Amman, Jordan, 2018

Our first event in Jordan tackled children’s rights, corruption and freedom of expression.

AMMAN BY THE NUMBERS

Applications from creatives

147

Nationalities represented

13

Value of pro bono work donated

$123k

OVERVIEW

Nearly 200 people applied to take part in our seventh flagship sprint. In total, 31 talented people attended, with participants coming from Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, India, Costa Rica, Brazil, Indonesia, Sweden, Italy, UK and the US.

Our mission was to support Jordanian CSOs, and from the 13 that applied to attend the sprint, we selected four. This sprint was hosted at Nofa, an old villa turned into a beautiful art gallery and community space on Rainbow Street in the centre of town.

Our fabulous partner for this event was the Amman-based journalism and podcast organisation SOWT, which means ‘voice’ in Arabic. They have a longstanding track record of working on innovative and engaging journalism in Jordan. They also know every good place to eat in Amman, which meant we were very well fed at this workshop (proof of this in the photo gallery of this event). Shukran!

MEET THE CSOS

Arab Women Organization of Jordan (AWO) promotes gender equality and women’s rights, increasing women’s presence in public, political and economic spheres.

Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism was the first nonprofit in the region promoting investigative journalism in Arab newsrooms.

Rasheed is Transparency International's Jordanian chapter. Their projects strengthens the pillars of integrity, transparency, and accountability in Jordan.

Information and Research Center – King Hussein Foundation promotes the welfare of families, communities, and vulnerable groups in Jordan.

PROJECTS

Featured

Al Bedaya - The Beginning

In Jordan orphans and children with no family face relentless discrimination.

A Bride With A Doll

An award-winning interactive data-led experience for mothers and their daughters who are at risk of early marriage in Jordan.

Documenting Corruption

A public-facing tool for Transparency International Jordan to show the impact of corruption.

TEAM LEADERS

From left to right: Amanda, Skye, Zdenek, and Giorgio

Amanda Hobbs
Is an experienced researcher, writer, and visual content editor with a passion for storytelling via information graphics and data visualisations. Her clients include publishing and media outlets such as Scientific American, The New York Times, and Taschen. Before starting her own business, Amanda was the Art Research Editor for National Geographic magazine for seven years.

Skye Moret
Is a scientist, designer and adventurer. She creates work that encourages curiosity, empathy, and interaction through data-driven design and visual storytelling. Her clients include Periscopic, TBA21–Academy, The Nature Conservancy, Nike Global Community Impact. She is also an Assistant Professor in the Collaborative Design and Design Systems at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Zdenek Hynek
Is a full-stack developer specialising in data visualisation, data science and AI. He’s the co-founder of a data-design studio and has worked as a lead developer at Signal Noise, and as a research assistant on a data project at Oxford University. He runs the regular dataviz meet-ups in London.

Giorgio Uboldi
Is a designer and co-founder of Calibro, a design studio based in Milan focused on tailored data-driven research and projects. From 2013 to 2015 he worked as research fellow at DensityDesign Research Lab. He is one of the founders of RAW Graphs, an open-source data visualisation framework built with the goal of making the visual representation of complex data easy for everyone.