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Ken Banks

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Postponing the launch of our 2020 Digital Identity Fellowship Programme

This time last year, we had launched the Digital Identity Fellowship and we were in the middle of accepting applications for our first cohort of Fellows. By the time the application window closed we had received over 120 applications from over 30 countries – the majority in the Global South – providing us with some fascinating insight into the kinds of challenges, issues and opportunities that mattered most to the people closest to them. After a tough selection process Paz, Subhashish and Tshepo started their Fellowships last October and are now half-way through their work researching issues of human rights,

2 min read

Pledging our digital identity verification services free to organisations tackling the Covid-19 crisis

Updated Friday 27th March 2020: Read more about how we can help organisations involved in the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic here. At Yoti, we have spent six years building a secure identity platform that makes it simpler and safer to prove who we are in our modern, digital world. We have always offered our digital identity app free to eligible charities and nonprofits, and for the next three months, we will be extending this commitment to any public health organisation, emergency service and community initiative tackling the Covid-19 crisis.  We want to help organisations under immense pressure to

3 min read
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Welcoming three more partners to our Humanitarian Tech Support Programme

Last month, we proudly announced the launch of our Humanitarian Tech Support Programme, a new initiative designed to support tech-focused startups focusing on global humanitarian problems. Using our unique blend of global development and digital identity experience, we have already started helping Lanterne in their mission to deliver a trusted, secure alert system to humanitarian fieldworkers in Afghanistan (over the last decade, more than 3,000 humanitarian workers were killed, injured or kidnapped in conflict zones around the world.) Today we are pleased to announce details of a further three Programme Partners.   People in Need People in Need helps people

5 min read
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Announcing our new Humanitarian Tech Support Programme

As we see in a new decade the world seems to be staring down the barrel of ever-more humanitarian challenges. At the start of 2020 The New Humanitarian lists urban displacement, conflict, antibiotic resistance to infectious disease, gang violence, extremism and climate change as just some of crises facing not just the developing world, but the planet as a whole. While some things have improved for some people, life is still a major struggle for the vast majority of people on the planet. In purely economic terms, for example, one in every two people globally lives on less than $5.50

5 min read
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DataKind UK's #7 Data Science and Ethics Book Club at Yoti

Last week, we had the pleasure of hosting the seventh Data Science and Ethics Book Club, organised by our friends at DataKind UK. This was the final book club of the year and the topic up for discussion was AI and race. This is a hugely important conversation to advance as our lives become increasingly digital and influenced by algorithms and machine learning.   The reading list  The main book that anchored the evening’s talk was Race After Technology by Ruha Benjamin, which provides an accessible but deep understanding about how technology can replicate and exacerbate racial inequality. This was

3 min read
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Adventures in social purpose

It’s been exactly 18 months since I joined Yoti, initially as Head of Social Impact but more recently under a revised title of Head of Social Purpose. We felt the word ‘impact’ was too focused on the end result, and not enough on the process, the DNA and the ethos of what we were trying to do. While we do, of course, want our efforts to have a positive impact, we believe that how you go about creating that impact is equally as important – perhaps more important – as the impact itself.  Most of my career has been spent

7 min read