Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining today's session today. We'll be talking about how we can leverage technology for social impact. I am Mani Gupta and I'm the founder and executive director of Hughes of the Mind Mental well-being Foundation.I am an engineer by profession and a social entrepreneur by passion. So here is what we'll be discussing today. Firstly, we all know that technology is advancing at a rapid pace. There are so many advancements in technology and with this, there are so many opportunities to delve into different spaces such as social impact. So in the first segment, we'll talk about the need and the development of new technology platforms. Secondly, we'll also talk about how these platforms impact and cause different uh repercussions in terms of the different avenues that we're working in. So we'll do this through a case study. As you can see, I lead a foundation that focuses on mental well-being. So I'll be taking some examples from the same to talk about the journey here. Firstly, when we talk about, OK, thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining today. As you can see today, we'll talk about how we can leverage technology for social impact. I am Nancy Gupta and I'm the founder and executive director of Views of the Mind Mental well-being Foundation. I'm an engineer by profession and a social entrepreneur by passion.

So through my experiences in the space of mental well-being, I will also highlight the different ways in which technology has helped us grow and how you can leverage the same as you can see. The table of contents. Here we have two segments of the session. Firstly, we'll talk about the different a different advancements in technology as we all know that technology is advancing at a rapid pace. And with that, there are new opportunities that are coming up in the space of social impact to use technology. So in this segment, we'll discuss the need and the development of new platforms. Secondly, we'll also talk about the repercussions that these platforms might have on the space that we are trying to impact. So we'll talk about the different different consequences and sometimes the cons as well.

So as I mentioned, I'll be highlighting the different learnings that I've had from my space and mental well-being in terms of advocacy and education. So I think we all can agree that especially after the pandemic, we've seen that technology is such a crucial segment in, you know, facilitating educational modules in schools, colleges, universities and so on. And why is it so important in advocacy? Firstly, the important and crucial aspect is that it is scalable and technology is scalable and it can be scaled in a lot of different geographical areas where there is access to internet. Secondly, it is relatively very accessible. When we talk about digital resources such as self help help kits or self-care kits. In terms of mental well-being, they can be very accessible in terms of any device that a person has, whether it's their mobile phones, laptops and so on. With technology, there's also the decrease and barrier in terms of the logistical issues that sometimes come in and with the rise in different technologies, we have the scope to innovate innovation and research is such a big segment when we talk about advocacy because we need to keep thinking of different ways to reach our target audience in terms of impacting them, whether it's about climate action, whether it's about health care and so on with the help of innovative campaigns, we can impact our audience and make sure that they are able to connect with the work that we do.

So firstly, I would like to highlight, especially in the terms of A I, we can see that A I is integrating in every space when we specially talk about mental well-being. You can see that here are some examples of applications that utilize A I. And the idea here is that we are able to create personas that are able to eliminate the need of human intervention or even provide intervention in timings where humans might not be able to be there. So in terms of scalability and accessibility, these applications act as online therapists and of course their scope and work is different from one another. But they also are solving challenges of a lot of a lot of challenges that are present when it comes to mental well-being and health care across the globe. Secondly, there are new modules that are coming up in terms of educational technology. Here is an example of the same, this one is called social and emotional learning. And as you can talk about uh social and emotional learning, this can be applied to different aspects. So when we specifically talk about tech, firstly, there are so many different areas in which tech can impact us and it's not just limited to educational modules, but it can also um make modules that are very interactive and game like to just influence and also impact people of different age groups.

And there are a lot of different types of learnings that are coming up such as activity based learnings and situational based learnings. And with the help of tech, we are able to analyze so many different details. So data analysis definitely becomes much more easier and just food for thought. While we're talking about the aspect of mental well-being in terms of tech, why not research, whatever social cause you're passionate about and see how we can leverage A I and tech in those I'm sure that you'll learn a lot by just going through the different cases that are present in that arena.

The next act aspect of tech leveraging technology is forming our online communities and forums. So when we specifically talk about mental health, we have a fact here at all since often find safe sharing spaces in online communities as they are accessible and relatable. And when we talk about support groups, they are not just limited to mental health, there can be support groups for so many different causes and we can definitely leverage these communities and forums to create that space of discussion. So some examples of those are seven cups and good.

But as I mentioned, these communities can start in any platform. They might be, they might begin by leveraging social media platforms or you might even want to create a forum of your own. It might be on your personal phone devices or it can be completely anonymous at all. The scope to innovate is immense. But we cannot deny that these forums really help us connect with one another. The next aspect as I was talking about is definitely social media platforms. And when we talk about this, there are so many different kinds of content that we can create. Whether we want to create something that is accessible to all, we can leverage long forms of text, for example, on linkedin or video content on different platforms such as tiktok and Instagram. But social media uh definitely has so much influence on the different target audiences that we have.

And specifically if we want to impact the youth, even as an organization, we are youth focused and youth led. And we have leveraged social media to share stories with people to break the stigma around mental health. And we can use social media for a lot of different causes as well. Some more examples are there is a page by the name of the Happy Broadcast that shows and shares positive health news from across the world and not just health actually news that is positive and good for our well-being from across the world and just like that for different causes that we are passionate about.

This can be a catalyst to, to connect with people and impact them in the right way. And there are a lot of new platforms such as disco that are also becoming increasingly popular. Then when we talk about community engagement, we definitely need to include the different consistent forms of engagement that we have initiatives such as podcasts and newsletters are a very popular method to engage communities and raise awareness. And this has also particularly helped us in terms of mental well-being and advocating self-help techniques. This is just an example of using it in the space of mental health care. But similarly, for any social course that you're passionate about podcasts and newsletters can be a great way to connect with your audience and these were just some examples of podcasts that have been increasingly popular. Some more examples of community engagement also include regular meetups or catch ups online and also using technology to have different webinars or lives or Twitter Spaces. Now, we will talk about the different challenges that arise when we talk about using technological innovation.

The first challenges as we all can acknowledge is data security and privacy, especially how is our data being used by the different applications that we use? Especially when it comes to mental health care. We have always been cognizant to use and recommend the correct applications after being acquainted with their data and privacy terms. So this is also another food for thought. We definitely can leverage A I for the different social causes that we care about. But how will it impact the data that we collect in those applications? How is data being shared and used? And are we secure from external acts? Are we secure from um the challenges that come online? Another challenge that we definitely acknowledge is the rise in misinformation.

So we want to use social media for advocacy for education. And when it comes to, for example, climate action, we might want to raise awareness about a lot of different aspects, but we have to be cognizant that whatever we share has been reviewed by experts or is definitely research back. So there is a lot of rise and misinformation when we talk about advocacy because there are a lot of um I would say content, influencers and coaches who might not have the right qualifications to share the relevant advice. So for example, this aspect comes from a space of health care specifically, but this it can be the same in any other space of social impact. And I'm sure we have to be, we have to create systems that battle this challenge as well. And with that, I come to the end of my talk, uh Please feel free to reach out to me and I will also take up any questions in our chat. Thank you so much. Uh Games for change has a plethora of games for social change. And even just adding on to that, even as an organization, we are trying to leverage, you know, games to actually impact Children. But in an educational way and there is a lot of scope for the same.

If you want to discuss any more of that or any work that we do. Please feel welcome to reach out to me. My name is Mani Cota and I'm available on linkedin as well. Thank you so much, Nancy. Please let me know whether you have any questions and I would love to take it up. Oh, that's lovely. I would love to connect with you with the help of this presentation. I just wanted to share a macroscopic view of how we've leveraged technology in our organization and I hope that we can take something back from the same.