Tag: nonprofit

Today, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the launch of the 2020 AWS Imagine Grant. The AWS Imagine Grant is a public grant opportunity open to registered 501(c) nonprofit organizations in the United States who are using technology to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.

Hospitalization can be an isolating and stressful experience. This is especially true now, as the pandemic has led hospitals to impose even stricter visitation and distancing procedures. To help make kids’ stays a bit brighter, AWS is teaming up with GameChanger Charity to donate GameChanger’s patient engagement platform, Playwell, for one year to select hospitals across the U.S. We are starting with Seattle Children’s Hospital—a hospital that Taylor spent considerable time in during his battle with cancer—and will announce additional hospitals in the coming weeks and months. With this donation, we hope to bring entertainment and joy to anywhere from 75 to 200 kids per day per hospital.

The First Street Foundation is dedicated to communicating the flood and inundation risks posed by a changing environment, with an emphasis on allowing Americans to discover and understand those risks. By building awareness, our hope is that every individual is empowered to take steps to reduce their risk exposure to flooding, as well as that of their communities—today and in the future. First Street created a nationwide assessment of flood risk for the CONUS and DC, and is now sharing that assessment through Flood Factor™.

On June 17, Amazon Web Services (AWS) held its AWS Summit Online for Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Check out content from the “I’m in the Public Sector” track, for government, education, nonprofit, and healthcare organizations—now available on demand.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that public sector organizations need modern infrastructure, capabilities and controls to overcome the disruption caused by global health outbreaks. Organizations that embraced cloud services proved more responsive. They were able to continue operating remotely and serving their customers and citizens, demonstrating agility, scalability, and speed. In How Governments Can Build Resilience in a New Normal: Emerging Practices from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, a new policy paper from the AWS Institute, we outline how organizations can use the cloud to recover from the disruption that the virus brought, as well as become more resilient for future challenges.

Atma Connect envisions a world where people use technology to amplify their voices, help one another, share solutions, and take action. We provide a digital platform, AtmaGo, and local trainings that help ensure communities will be able to help neighbors mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and bounce back from disasters. Building disaster resilience—the ability to rebound and rebuild health and economic well-being after a disaster—is directly related to the welfare of our AtmaGo users.

At Amazon, we are committed to providing immediate relief and response to global communities impacted by natural disasters. The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Disaster Response team plays an important role in this response, and the team has supported customers worldwide in the wake of hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, and disease outbreaks including COVID-19. We help by bringing our operational and logistics expertise, as well as cloud technology to support our customers and our communities when and where they need it most, working closely with organizations like the American Red Cross.

The breadth of challenges that can be addressed by overhead imagery is broad and continues to grow as new and improved sensors are deployed. To make the best use of this data, you need to have high-quality training data—data that you know is true (often called ground truth data) so that your algorithms can learn from it. A lack of this high-quality labeled training data continues to impede progress in many areas of remote sensing analytics, including machine learning. Two of the SpaceNet collaborators, Capella Space and AWS, are providing access to a unique dataset to help foster innovation in geospatial-based artificial intelligence. Learn more about Earth observation data, the SpaceNet 6 Challenge, and available datasets.

AWS announced the launch of a preview version of an online gamified tutorial, “AWS Cloud Champion: Virtual Workplace Interactive Challenge,” that highlights cloud capabilities available for online meetings, cloud-based contact centers, and virtual desktops. The tutorial is presented as a 3D, virtual tradeshow experience, which includes kiosks and an AWS avatar that guides you through a self-directed path, explaining applicable AWS services in a concise and engaging format.

Technology and the cloud can help address some of the world’s most pressing and immediate challenges, like battling COVID-19 and improving cities. At Amazon Web Services (AWS), we encourage innovation through technology in our AWS Cloud Innovation Centers (CICs). CICs are long-term, strategic collaborations with public sector organizations interested in solving societal problems through digital solutions while providing students a platform to learn by doing. Check out a few of the challenges CICs around the world have worked on so far this year.