As part of National Volunteer Week this month, we are profiling our DataCorps volunteers of projects past, present and future. These volunteers donate a whopping 5-10 hours a week over the course of several months to apply data science techniques that can help advance a social change organization's mission.

"We are excited to partner with DataKind to better understand where to target our services and we anticipate the results of this project will enable us to work more effectively toward our mission – to break the cycle of child abuse by empowering children, families and communities. Thank you to Eduardo, Nanette, and everyone for all your help!"

-Upbring

Upbring is a 135 year-old nonprofit organization with a rich legacy of serving vulnerable people across Texas. Its mission is to break the cycle of child abuse by empowering children, families and communities. Upbring serves more than 27,500 people annually and provides innovative programs and services for children including foster care, adoption, education, residential treatment and community services.

Using data to pinpoint where child abuse incidents most often occur, as well as crime records, locations of other nonprofits and other publically available data, Upbring would like to develop a coverage map to identify if the areas they are currently serving are those most in need of services to reduce child abuse in Travis County, Texas. Bringing together this information is extremely powerful and will help the organization better profile where incidents occur. Upbring knows their impact happens one child at a time and is shaping the way Texas cares for children in Travis County.

DataCorps volunteers Eduardo Franco and Karissa Nanetta are working together with Upbring to make this happen.

Eduardo is a Data Scientist at Descartes Labs and studies agriculture and global commerce via satellite imagery. Eduardo volunteers with DataKind because he believes, "Data shouldn't exclusively be used for profit." Meet Eduardo > 

Karissa is serving as Project Manager and is a Strategy Consultant at Ernst & Young. Meet Karissa >