Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Patrick Meier.

Patrick Meier is a digital humanitarian helping to silently transform the story of underdeveloped countries through technology. Inspiring a team of volunteers using free, open-source technology from Africa, he created a live map in the aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake -- described by the head of FEMA as the most comprehensive crisis map of Haiti available to the humanitarian community -- and became a pioneer in the field of live crisis mapping. He now scales humanitarian aid through the use and localization of appropriate robotics solutions. These include aerial, marine and terrestrial robotics. He creates disruptive models that seek to up-end top-down solutions and that devolve power, voice and money to local communities -- to counter his view that "the vast majority of social good projects seem to be led by foreign experts. They parachute in to momentarily extract data from the Global South without any local knowledge or local context."

Below are some of the nuggets from the call that stood out for me ...

• Growing up in Nairobi was magical, and at the same time very real.
• I was a teenager in Kenya and learning a little swahili. The term juakali , which means “hot sun,” also signifies local ingenuity and creativity. I was taken with the ingenuity I saw everywhere.
• A big part of my work is captured by the phrase, “decolonizing technology for good.” The big question is, how to do it? There’s no one way. It does take a village. And it involves learning as we go, for better or worse.
• Local leadership is more important than new technology.
• In the mainstream humanitarian NGO community, if we need an expert somewhere in the Global South, the foreigner is the expert by definition.
• We’re trying to change that, by first of all changing the discourse. By shining a light on local experts.
• The typical excuse among big humanitarian organizations is: “We didn’t know there were local experts.” We want to rob them of this excuse! Local people are the ones with valuable local knowledge and expertise.
• So we needed to do something more subversive: opportunity transfer. We say, “Why don’t you hire the local experts? They understand the culture and the context.” Most of this happens behind the scenes.
• The pandemic has accelerated this transfer. International organizations tend to say: we have to be there. During the pandemic they’ve been forced to rely on local expertise.
• Regarding drones, the conventional wisdom regarding transferring opportunity was: no, that’s too technical!
• But we’ve been proving them wrong. One great example is Yusef in Zanzibar. He had expertise and did remote training in drones.
• The best way for people to become masterful with a technology is to co-create it. This involves a different way of working together.
• For humanitarian workers, this is about mutuality: helping to set the stage and then getting out of the way.
• We do this with co-creation workshops. I never cease to be amazed at the difference between how things were years ago, and what we’re doing now .
• This is not complicated. it’s about dignity and respect, basic human decency. Checking your ego at the door, and listening.
• We work with fixed wing drones, which look like small airplanes, and multi-rotor drones, which look like helicopters. As an example, in the mountain areas of Nepal, where spaces are tight, they’re using multi-rotor drones.
• In the Flying Labs community that we’ve brought together, we don’t tell each community what to work on.
• Some examples: Counting birds in wildlife reserves. Disaster mapping after disasters — to help drive mitigation. In Peru, creating images of the oldest free-standing rope bridge in Peru.
• An example of opportunity transfer. We were invited to do drone training in Papua New Guinea. We could have hired the “usual suspects” from, the U.S. and Europe. Instead we hired people from India who had launched a new drone start-up there.
• The dynamic in the room was completely different. I stand out — white, American, etc. Indian people blended in much better. The Papua New Guinea people were much more relaxed, and more comfortable in collaborating.
• Conventional humanitarian organizations have been the last adopters of emerging technologies. Younger people on their own, around the world, have been way ahead of them.
• So our strategy has been to mobilize thousands of students around the world. We’ve been much faster and have received lots of attention.
• We’re trying to change the drone-robotics space.
• We look for startups around the world and do what we can to connect with them and support them.
• We’re aiming to start sourcing drone and robotics technology globally.
• “If you want to change a system, build a new system that makes the old one obsolete.”
• "Think about how you can shift your own power to somebody else. Just do it. It doesn't have to be something that takes 17 years. We all have different kinds of privileges. Find out where you feel like you have privilege and find out where you can shift your power to somebody else. If you can do that, my G--, what a beautiful gift."

Lots of gratitude to our guest Patrick Meier, our moderator David Bonbright, our streamer and Zoom host Ronak, our fearless team anchor Preeta, and all the behind-the-scenes volunteers that made this call happen!

Aryae