Norwegian Church Aid works in some of the world’s most vulnerable countries. When the organisation saw an increased need for digital tools in their global peace work, they asked Semcon for support to find the way forward. The initiative is called Tech for Peace and will counter online disinformation and polarisation through participation and dialogue. Semcon’s participation in the project is a part of the company’s CSR-program.
Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) has worked to eradicate poverty and injustices in the world since the 1940’s. A large portion of their work involves trying to build peace with dialogue and participation in countries with on-going armed conflicts. This has proven increasingly difficult, because a growing number of conversations nowadays take place in digital channels where local leaders and peacekeepers don’t have access. NCA realised that they needed to find new ways of working, and welcomed the support of Semcon’s experts within idea generation and innovation to help map out the way forward.
This is a global problem that we can’t solve ourselves. Hate speech and disinformation is something that affects us all, so it doesn’t make sense to tackle the issue alone. We want to draw on experiences and knowledge from business and academia and cooperate towards a common goal.
Tech for Peace builds on dialogue
Semcon has helped NCA with innovation processes by clearly defining problems and then find the best way forward. The cooperation between NCA and Semcon has led to the creation of an Advisory Board, with the purpose to find new solutions that can meet the challenge of fake news and hate speech in digital channels. It will consist of actors from business and academia who will collaborate to innovate together. Semcon will contribute by gathering them and by facilitating dialogue and collaboration.
It feels great to be a part of and get to contribute to such an important project. We wanted to participate and now we are using all our knowledge within innovation, which in large part concerns facilitating conversation and helping the group understand things together.