>> From Seattle Washington, it's theCUBE, covering AWS Imagine, nonprofit. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're actually on the waterfront in Seattle at the AWS Imagine nonprofit event. We were here a couple weeks ago for the AWS Imagine education event. This is really about nonprofits and solving big, big problems. So Dave Levy and team have you know dedicated to some of these big problems. And one of the big problems in the world is human trafficking, and problems that people are encountering and all kinds of nasty situations all over the world. And we're really excited to have someone who's tackling that problem, and really trying to bring a voice to those people that wouldn't otherwise have a voice. And she's Hend Alhinnawai, she's the CEO of Humanitarian Tracker. Hend, good to see you. >> Thank you Jeff, good to be here. >> Absolutely. So before we jump into it, impressions on this event? >> Wonderful event bringing together technologists, people in nonprofits, really creating synergies for people to collaborate and talk to each other and network and learn how they can advance their organizations. >> Such important work. >> Yes. >> So give us kind of the background on what you're up to, what Humanitarian Tracker's all about. >> So Humanitarian Tracker's a nonprofit forum. It was created to connect and empower citizens using innovation and technology, but specifically for humanitarian events. We were among the first to combine crowdsourced reports with data mining and artificial intelligence and apply them to humanitarian disasters, conflicts, human rights violations, disease outbreak. All the way to tracking the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. Really giving a holistic view of what's happening. >> It's interesting, you know, it's probably like the middle eastern spring, I can't remember the exact term that people use, where it was kind of the first use of regular people using their mobile phones to kind of grab a ground swell of action. You're not looking at the politics specifically, you're looking more at humanitarian disasters. But pretty amazing kind of what a connected phone represents to anyone anywhere in the world now to communicate what's happening to them. To share that story. We really didn't have anything like that before. To get that personal event on the ground. >> No it's really a new way of consuming, creating and consuming information. So the cell phone has really given people on the ground a chance to tell their own story. But it's not enough. If you have an event that happens to you. Something happens to you. And you record it, it stops there. But the unique thing with Humanitarian Tracker is it gives people that forum to show the world and tell them what's happening to and around them. >> Right, but it's not just about the individual. And what you guys are doing is using cutting edge technology, obviously you're here as part of the AWS event. In terms of machine-learning and big data to grab a large number of these reported events and distill it into more of an overarching view of what is actually happening on the ground. How did you do that, where did you get that vision, how are you executing that? >> Well, we're all about empowering the citizen. And in our line of work we deal with a lot of data, a lot of information, most of it is unstructured, most of it is crowdsourced. So we use machine-learning to help us extract important details. Information on time. Event location, what is happening. And at the same time we really cared that this reporter, stays anonymous for their own safety. We, privacy and security is utmost importance to us. So that's always our focus. So in that space, we de-identify them. We take out any information that could be identifiable, that could lead to their arrest, or could lead to someone identifying that it was them that reported. >> And how do you get this information to the people that are suffering this activity ground? How do they know about you, how do they know that you are anonymizing their information so there's not going to be repercussions if they report. You know, how do, kind of I guess your go-to-market, to steal a business terms, in making sure that people know this tool's available for help? >> It depends on the situation. For example in the conflict situation, we rolled it out, and we kept it low key for awhile. Because we didn't want government attacks, we didn't want people to be arrested, or to be tried. So we rolled it out. And it was word of mouth that spreads. And people started submitting supports. Actually the first project we did with conflict, we weren't sure if we were going to get one report, zero reports. The first week we got nothing. And then slowly as people learned about it they started submitting their reports. And we see our job as really elevating the otherwise marginalized voice. So you submit a report to us, we then take it. We verify it. We make it public. And that, we welcome, we encourage, we want people to consume it. Whether you're a student, whether you're a journalist, whether you're a government, whether you work in a nonprofit, the UN. It's been used to address human rights violations, it's been used to identify humanitarian hotspots. The data's phenomenal, and what you get from it. It's not just collecting data. We're not just about collecting the data. We want to make sure it's meaningful, and we want to derive insights. So we want to know what is the data actually telling us? >> Right, right. So just to be clear for people that don't know, so you're making that data available, you're cleansing the data, you're running some AI on it to try to get a bigger picture, and anyone with a login, any kind of journalist can now access that data in support of whatever issue or topic or story they're chasing? >> That's it Jeff. >> That's phenomenal. And just kind of size and scope. You've been at this I think you said since 2011. You know kind of how many active, activities, crisis, I don't know, what the definition is of a bucket of these problems. Are you tracking historically at a given point in time? Give us some kind of basic sizing type of dimensions. >> It really ranges, because it could, when we were tracking conflict for example, we were really focused on one area, and the surrounding countries. Because you had refugee population, you had displacement, you had all sorts of issues. But it could be anywhere from five projects, it just depends. And we want to make sure that each project we're taking on we're giving it our full attention, full scope. And I like to run the organization like a two-team pizza team. And so I don't take on more than I could handle. >> Right, right. So then how did it morph from the conflict to the Global Sustainability Goal? So we've worked with Western Digital, they're doing a lot of work, ASP's doing a lot of work on kind of these global sustainability goals. How did you get involved in that, and how did the two kind of dovetail together? >> So the elasticity of the cloud has helped our operation scale tremendously. And in 2016 we were selected as a top 10 global innovation, that could be applied to the Sustainable Development Goals, and-- >> So they found you, the UN find you, or did you get nominated? How did that happen? >> We were nominated, and from over 1,000 solutions we were chosen. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. And we were showcased at the Solutions Summit which is hosted at the United Nations. And just based on that experience of meeting people that were doing really cool things in their respective communities, we launched the Global Action Mosaic. Because we wanted to create one place where people that are doing projects in their communities could submit it, and have it showcased. And the goals are not only to crowdsource the SGD's, but to also be a part of the effort to track what's happening. Who's doing what where, make it easy for people to search say, Jeff you decided to get involved in a project with education. You can go onto our Global Action Mosaic, search projects on education in your community or in other parts of the world and then get involved in it. So it's really creating a centralized place where people can get information on the global goals. >> Awesome. So that's pretty much the Global Action Mosaic. It's pretty much focused on the UN global goals versus your core efforts around the Humanitarian Tracker. >> Yes. >> That's great. So we're here at AWS. Have you always been on AWS? Is this something new? How does being on kind of the AWS infrastructure help you do your mission better? >> We are, we've been partners in running AWS since we actually started. >> Since the beginning. >> Yes we have Yusheheedi as one of our partners, development partners, AWS. And because one of the core, one of the most important things to us is privacy and security, we want to make sure that whatever data is being handled and received is stored securely. >> Right, right. >> And that information transmitted, handled is also being done so in a secure way. Like I mentioned, the elasticity of the cloud has helped us scale our mission tremendously. It's affordable, we've been able to us it, we've learned their machine-learning stock to de-identify some of the data that comes in. So we're firm believers that AWS is essential to how we run our operation. >> Because do the individual conflicts kind of grow and shrink over time? Do you see it's really a collection of kind of firing up hotspots and then turning down versus one long, sustained, relatively flat, from kind of a utilization and capacity point of view? >> Yeah, no it definitely, it flares up and you'll have like a year, months, weeks sometimes where it's just focused on one area. But one of the things we focus on, it's not just. So what is the data actually telling us? So say you're focusing on point A. But just down the street in location B there is a dire humanitarian emergency that needs to be addressed. The crowdsourced reports, combined with the data mining and the AI, helps us identify those hotspots. So everybody could be focused here, but there could be an emergency down the street that needs to be addressed as well. It just depends. >> And do you have your own data scientists or do you, do other people take your data and run it through their own processes to try to find some of these insights? >> We have both. >> You have both. >> Yeah. >> So what's been the biggest surprise when you anonymize and aggregate the data around some of these hotspots? Is there a particular pattern that you see over and over? Is there some insight, that now that you've seen so much of it, from kind of the (muffled speaking) that you can share and reflect on? >> I think it' very unique to each project to do. But there is one thing that I strongly support, that I don't see enough of, and that's the sharing of data within the organizations. And so, for example just getting to that culture where sharing your data between organizations is encouraged and actually done. Could help create a, create a pool of knowledge. So, for example we worked with 13 different organizations that were all tackling humanitarian events. The same one, in Syria. And the 13 did not share data and did not talk to each other. And so we found that for example, they were all focused on one area. When just a few miles down, there was a need that wasn't being addressed. But because they don't share information, they had no idea. >> Right. >> It was only when we were able to take a look at it, kind of from the, from an overarching view, looking all their data, we were able to say you know, it would be helpful, it would actually, you could save on resources, and less time, and less effort, and you guys are tackling a small funding pool to begin with. If you shared information and tackled different things, instead of focusing on one area, because you don't know what the other guys doing. >> And were they using crowdsource data, is there source data, or were they just trying to collect their own from the field? >> They were collecting their own. >> So I assume that the depth, and the richness, and the broadness of data is nothing like you're collecting. >> Well you get a different kind of, you get different kind of information when the individuals actually telling you what's happening versus you asking a very direct question like, "Are you healthy? Yes or No?". Whereas you give them the chance, they might tell you that they haven't eaten, and their diabetic and you know, give you other pieces of information. Where they're living, are they refugees? Are they healthy? Are they not healthy? Do they go to school? Do their kids go to school? How many kids they have? Are they a female-run household? All this information could help guide development in the proper way. >> Right, right. All right. So give you the final word, how should people get involved if they want to help? >> You can go to humanitariantracker.org if you want to volunteer with us. And if you're doing a project that is related to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, I would like you to go to globalactionmosaic.org, and map it there, and be part of our community. >> So Hend, thank you for taking a few minutes to share your story, and for all the good work that you're doing out there. >> Thank you Jeff it was a pleasure. >> All right, she's Hend, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at AWS Imagine nonprofit. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (techno music)