the data that is produced. They will also be empowered and responsible for the type of information published by the project as well as the formats of those reports (eg. infographics, data visualizations, memes, explainer videos).

It is impossible for the project to be a success without their full engagement and participation, it is therefore part of the methodology that they co-create the social and communications agenda and strategy to be executed to generate public awareness on the topic. They will also be responsible for changing perceptions amongst friends, family and their local communities.

Chispa Air addresses 3 Solve Challenges:

RESILIENT ECOSYSTEMS

The scalable infrastructure and processes to produce verifiable data on air quality in a city of 2.5 million people, while adhering to best standards in data gathering, statistical analysis.

HEALTH SECURITY & PANDEMICS CHALLENGE

Crowdsourced data from participants who will be trained in communications strategies and tactics to change public perceptions and behavior towards a vital environmental objective.

DIGITAL INCLUSION

Our core constituency are young women will be given transferable technicaland soft skills and actively prepared to become data activists. Part of the program will be to actively network with technology employers.

We have a single sensor already operating in the San Antonio neighborhood of Cali and reporting data, and generating visualizations see http://influxdb.canair.io:8000...

We already have a data publishing platform (CKAN + Python + React + Datawrapper) that is ready to receive the data, transform them into data visualizations see https://cali.chis.pa/

Reasons for this approach:

• verify that sensors can generate data
• validate that this data can pass successfully through the initial data pipeline
• allow us to show potential funders, participants, partners and volunteers of the seriousness of our plan and generate enthusiasm 

The secret sauce is in the combination of technology and communications strategy for a very broad and positive impact on an urban environment and the direct impact in the lives of our participants.

What is new is that our participants would never, in the normal course of their lives, have been given such an opportunity to be centrally involved in something that will positively affect their professional development as well as their neighborhood environment, and the environment of their city.

What is innovative is that we will co-create the messaging and communications tactics with our participants. They will become the very visible ambassadors for the project and will share constructive messages for young women in STEM and in the climate change movement.

Our air quality project has not begun yet.

Direct stakeholders: 100

Indirect beneficiaries: 200,000 residents of Cali who will be reached and engaged by the campaign over 9 months

Direct stakeholders: 10,000 (we anticipate expanding the program to include more participants with sensors and who participate in the campaign and training). Sensors will be placed in schools and other sensitive areas with population density. By year five we may operate in 4 other cities.

Indirect beneficiaries: 

• 1,000,000 residents of Cali who will begin to see the importance of acting (politically and in their personal sphere of influence) to protect the air in our city.
• The local government will gain a powerful ally to help shape public policy through accurate data and public participation, and the local government institutions will gain more legitimacy resulting from increased oversight and transparency, and thus credibility.
• We hope to influence and motivate other to address other public interest topics including water quality and access, mobility/transport, connectivity, and healthcare.

The following are our year 1 indicators of success:

• 100 women empowered through climate change activism and data science skills
• 300,000 citizens aware of the air quality status in the city
• 10 more reports: data quality for air in Cali, open data reports, activism campaign
• 3 digital data platforms will report real time about air quality in the city
• 5 different stakeholder audiences will be made aware of the air quality data: politicians, journalists, data scientists, teachers and researchers 

There are three project directors:

Andrea Bernal: +573192481549 

Germán Alfonso: +57 310 5644607 

John Oliver Coffey: + 57 311 6097986

and the project will also hire for other roles (part time and full time).

The Chispa leadership team (Andrea, German, Johnny) comprises three seasoned experts across management consulting, communications and technology, and our combined experience in projects in the public and private sectors gives us the discipline and processes necessary to anticipate and mitigate project risks.

Profiles:

Andrea Bernal: Colombian, psychologist, Masters in communications and marketing. 3 years in government projects related to digital citizen participation, digital education. Former advisor to Bogota Mayor. Over a decade of work in digital marketing. 

Germán Alfonso: Colombian, political science major, strategy and management consultant, over 10 years implementing dashboards in a dozen countries. Two years of social work in Cali. Partner at Hay Día digital marketing agency. 

John Oliver Coffey: Irish, founder/CEO of software company, startup mentor, networker/connector, consultant with Masters in Economic Development. Focused on the use of data and technology for economic and social impact.  

We decided to work together in 2018 and to dedicate a significant part of our careers to projects of social impact in Cali, Colombia. Since launching Chispa we have produced work on transparency with specific initial focus on security in Cali, where the homicide rate has improved every year for the past 7 years, yet nobody believes this. We published data, reports, podcasts, webinars and social media to drive home this message, and most importantly provide the a working portal for open public data in Cali. This is our second data project. See previous work here:

https://cali.chis.pa

https://twitter.com/calichispa

https://www.facebook.com/chisp...

https://www.instagram.com/chis...

https://www.youtube.com/channe...

https://chis.pa

Cali is a very diverse, energetic and alive culture in Colombia. So our leadership has to reflect exactly the kind of culture we’d love to change. Cali, Bogotá and Dublin are represented in our board. We are professionals in psychology, marketing, international business and management, economic development, political science, and strategic thinking. 

Our board is a trinity. First, a woman, born and raised in Cali, is in charge of all things communications. Andrea is a psychologist who after two decades of work in digital government consulting, leads all efforts that aim to engage caleños in social media. Second, Germán, born in Bogotá, worked for 20 years as strategy consultant to international corporations Spain, Brazil and middle east. Now, he leads strategy at Chispa, and he brings his cultural perspective and experiences in social work with the most vulnerable communities in the city. Third, Johnny, born and raised in Ireland. Technologist and startup mentor, he leads Chispa's platform development as well as partnerships with state-of-the-art innovators, science and academia, foundations and NGOs. 

Chispa Air's tenets for diversity, inclusion and equity are built in to our operating structure:

• 50% to 70% participation of women in all projects and activities

• 33% equal participation for partners and each partner gets equal decision making power in every single endeavour.

• 100% of our projects aim to change lives for people in vulnerable areas of our city, calling for collaboration and participation from academia, journalists, government and civil society organisations.

We feel that we can be net contributors to the SOLVE network. We can give, and we hope to benefit from our involvement.

We need help 

• to finance our project
• to further develop the solution and methodology: scale, how to provide additional value (eg. prediction, mitigation measures)
• to evaluate effectiveness 
• to replicate our model to other cities

We can offer help

• to provide our data as an input to SOLVE partners
• to provide our city as a testing ground for other solutions from SOLVE partners
• given our professional experience we can be active mentors in the SOLVE community

We need help 

• to finance our project: pitch opportunities
• to further develop the solution and methodology: scale, how to provide additional value (eg. prediction, mitigation measures)
• to evaluate effectiveness 
• to replicate our model to other cities

Code Nation 

There is a growing demand for BPO and nearshore technology services in our region, and based on direct experience in this industry we know the demand far outstrips supply of professionals. The reality on the ground is that schools are not equipped to develop these skills. We need specific help in skills building, to better understand how to encourage students to consider this career, and what are career development paths. And we feel CN can help.

Blue Sky Analytics

There are a lot of similarities between Chispa Air and BSA. We recognize that BSA are leaders in civic data movement when it comes to air quality, so we want to learn from them in three specific areas:

1. Pitfalls: technical (eg. Calibration, hardware obsolescence), data quality and interoperability of data
2. Prediction: the obvious ‘next level’ for Chispa Air is to apply AI to help citizens and authorities understand what the immediate and longer term future holds, and how it affects socio economic costs, in particular healthcare.
3. Monetization: we want to explore monetization strategies, and feel that BSA can help us understand the opportunities of data markets.

Climate Eco Lab & Center for Collective Intelligence

We need specific guidance on the following topics and would like to explore ways to collaborate:

• How to best measure the socio-economic costs of inaction and opportunity costs
• Prediction: how to apply AI and statistical analysis to climate outcomes
• Incentives: how to apply gamification, and other types of incentives to spur behavioral change (ie. nudge)

Chispa Air directly speaks to the goals of the GM Prize, specifically in our provision of STEM education for young women from lower economic backgrounds in a developing country of Colombia. Chispa Air will provide not just economic opportunities to young women, but will also empowers them in democratic participation in a topic (climate) that directly affects their quality of life and the quality of life of millions of others. Our participants will become positive role models for all young women, and our media campaign will help ensure that this happens.

Chispa Air directly speaks to the goals of the Innovation for Women Prize. Our is a technology-first approach, that directly promotes the voices of young women in a topic of vital interest to their city. 

We position them front and center of the debate by giving them an evidence-based approach as well as the campaigning tools and skills to make them effective representatives of their community and the interests of those communities.

Our campaign will reach high schools to ensure that STEM and innovation are seen by parents as well as young women, as a feasible career option. We will provide networking opportunities in our city to ensure that talent and effort are rewarded with a career path in technology.

Digital inclusion for young women is a core objective of Chispa Air.

A major challenge that our project will address is that a technology career in our community of Cali, Colombia has a very low profile. Yet the demand for tech skills is very big; there aren't enough qualified professionals for the open positions, and the Covid unemployment rates have sky rocketed. This is a golden opportunity to rebalance the gender equation when it comes to women in the technology workforce. Chispa Air directly promotes digital literacy, and technology (re)skilling.

Second, Chispa Air will change people's appreciation of clean air, and specifically will change how people behave when it comes to their contributions to contamination. Our program of workshops will show these young women how they and their communities can reduce carbon emissions through for example, the use of public transport and, energy consumption. More importantly, we will empower these women to become ambassadors for the message of the need for positive steps for climate improvement.

One of the hallmarks of global climate change is that it is becoming more and more difficult to predict. In our city, as well as other equatorial cities, extreme climatic conditions range from flooding, to extreme heat and contaminated air. And this produces direct human as well as political and economic costs.

We believe that accurate forecasting can help mitigate damages and reduce costs and these savings can be invested in long term, community oriented, climate mitigation activities including drainage, parks, healthcare, and public transport.

Prediction through modeling is the next phase of Chispa Air, once we get the initial infrastructure operating and optimized. We want additional investment to develop and operationalize scientific research using groups from local universities that we have already identified and contacted. We also see the enormous potential in replicating this predictive work in other cities with similar characteristics.

Technology is the bedrock of Chispa Air. Both as a platform and as an enabler of economic and social development.

A major challenge that our project will address is that a technology career in our community of Cali, Colombia has a very low profile. Yet the demand for tech skills is very big; there aren't enough qualified professionals for the open positions, and the Covid unemployment rates have sky rocketed. This is a golden opportunity to rebalance the gender equation when it comes to women in the technology workforce. Chispa Air directly provides digital literacy, and technology (re)skilling.

Our campaign will reach high schools to ensure that STEM and innovation are seen by parents as well as young women, as a feasible career option. We will provide networking opportunities in our city to ensure that talent and effort are rewarded with a career path in technology.

We need funding to develop and operationalize scientific research specifically around prediction and mitigation, using groups from local universities that we have already identified and contacted. We also see the enormous potential in replicating this predictive work in other cities with similar characteristics.