DC’s PeaceTech Lab launches a new ‘scalerator’ program

How can technology (and data and media) be used to scale the important peace-building work being done in conflict zones around the world?

This is one of the questions the folks at the D.C.-based PeaceTech Lab ask themselves every day. Peace-building is a process and data, technology and media communications are tools that may help that process. But how?

Two years after spinning off into its own nonprofit organization (out from under the umbrella of the U.S. Institute of Peace), the PeaceTech Lab is launching a new way to explore this question — by inviting early-stage peacetech startups and nonprofits in to participate in a “scalerator” program.

The PeaceTech Scalerator. (Courtesy image)

The PeaceTech Scalerator, supported by C5 Capital Limited (a London-based investment firm) and Amazon Web Services and based out of the PeaceTech Lab at the USIP building in Foggy Bottom, is an eight-week training and mentorship program. At the end of the eight weeks participants have the opportunity to pitch to investors — the inaugural cohort kicks off on March 1.

According to a press release, the PeaceTech Scalerator will be “the first major international peacetech program powered by cloud innovation and dedicated to scaling startups around the world.”

Nancy Payne, Vice President of the PeaceTech Lab, told Technical.ly there’s a real desire for entrepreneurial thought in peace-building. “There’s a great future ahead for entrepreneurs who want to develop peace-building technologies,” she said. The scalerator is the Lab’s attempt to invest in that innovation.

Applications for the first scalerator cohort are still being accepted through Jan. 15, and Payne told Technical.ly there are plans to select another after the eight weeks have elapsed.

Check out the application here.