PPa - People's Protection app

In a world where 1 billion people are unable to prove their identity through any recognized means, the use of digital ID and data standards in the humanitarian sector can improve the efficiency and efficacy of service delivery, and increase convenience for beneficiaries.

People’s Protection app (PPa) is a biometric identification system that allows organizations to register and manage data of vulnerable groups efficiently and in a secure way. Fort the first time, palm vein recognition, highly reliable in children, is used in humanitarian aid.

The solution was co-created among different actors to enable interoperability in a network that works to protect street children in India, where it has been safely tested, and is currently being scaled to Africa.

It is an affordable solution, easily adaptable to different humanitarian settings so it could become a standard of identification for humanitarian aid.

Poverty, war and natural disasters are the reasons why 1.1 billion people lack of an id proof that validates them as citizens and give them access to human rights. This makes for non-profits and governments difficult to identify and track vulnerable groups such as refugees (65M),street children (150M - 18M only in India, country where we came up with our solution and where it has been safely tested), victims of trafficking (40.3M), etc, and therefore, it is very difficult to protect them in and efficient way. With climate change, it is highly likely that poverty and natural disasters will get worse and more frequent. Infectious diseases are becoming more prevalent and harder to control, because of conflict, weak health systems, poor water and sanitation, and lack of access to vaccinations.

Needs are growing faster than funding. The current humanitarian system is buckling. It desperately needs bold ideas to increase efficiency and effectiveness in humanitarian aid to close this gap. The humanitarian organizations agree that the use of digital identification and data standards in the humanitarian aid can improve the efficiency and efficacy of service delivery in crisis, while increasing convenience for beneficiaries.

PPa is currently impacting in the lives of street children (boys and girls, aged under 18 years, for whom "the street" has become home and their source of livelihood, and who are inadequately protected). It was co-created with Don Bosco Organisation in India in 2017, non-for-profit running a national program (ChildMISS) since 2013, endorsed by Unicef, to protect street children in 81 locations across de country. The program is impacting over 300K children. These children constantly migrate, running away from mafias and dangers. They frequently lie about their identity. There were many duplicities in the database. That is the reason why PPa was developed, to avoid duplicating interventions, such as vaccines, and to reduce the number of days the children are in the streets and put them safe in shelters or back home quicker.

In 2019 several NGOs in Senegal identified PPa as a great tool to help them better protect talibé children (boys sent to a daara to study the Quran that ends up being forced to beg in the streets) so it was installed in Senegal too. It is currently being installed in Sierra Leona to efficiently protect street girls victims of sexual abuse.

Governments need non-for-profits and humanitarian agencies' support in order to reach and provide digital ID to stateless people (to reach 2030 Agenda goal of registering every citizen). These entities will prioritise ethics and guarantee the integrity of the ID system. PPa provides a digital ID to stateless beneficiaries to efficiency manage social programs and aid delivery. In collaboration with governments, it could be an extraordinary tool to help countries register stateless groups as well as to allow interoperability among entities in a secure way. Using palm vein recognition (contact-less) it can also support governments trace Covid19 cases with international agencies

PPa-People’s Protection App is novel as it is the first time palm vein recognition, which has been proved to be extremely accurate in children, is used in humanitarian aid, and it is the first time it is used in mobility too.

IRISGUARD is a supplier of end-to-end iris recognition financial delivery platform to provide financial inclusion and authorisation of transactions for vulnerable populations. Being focused in financial inclusion, it is not as accurate as PPa in case of children. UNHCR’s Biometric Identity Management System is a global database that can determine that every individual UNHCR registers receives a unique record. The solution has been developed specifically for UNHCR to be implemented in Refugee Camps, but it is not accessible for other NGOs and entities targeting the same beneficiaries. Our project PPa has been developed as an affordable solution for social organizations, where data will be securely shared by organizations in a blockchain backed DLT environment accessible just to those with permissioned access.

PPa is also an innovative sustainable model. Owned only by non-for-profits (to ensure an ethical governance model), the objective is to create social impact - identify and register stateless people - and therefore our aim is to deliver frugal technology at accessible price (pay per use) to ensure scalability. The affordability is guaranteed thanks to strategic partnerships with Fujitsu, Neoris an HoganLovells, corporates that have committed pro bono and affordable prices as part of their CSR policies, joining our purpose.

PPa has been designed to be implemented autonomously without integration or dependence on any other existing application in the Organization concerned. To maximize the reliability of people's recognition, it three biometric identification factors (facial, fingerprint and palm recognition),

although each entity can decide which ones to use.

The mobile application operates in a coordinated manner, and in connection with the system that is installed on the corresponding server.

Identification is only done by authorised users. It will proceed to the univocal identification of the Social Worker through fingerprint biometrics (and inclusion of username and password), in order to protect the query of sensitive data.

The mobile application can be used online and offline. When the mobile is outside of network coverage, the captured biometric data will be stored locally, until it can be transmitted to the server for storage.

All the sensitive information of PPa is encrypted, which will guarantee the privacy of the personal data.

The PPa application can be implemented as a multi-language application.

PPa currently uses a central repo to store biometric data on the cloud. The continued viability of the system is dependent on a single entity maintaining the infrastructure. The move towards a more robust, decentralized ecosystem is key. The biometric information retrieved will be presented using the DID spec proposed by the W3C working group on Decentralized Identifiers for a blockchain agnostic approach to delivering Self Sovereign Identity. DIDs are the building blocks for building verifiable claims.

DEMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U15FQCd8oIs

Theory of Change of PPa

OBJETIVES

• To introduce a biometrical technological solution into humanitarian aid to ensure accurate beneficiaries registration and efficient data management. 

• To ensure data protection for vulnerable people in humanitarian and social fields.

• To obtain accurate data of vulnerable groups that are unable to prove their identity through any recognised means to have a better knowledge of their problems and help humanitarian agencies and governments design better social polities, aligned to real needs, to protect them.

•To ensure sustainability of the project with an appropriate business model

INPUTS

•Funds invested to develop the solution :250K€ 

•Variable costs for users (annual PPa license that will depend on number of registers)

•Hardware costs (PPa Kit can cost from 450€)

OUTCOMES

·       Nº of public institutions, agencies and NGOs that use PPA in their humanitarian programs

·       Nº of social problems intervened Nº of crisis intervened

·       Nº of people registered

·       Time saved in beneficiaries identification and profiles registration

·       Amortization fee of the technology

IMPACT

•Beneficiaries accurately identified and registered having access to public and private services 

•Social interventions improved in crisis thanks to beneficiaries accurate registration in efficient databases 

• Client costs related to beneficiaries identification, registration and data management reduced for social organisations

• SDG 16 supported (all citizens legally registered by 2030)

• 100% of PPa investment paid off, income generated and technology improved

In the countries where we are currently working (India, Sierra Leone and Senegal) we are already in conversations with public administrations to ensure we can collaborate with them to ensure beneficiaries of our projects could be legally registered to access the public services and therefore their human rights. For example, in India we are in contact with the Chief Architect of Aadhaar Card system (Pramod Varma) who confirmed that PPa could definitely help the Indian Government register and protect street children. Even if more than 80% of Indian population has already been registered with Aadhaar, most of street children haven’t and the government is finding it very hard to do (there are over 18Million children living in the streets of India as per UNICEF). ChildMISS network with PPa could definitely support the Governmet in the task. Through APIs both systems could share specific data so that if a child already registered in Aadhaar is found lost or under danger in the streets, he/she can be safely restored back home. Or if a child was never registered, he/she can be and therefore being visible to the government to obtain the needed support and protection.

PPa is extremely easy to use. It has been co-desgined with users (Indian social workers and we are currently improving the UX thanks to the feedback of our pilots in Africa). The biometric data along with the personal data is collected from a mobile device or PC and safely storaged, encrypted, in AWS. The biometric licenses used are universal so it can be incorporated to any governmental identification system. Even if the main print we suggest to ensure accuracy in children is palm print (not used by any of the countries we are working in yet), social organisations are also collecting facial recognition and fingerprint (the combination of the 3 of them ensures almost 100% accuracy) so PPa and governmental systems could talk to each other.

PPa is a very simple solution that combines different solid technologies. The value of it is a combination of the architecture, that enables to safely interoperate among entities and ensure data protection, and the simplicity of its use.

Our solution integrates different existing technologies and uses international standards biometrical licenses so that it can be integrated through APIs with other softwares. 

PPa was developed for a Street children program. Therefore, apart from accuracy in minors, the most relevant challenge was to be able to be used in low connectivity environments and directly in the streets (in mobility). Therefore, the mobile application can be used online and offline. The data query cannot be done offline, however the biometric data capture can be done in both scenarios. When the mobile is outside of network coverage, the captured biometric data (face photography, fingerprint, etc.) will be stored locally, until it can be transmitted to the server for storage. As soon as there is connectivity, the application identifies the data stored locally and sends it automatically to the cloud. It there is an ID match it will let the user know so he can merge the profiles and save the latest updates.

Regarding low literacy and numeracy levels, PPa has been co-designed with social workers (some of them used to be street children). We have been adapting the application with their feedback for almost 3 years now so the UX is extremely intuitive and there is no need to write much about the beneficiaries. Most of the fields are checkboxes. The GPS allows to automatically incorporate the location where interventions are done and the system automatically registers the user ID and the center he works at.

PPa was developed in 2017 with Don Bosco Forum of Youth at Risk with the objective of enabling interoperability to increase the efficiency and impact of the 81 centres of ChildMISS network and to improve the quality of services provided to children. During the pilot, over 4000 children were registered already and we are currently scaling the solution to the 81 centers so we will be impacting 300K children in the next year.  

In September 2019 the PPa was successfully installed in Senegal in collaboration with Foundation COOPERA and Maison de la Gare to identify, register and protect talibé children (forced to beg by mafias). The pilot has impacted in 100 tablibé children and we estimate to impact 4000 in the next year.

In September 2020 one more project starts in Sierra Leone in collaboration with Child Heroes Foundation and Don Bosco Fambul that will impact in 3000 sexually abused girls only the first year.

Unicef has selected PPa as one of the best 5 projects to help its mission we are now participating in Unicef Innovation Lab in Spain. We are identifying a project to be ran with Unicef in the next year. Red Cross has awarded PPa with the Humanitarian Technology Award 2019 and will identify a pilot too.

Therefore, apart from the 4100 children impacted already and over 307K next year, we expect to reach at least 5M registrations in 5-year time thanks to strategic partnerships with both with international agencies and governments.

We dream of becoming and ID standard for humanitarian aid, in collaboration with UN agencies and governments. We aim to help UN achieve the 2030 Agenda goal of every citizen registered and accessing their rights by 2030. We have strategically started targeting street children programs as our most USP is children accuracy and because of our recent partnership with UNICEF (the estimated number of street children in the world is 150M). However, we are starting to look into scaling the solution along with organisations such as Red Cross to target other stateless and vulnerable groups such as victims of trafficking or forced migrants and refugees.

In terms of technology we are currently working on decentralising the data bases with blockchain to increase data protection. For that, we are participating in an investigation that Unicef is running on how blockchain could help women victims of trafficking and their children. We might be piloting PPa on blockchain in Spain as part of this investigation.

Being a non-for-profit our first barrier is finances. Even if we have a sustainable model in place (our clients pay a license per use), in the next 5 years we still need to invest in new developments and to ensure the humanitarian field adopts the technology. However, there are very limited philanthropists in Spain that invest in this type of innovative projects. We are starting to look for partners abroad that might be interested in joining our mission to avoid finance risks in the next 5 years. We hope our partnership with UNICEF will also help.

We are also finding legal barriers. Even if the use cases of PPa are legal in every country we are working in (sensitive data can be collected and managed to protect lives of citizens), there are still reluctances regarding where data is storage. If we decentralize the data base with blockchain, it might cause more reluctance. However, we could with HoganLovells, who is supporting us pro-bono to ensure we accomplish every law in all countries where we are.

Apart from looking for partnerships abroad (such as in the EEUU where there are more philanthropist investing in technological innovation to achieve 2030 Agenda), we are also looking into other sectors where PPa could add value such as to ensure there is no child labor in supply chains.

We are also looking for experts and advise on how decentralizing PPa Data Base could improve the data protection of the vulnerable groups we are collecting and managing data from but at the same time how we can accomplish with the different countries laws. We are aware of the ambition of our project and we are aware that tackling this type of issues may also have a negative impact so we know we need the best corporates and organisations to join our mission. That is the reason why we are already parnerting with Fujitsu, Neoris, HoganLovells and Unicef and the reason why we are trying to maintain the non-for-profit sustainable model to ensure there is never a decision taken over capital rather than over beneficiaries’ welfare. Ethics must always be at the centre of our work.

3 full time employees (Itwillbe), 2 full time volunteers (Itwillbe) 

However, our business model is based in strong partnerships with technological companies and non-for-profits so we have plenty of people working with us from Neoris (2 part-time), Fujitsu (1 part-time), HogalLovells (2 part-time) and several teams of non-for-profits in India (Don Bosco), Sierra Leona (Child Heroes), Senegal (Coopera, Xaley, Maison de la Gare), Unicef.

We are currently working with Unicef Lab Program on a new governance model where some of these entities could become owners of PPa and/or board members

Our team has been working on projects to identify vulnerable groups to help them access their human rights since 2010. We started back in 2010 supporting immigrants in the state of Haryana (India) to understand the importance of applying for an id proof (the project was called Right to Identification) and our entity helped more than 10K stateless people register. In 2013 we partnered with the local government to help people in Rajeev Nagar get their Aadhaar card (Indian biometrical id). In 2016 we started searching technological solutions that could help identify groups that are difficult to register due to the challenges they face (people born in remote areas), their fears to be registered (victims of trafficking), difficulties because of the lack of accuracy of current solutions (children), etc.

In all these years our inspirational work has made several companies fall in love with our cause (Fujistu, Neoris, Hogan Lovells, Unicef among others). Therefore, we count with more than enough talent to keep looking for new solutions to tackle this huge challenge of getting 100% of citizens registered by 2030. All the awards PPa has received (from UN Global Compact, World Summit Awards, Connecting for Good from Vodafone, Humanitarian Technology from Red Cross, etc) prove our team’s commitment, perseverance and determination, which are the key values to ensure we accomplish such an ambitious mission. We know we won’t accomplish it alone. We don’t have “the perfect solution” yet, but we have something that will definitely help accomplish it.

Unicef. PPa was selected in January 2020 as one of the best technological innovations to support Unicef mission and we have been part of Unicef Innovation Lab program this year. We are currently identifying pilots to run together.

Fujitsu. It is the first time Palm Secure (Fujitsu’s palm vein recognition system) is used in the social field and in mobility, they decided to join our project as part of their CSR efforts. They have committed to lower prices in their software and hardware and have donated all the technology for the pilots so far.

Neoris is our technology developer. It is a digital business accelerator that helps companies step into the future. Jointly we co-design the developments and implement the changes and improvements. They constantly inform us about novelties in the field of software, biometrics, AI, Big Data, etc 

HoganLovells an international law firm specialised in helping to solve the toughest and most complex legal issues. They are placed in all the continents, with strong local relationships. Apart from supporting us with due diligences, contracts, etc, the most relevant support is the studies the firm does regarding Data Protection law in each of the countries organisations want to introduce the technology. They have done studies in India, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mexico and some countries in Latin America so far, for entities such as Don Bosco or World Vision. Everything done is pro bono, enabling the access to such important information to humanitarian organisations.

Our business model integrates PPa (our business activity) with our non-for-profit (the social programs to protect stateless and vulnerable groups in collaboration with local NGOs).

We provide value to our clients (social organizations and governments) and to the final beneficiaries (stateless vulnerable groups, such as street children, forced migrants or victims of trafficking).

We provide our clients with an affordable technological solution to collect accurate data and manage it more efficiently and securely. The beneficiaries of the projects access better social services from our clients and reduce risks (ie duplicate interventions such as vaccines due to lack of accurate information).

We provide both the software (clients pay one time installation – 11.850€ and then only a yearly license fee that will depend on the number of beneficiaries registered) and hardware (pc, tablets and the biometric lectors).

Our clients need tools such as PPa to accurately quantify the social problems they are tackling (that affect stateless people). With quality information they will definitely better serve their beneficiaries and make better decisions to solve the problems. How can we tackle problems which we can’t quantify or deeply understand? We need quality data and first thing is to know who our beneficiaries are, make them visible to society.  

Our resource strategy is based on partnerships. We are working to identify and help register stateless people worldwide. Such an ambitious challenge can’t be solved by one entity. That would be not only ineffective, but dangerous too. Our business model relies on partnerships to ensure we count with the right resources, the best innovations and leaders from different fields, with a common purpose to serve and end poverty due to statelessness.

These partnerships have allowed us to offer our clients frugal technology at affordable prize. Thanks to Fujitsu we can offer biometrical hardware at lower prices. Thanks to Neoris, we can install our application (one time cost for our clients) at a modest prize. Thanks to HoganLovells, social entities have access to pro-bono advise on data protection law in any country.

We were able to reach the current stage thanks to philanthropy, innovation awards and a loan. Since 2019 we have started to pay off the loan thanks to the income generated in the projects in India and Senegal. We expect to increase our income in the next year thanks to our recent partnership with Unicef and our plans to pilot PPa with Red Cross, and to combine it with grants that can help us accelerate our developments and pilots. We are also innovating on a new governance model where we could allow our clients (non-for-profits) or other non-for-profits to invest in our project and be part of the board to ensure we add more value and possibilities to scale.

Grants/Awards:

Vodafone Foundation (Connecting for Good Award 2018): $17.700

El Pais (Digital Talent Award 2017): $17.700

Princess of Girona Social Award 2018 to our founder Arancha Martinez: $11.800: https://es.fpdgi.org/proyectos/premios-fpdgi/premiados/social/arancha-martinez-premio-fpdgi-social-2018/

Red Cross (Humanitarian Technology Award 2019): $4.720

https://www2.cruzroja.es/premios-tecnologia-humanitaria/ediciones-anteriores

Unicef (Innovation Lab 2019): $5.900

Loan from FFF & from La Caixa: $147.500

Income: $59.000 from 2 clients (Projects in India and Senegal)

We are seeking for social investors (ideally foundations) that can not only fund the project to accelerate the impact, but also add intelligence to the project. We are currently being accelerated by Unicef Innovation Lab which we expect to help us anchor our projects with institutions in the countries we are operating as well as to identify new projects/countries to scale our solution. However, we need other accelerator agents and investors that can support our team to improve our solution and to run some more pilots. We are seeking for $118.000 to strengthen our team (commercial profiles with experience in social entrepreneurship).

In the scenario that we raise the expected funds our expenses for 2020 should be $177.000 (mostly for HHRR and marketing)

We have invested €11.800 in Q1 2020 to improve the latest version of PPa and we shouldn’t need to invest in new developments at least till Q3 2021.

The potential cash prize would allow us to keep on with our road map. But for us the most important reason why we are applying to this challenge is the possibility to share our experience, results and mission to the World Bank Group and MIT. We believe we can create huge impact in millions of lives. We have been working to identify vulnerable groups to improve their lives for several years. We have a great network and credibility, especially in Europe and Asia thanks to our collaboration with entities as UN Technology Innovation Labs, Unicef or Red Cross. We have been awarded with the Global Champion at World Summit Awards Vienne 2020. But we now need a last “push” to improve our technology, marketing skills and business model to grow and make this dream possible. We can’t think of a better partner to do so than MIT.

MIT, as we believe we could benefit of technological support to innovate on how blockchain and other technologies can improve our solution, better protecting beneficiaries data, finding the best ways to interoperate among entities and sector (ie between UN and governments)

USA foundations such as Bill Gates Foundations and other charities that invest in such innovations in the humanitarian field, that understands the need of investigation and innovation to tackle poverty

TED. Our CEO Arancha Martinez already did a TED Talk about the need of investing in technological innovation in the social sector and identifying stateless groups to end poverty

https://www.ted.com/talks/por_que_es_vital_invertir_la_solidaridad_en_innovacion_tecnologica

We believe in order to achieve our mission, apart from funding and network, we need to spread the message to the civil society and TED is a great foundation to do so.