In the non-profit sector, social responsibility takes many forms. Transparency in social impact, ethics and communication are key to making a non-profit organization and its projects successful. Building an organization committed to the highest ethical standards demands more than just following the law, it requires fostering practices that create an environment of transparency, accountability and integrity. Mara Manca, humanist at heart, a fellow at the Scimpulse Foundation and researcher on the OpenCare project achieves that with a practical approach. She implements processes to create an atmosphere that is transparent, interactive and creates it in terms that everyone could relate to in their everyday lives. She makes it easy for everyone to see the vision of the project and what they hope to gain, and the risks involved. Transparency and accountability OpenCare is constantly working to ensure ethics and transparency. The challenge, is to keep it as simple and understa...

A new initiative promises help for blind and visually impaired gain more mobility, independence and confidence. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) there are a quarter billion people in the world with vision impairment. Of those, more than 80 million are completely blind. That is twice the population of Canada. Developing a technology that could sense and reconstruct reality for blind people can be one approach. But, a technology that enables blind and vision impaired to mediate their perception of their environment and interact with their surroundings is actually empowering then to be independent from aid devices. Many blind and partially sighted people of all ages are unable to lead independent lives because they are not getting the support they need. The needs of people who lose their sight are many and varied and the support provided must be personalized if it is to meet individual needs. Teaching the blind to see with hearing using echolocation would ...