New partners including Heifer International and charity:
water join IBM developer ecosystem and open source community to
take on climate threat
ARMONK, N.Y., March 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Together with
Call for Code Creator David Clark Cause, Charitable Partner United
Nations Human Rights, and the Linux Foundation, IBM (NYSE: IBM)
today announced the launch of the 2021 Call for Code Global
Challenge. This year's competition invites the world's software
developers and innovators to combat climate change with open
source-powered technology.
Now in its fourth year, the Call for Code Initiative has grown
to more than 400,000 developers and problem solvers across 179
nations, and has generated more than fifteen thousand applications.
Call for Code aims to drive immediate and lasting humanitarian
progress around the world through the creation of practical
applications built on open source-powered software, including Red
Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, IBM Blockchain, atmospheric
data from IBM's Weather Company, and developer resources and APIs
from partners like Intuit and New Relic.
The diverse and like-minded global ecosystem of experts,
companies, foundations, universities, and celebrities supporting
Call for Code continues to expand. It includes UN World Food
Programme Innovation Accelerator experts, Arrow Electronics, Black
Girls Code, Caribbean Girls Hack, Clinton Foundation, Clinton
Global Initiative University, Ingram Micro, Intuit, Kode
With Klossy, NearForm, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk
Reduction, United Way, and World Institute on Disability.
To help take on climate change, IBM is announcing new
partnerships this year with Heifer International and charity:
water. Heifer International joins the Call for Code movement,
contributing their world-renowned expertise in mitigating hunger
and poverty by investing in local farmers and their
communities.
"Smallholder farmers produce the majority of the world's food
and are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. With access to
information and technology, they can make informed decisions on
what to grow and when, enabling them to increase their incomes,
while feeding the world," said David
Gill, Senior Director of Technology Innovation for Heifer
International. "We're excited to join IBM and the developer and
open source communities in supporting these solutions that have the
potential to increase access to water, food, and markets for
millions of people around the world."
IBM's multi-pronged advocacy for environmental sustainability
dates back decades. Earlier this year, IBM announced it will
achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by prioritizing
reductions in its emissions, energy efficiency efforts, and
increased clean energy use across the more than 175 countries where
it operates. More recently, IBM Research announced progress in
accelerating the discovery of new carbon capture, separation, and
storage technologies.
"Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time,
and we must apply our collective ingenuity and cutting-edge
technologies to make a lasting difference," said Ruth Davis, director of Call for Code, IBM.
"Together with our ecosystem of partners, IBM will work with the
winning team to incubate and deploy their solution in communities
where it's most needed, just as we've done with past winners. I
encourage every developer and innovator around the world to seize
this opportunity through Call for Code to change our climate
trajectory."
Last year's winning solution, Agrolly, is an app designed to
support small farmers by providing climate and crop predictions and
recommendations. Since October, the Agrolly team has expanded their
solution to new markets and provided hands-on training to more than
500 rural farmers across Mongolia,
India, and Brazil, who are testing and using the app to
fight the effects of climate change. Agrolly is also working with
the IBM Service Corps on a deployment plan to improve and test
their technology in the coming months.
Call for Code has generated more than 30 solutions that are
being incubated and field tested in a series of deployments,
including 12 open source projects hosted by the Linux Foundation,
enabling these projects to evolve through the power of the open
source community. As the latest example, today on UN World Water
Day, the Linux Foundation announced that another Call for Code
solution, Liquid Prep, will be hosted at the Foundation so
developers worldwide can contribute their mobile, IoT, Edge, cloud,
and weather skills to help farmers optimize water usage during
droughts.
"The winning team from each Call for Code Global Challenge
receives $200,000, and support from
the IBM Service Corps, technical experts, and ecosystem partners to
incubate their technology, open source their code to make it
available for anyone to use, and deploy their solution on the
ground in communities around the world," said David Clark, CEO of David Clark Cause, and
Creator of Call for Code. "This year the competition focuses on
three sub-themes that are key to combatting climate change: clean
water and sanitation; zero hunger; and responsible production and
green consumption."
About Call for Code
Developers have
revolutionized the way people live and interact with virtually
everyone and everything. Where most people see challenges,
developers see possibilities. That's why David Clark, the CEO
of David Clark Cause, created Call for Code in 2018, and launched
it alongside Founding Partner IBM and Charitable Partner UN Human
Rights. Since then, Call for Code has scaled to include an annual
University Challenge in addition to regional prizes and the
creation of Call for Code for Racial Justice. This
multi-year global initiative is a rallying cry to developers
to use their mastery of the latest technologies to drive positive
and long-lasting change across the world through code. Call for
Code Global Challenge winning solutions are further developed,
incubated, and deployed as sustainable open source projects to
ensure they can drive positive change. To learn more about past
winners and their progress, visit IBM Developer.
Contact:
Deirdre Leahy
deirdre.leahy@ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM