InReel - Consume real Information

There is a strong proliferation of misinformation and fake news about the disease's lethality, vaccination, preventing infection, from news outlets, social media, and through person-to-person interaction is generating hefty deleterious consequences on the health of people especially the ones from marginalised communities.

Accurate, relevant, and timely access to curated health information in times of humanitarian crises can aid mass population to use the right information in right time to save lives.

To combat infodemic in times of crises we propose a one stop AI guided solution for creation and dissemination of hyper locally contextualised information for crises management via a platform which connects organisations in need of content creation, to volunteers (animators, script writers, graphic designers etc) and a team of domain experts for vetting the information before it goes for public use. Organisations globally can co create, find a repository and translate content in desired language. 

Any natural calamity or emergency like CoV-2 endemic presents important and urgent threat to global health and its effects get even worse in middle- and low-income countries where the health system is generally weak and fragile. 

Timely access to accurate information and public awareness on prevention methods in these countries can be difference between life and death. The stakes are high in developing countries like India and Africa where millions of people have limited access to information because of low media access, insufficient internet penetration, and illiteracy. 

For example, misinformation about Zika was three times more likely to be shared than were verified stories on multiple social media sites, with half of  top 10 news stories regarding Zika considered to be misinformation

In the recent humanitarian crisis, the anti-vaccination situations e.g. related to crisis of public confidence in vaccination let the community become exposed to diseases such as CoV-19. 

To make sure all communities are reached Inreel will target the bottoms up strategy and will be an open platform for groups such as youths, journalists, and faith-based organizations to co-develop guidance that is tailored to each context and community. These groups serve as amplifiers, disseminating accurate information to people organically. 

Inreel aims to provide timely and accurate information about health and life in an understandable way to communities around the globe by giving individuals and humanitarian organisations a platform to share, create and co-design correct information in times of emergency. 

As there is always a dearth of correct information and a high potential of misinformation that affects lives beyond disasters. Inreel already has a repository of information (in the form of scripts, illustrations, graphics etc) which is open sourced, it offers multi language conversion of available content for hyper local contextualisation of information, an AI guided content creation assistance, BCI’s existing partners who can co create/ co design content and a pool of ever-growing volunteers who work pro bono building scripts/animations etc that can be leveraged.

 Inreel reduces the time gap between correct information dissemination and creation. It also authenticates each information developed, through a panel of domain experts who vet and approve each document before it is open sourced for public use hence saving potential risk to lives due to misinformation. 

The solution aims to serve each one of us but especially the rural marginalised groups, who are in need of reliable , customizable and hyper local information in difficult times of emergencies . 

The solution is more meaningful in communities of developing countries like India and Africa who already have limited access to internet resources for credible information and where spread of misinformation and myths is very strong. A lot of times such misinformation and myths create danger to lives. 

Most information put forward in mainstream media is urban and hence not found relatable by the rural audience. Hence the requirement of contextualised content creation arises.

To save time in creation and dissemination of authentic information, there is always a need of co creation of content with partner like minded organizations who are willing to open source the information for wider dissemination.Humanitarian organizations or individuals working on a bottoms up approach serve best to these communities as they address needs in the way that it will be well accepted by these communities. The content created by organizations is further disseminated in their respective communities via local community representatives. 

Inreel aims to stop the spread of misinformation by providing a platform for authentic hyper locally contextualised good information creation to like minded individuals and humanitarian organizations who have the ability and resources to reach the last mile community, thus equipping the last mile healthcare systems with the correct knowledge to address spread of misinformation or myths.As the content is contextualised and created preferably in the local dialect it has huge acceptance and hence prepares mass populations to tackle any emergency situation and take precautions for any such future outbreaks. 

The idea was initiated when COVID struck the world. Barefoot College International, a nonprofit women empowerment organisation, was struggling to create good information or contextualise available good information as per the needs of rural population for wider dissemination. Since the inception of the idea, we have been able to create a repository of vetted information which is also co created by like minded organisations with the support of volunteers and is disseminated in rural communities in 10 local Indian languages, apart from English and Spanish. At this stage, the information is uploaded on the software and is available for downloading. 

Inreel is still undergoing development. We are working on incorporating AI based tools to process natural language and use that as a basis to create videos using preloaded graphics. Once completed, we will start with working on the end-user interface and building a healthy community of users in India. 

As is said necessity sparks innovation.Its the struggle to create information on urgent basis during crises and absence of availability of vetted good information that could reach the last mile to save their lives from misinformation that gave birth to InReel.

Creating a community of healthy consumers of multilingual information, InReel addresses the problems of misinformation. InReel is unique as it simplifies the creation of content by hosting features like AI powered video generation based on narrative description. The tool hosts a large repository of animated figures localised for various regions and allowed for easy Voiceover additions. The tool enables a regular consumer to browse content relevant based on preferences and geography. 

In Reel is a catalytic solution as it gives the power of authentic content creation in the hands of philanthropists and humanitarian organisations who represent the bottom layer of the society , and enables them to share the same platform for co creation and exchange of their best abilities to save the planet during times of crises.

In Reel is a long term solution for good information as it stores huge database of good information that can be used by anybody under any circumstances.

In its first phase InReel has been able to reach out to nearly 1 million people across India.The content creation has been hyperlocally contextualised in nearly 10 Indian languages apart from English.The response from communities for the good information created and disseminated has been quite promising.Reaching this huge number of beneficiaries has been possible through partnerships and joint alliance  between 40+ like minded organizations and BCI who have co created and curated content which has been vetted by a team of domain experts and open sourced for everyone .In the next one year we aim to build our strength to reach 10 million people around the globe, which will further multiply to 100 million people by the end of next 5 years.

The solution shall track it's journey towards it's impact goals in terms of the following outcome metrices:

·         Number of reusable visual elements contributed

·         Number of final communication material produced

·         Turnaorund time for creation of a visual element from scratch (by content volunteer)

·         Turnaround time for creation of complete visual communication from a textual organization (by content specialist team)

·         Turnaround time for customization of any existing communication into a new version (e.g., new language)

·         Authenticity of final communication produced

·         Number of views/downloads of final communication materials

·         Number of official partnerships promoted in app

As of now the ever growing team comprises of the following 

Fulltime : 5

Part time : 10

Contractors : 1

Volunteers: 15

InReel  is an outcome of challenges faced to fight misinformation during the ongoing CoV-2 endemic especially at the grassroots level, when saving lives was essential not only from the deadly virus but also from the prevalent myths that imposed danger to innocent lives which had limited access to good information.

InReel is a brain child of group of BCI staff who all have been associated with the organization since 2016. All of them have had on ground experiences in various communities around the globe and are perfectly suited to ideate bottoms up solution for the communities they are dedicated to serve. Mr.Prayag Ichangimath is a Youth for India fellow, and is our technical expert who has an engineering background and has had an opportunity to visit the Apple Academy as part of an internal project in the past. Dr.Monalisa Padhee is a PHD holder and Atlantic, Aspen Fellow 2019, she heads the health department at BCI.Mr.Shuvajit Payne is a content development expert and has immense experience in digital content creation and dissemination domain. Mrs.Ojasvita Malhotra , is also a Youth for India Fellow and is has masters in Strategic Management. She manages strategic partnerships with like minded organizations, and holds the fort for the funding needs for the org. Miss Cliona, heads the external communications , media content creation and is highly reliable when it comes to organising call for partnerships or volunteering opportunities.

The present InReel team is an extension of the Barefoot College International (BCI) team - an organization that has a stated inclusion policy, with a focus on bottoms up improvement of women and disadvantaged groups as its vision. 

In it's leadership, BCI has a balanced representation of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and even caste and economic class keeping  in mind it's Indian origin context. BCI achieves this inclusion through its foundational approach of building grassroots talent upwards by making them confident and capable in embracing technology.

Further, the solution InReel also extends the spirit of inclusion by envisioning to create a space that allows any organization working with any group to find, produce and reuse information and content that can be of aid during a pandemic.

InReel is an innovative solution that addresses the global need of fighting mis information regarding health in times of emergencies. It's one of its kind solution that requires support from like minded organisations and individuals to scale up the level of its performance and growth.

With MIT Solve we get an opportunity to explore the network and also gain esteemed guidance and technical expertise from solver communities to grow InReel for larger community benefits.This is what is most needed for wider acceptance and fool proof performance of InReel. Using the wide network of Solver community that can further vouch for InReel will help us reach mass populations and counter information reliability of people on the prevalent platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc which have high misinformation threads. Offcourse the grant prize money is important to initiate and scale up all activities.

We need human capital in the form of consultants, domain experts, volunteers who are motivated to commit their time and expertise pro bono or with some remuneration so they could help us build InReel with more human experiences and learnings.InReel's technology needs a massive upsurge and so we need partners who can share and guide us in developing necessary tools so that the platform becomes more accessible to a wider range of audiences and is fool proof one stop destination for credible vetted information which reduces the turn around time of content dissemination during the time of emergiencies. Monitoring and Evaluation is equally important for us so we are able to study the impact generated on the ground level.Partnerships between like minded organisations are necessary to increase the product usage so the proliferation of misinformation could be checked and balanced.At last finances are important to scale up and feed the growth of InReel.

There are a number of organisations that we would like to learn and collaborate with in order to grow InReel in its reach and efficiency to deliver accurate good information.

Pratham- for content creation ,Pratham is one of the largest non-governmental organisations in India. It works towards the provision of quality education to the poor in India. They have been working in the digital content creation domain since a decade and our partnerships with them will be really valuable in terms of content creation and building a repository of scripts and videos that are hyper locally relevant.

MIT media lab - The MIT Media Labs support in design and research of important tools and technology which will make InReel efficient and fool proof with tech tools that make it the most used platform for good information generation is envisioned.

Health and well being of people is also ensured if they are able to access correct health information. In these times of digital influx where people have the ability to log in platforms with unauthenticated information the risk to human lives with misinformation is triple fold. In such a scenario a platform that authenticates information by collaborating with domain experts who vet each and every information created is a necessity. Specifically in times of health crises where there is an information gap, even the govt agencies fail to reach the last mile. InReel is a platform which is required by people globally so such information gaps can be filled with creation and dissemination of good information that counters the lag in content dissemination.The Robert Wood Johnson Prize will further motivate and contribute towards the financial needs of InReel that will aids its growth.

As mentioned earlier in the pilot phase of InReel, the focus is on platform development and AI integration that shall be done through donations and grants. In the scale phase 1.0, the focus shall be on inclusion of a large number of stakeholders and that shall require communications as well as incentives, for which we shall explore crowdfunded donations, as well as grants.

InReel's entire scale up and development in this phase needs funding support for growth.

InReel is a technological solution that inculcates a vetting layer but moreover gives the ability of end to end content creation in the hands of the end user. The technology used is a boon because it guides the content creator to create information in a hyper local contextualised manner. It also hosts an AI guided tutorial for content creation to all its users.