Ushahidi Wins DREAMS Award

This week at the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, the DREAMSPartnership announced the 56 winners of the DREAMS Innovation Challenge. We are excited to report that Ushahidi was one of them. The winners will implement their innovative solutions in all 10 DREAMScountries and six Challenge focus areas over the next two years to empower adolescent girls and young women to live HIV-free.

DREAMS is committed to achieving a 40 percent reduction in HIV infections among adolescent girls and young women in the highest-burden areas of DREAMS countries by 2017. We know that traditional health sector approaches are not enough to substantially change the status quo. Through the DREAMS Innovation Challenge, DREAMS is investing $85 million for high impact approaches that will infuse new thinking to give girls the opportunity to fulfill their dreams and live AIDS-free. 

Key stats from the Challenge include:

More than 800 ideas submitted from 27 countries

Half of the ideas submitted came from new partners

60 percent of winners are small, community-based organizations

$40 million will focus on solutions to help keep girls in secondary school

Visit the DREAMS website (www.dreamschallenge.org) to see all the winners and read highlights from a selection of innovative projects.

Our project is focused on using the Ushahidi platform to help the HIV prevention community collect feedback data from the young women and girls that they are trying to serve. Our project aims to make the act of data collection more human, helpful, and real-time so that the industry as a whole can listen and improve their work on a continual process. We will report more about our project as we get things going.