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RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC—RTI International is an Innovation Partner for Devex World 2016, a conference focused on exploring the future of global development with stakeholders from across the public and private sectors, NGOs, corporations, foundations and social enterprises. Discussions and workshops will be centered on five themes shaping the way forward in development, including how data is transforming programs and taking innovation to scale.
“International development is not just for development practitioners anymore,” said Aaron Williams, executive vice president of government relations and corporate communications, who will speak at the event. “The development sector’s path forward is being blazed by an innovative, diverse and optimistic mix of professionals who are set apart by different talents and expertise, and united around a common commitment to improving lives in developing countries around the world.”
Williams will speak during the closing plenary session titled “How Institutions are Shifting in the New World,” joining other leaders to discuss how organizations are embracing and shaping new opportunities for improving lives in developing nations that draw on new and emerging knowledge, expertise and capabilities. For instance, rapid advancements in technology and open data initiatives mean more data is available now than ever before. RTI draws on expertise not only in development, but in areas such as data collection, data science and mobile technology in order to help organizations harness this “data revolution” and achieve better development outcomes. Actionable insights, combined with development know-how, provide the foundation of programs that are smarter, more efficient, and scalable.
Throughout the day, RTI staff will showcase several technologies that offer new approaches to tackling challenges facing developing nations. These include:
- Tangerine®, the world’s leading open source mobile software for capturing, analyzing and acting on student responses in early grade reading and mathematics skills assessments
- Youth Voices, a pioneering digital platform that tells stories of the global youth unemployment crisis as seen, heard and felt by young people around the world
- Coconut, a versatile open-source software platform for creating tailored data collection and data management applications in limited-resource settings
- Beacon Relief, a cost-effective platform that improves situation awareness for disaster response by providing maps and real-time tracking of people and supplies
Attendees may learn more about RTI and these technologies at the RTI Innovation Zone, which will be open throughout the conference. Additionally, RTI experts will be conducting “Flash Talks” at the following times:
- 1:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m.: Tangerine® - Early Learning Assessments Made Easy
- 4:15 p.m.-4:30 p.m.: YouthVoices: Why Aren't We Listening to a Group of 621 Million People Around the World?
For more information about the conference, please visit https://pages.devex.com/devex-world-2016.html
For more information about RTI and our work in development and beyond, please visit www.rti.org/idg and www.rti.org/ict
