Our Impact

WeRobotics became operational in 2016. The first 18 months of operations were dedicated to field testing the Flying Labs framework in 3 countries across 3 continents. In 2018, we implemented the “Flying Labs Local Model” that enables existing local organizations to join the network. Until then, we measured impact related to our own projects only. In 2018, we collaborated with Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) to create a wider set of impact indicators. As our collective work evolves, we continue to adapt and extend this impact page with new indicators.

Drones, data and AI have transformed how social challenges can be tackled. While these emerging technologies are readily available to some, broader access to these technologies and the leadership opportunities that come with them is limited and unequally distributed. This is neither sustainable nor localized. Through the Flying Labs network, we shift power from the global back to the local by ensuring that local experts with local knowledge and lived experience have the access they want and the leadership opportunities they seek to implement social good projects themselves. In the process, they grow their own local ecosystems all the while being connected to a global community.

Network Growth

The Flying Labs network grows organically. It is fully demand/need driven and sustained by existing local organisations.

Currently, the network counts 32 Flying Labs

Leadership

Local leaders across Latin America, Africa and Asia are independently leading the activities they choose to implement.

Currently the network brings together 186 local leaders.

  • Women
  • Men

Women make up 28% of the Flying Labs network, more than double the average industry benchmark of 13% (link to study).

Network & Ecosystem

We organise a wide variety of events to facilitate and support the Flying Labs network. And we co-create and facilitate a global ecosystem, bringing together technology and organisational partners, academia, research and donors.

The ecosystem currently counts 45 technology & organisational partners.

We have organised 59 activities / events for the network and ecosystem since 2019.

Opportunity Transfer

Co-creating and facilitating a vibrant, diverse and global ecosystem allows us to transfer international opportunities to Flying Labs.

WeRobotics has transferred a total of 272 opportunities to Flying Labs since 2019.

Value Transferred

We transferred 38% of our revenue directly to the Flying Labs network in 2020, up from 23% in 2019.

This puts us above the aspirational 25% benchmark set by the Grand Bargain and Charter4Change. Note: only 2.1% of international humanitarian aid goes to local NGOs.

In addition to transferring 38% of our revenue, we directly transferred to several Flying Labs contracts worth more than USD 341,000 in 2020 and 2019. This represented 12% of our total revenue in 2019, for example. We did this instead of taking on these contracts and the work ourselves. In 2021, we launched a new multi-year project with Flying Labs thanks to a new grant that WeRobotics secured. We are transferring 59% of the of the grant funding directly to Flying Labs and local partners.

Revenue Streams Transferred

USD

  • Grants
  • Tech
  • Training
  • Grants include subgrants and microgrants.
  • Technology includes soft/hardware and hosting.
  • Training includes online and in-person trainings.

Impact of Flying Labs

WeRobotics co-creates and supports the Flying Labs network to enable more inclusive, locally-led, sustainable and impactful social good projects in Africa, Asia, Latin America & beyond.

Flying Labs create impact locally by strengthening local capacity, running and enabling locally-led social good projects, and by facilitating local ecosystems for drones, robotics and related data and AI solutions.

COMING SOON: Discover the impact Flying Labs in their local communities on the Impact page of the Flying Labs website.

Coming Soon

Enabling environments enable Flying Labs to grow in expertise and impact. Working in close collaboration with our strategic and global partners, we concentrate the majority of our work on supporting the Flying Labs network with the needed resources, tools, guidelines, knowledge and opportunities to thrive and become sustainable. This is what we call the “Behind the Scenes” work.

Knowledge Resources

We create a wide variety of resources, from technical workflows to ethical guidelines to use cases and operational, financial and strategic tools. And we share them through a wide variety of formats, some restricted to Flying Labs and others with open access for anyone interested.

Research & Development

While the majority of projects and training activities are led by Flying Labs, we lead a number of projects and trainings for R&D purposes.

Competitions

We organize and run a variety of entrepreneurship competitions and technical challenges that allow to add missing resources to the enabling environment.

  • Use Cases
  • Online Courses
  • Webinars

We have created 70 openly accessible resources since 2019.

  • Support Sessions
  • Guidelines
  • Tools

Today the Flying Labs network has access to 66 exclusive and dedicated resources.

The resources we create and the projects, trainings and competitions we lead directly impact the following SDGs:

We are proud of the value and opportunity transfer that we are driving to local experts across Flying Labs. We also recognize that power itself needs to be transferred. While funding may “trickle down”, this doesn’t mean that power does. Our ultimate goal is to shift power back to local experts to drive systems change. We have started with some first stepping stones to pave the way. This section will be updated with new impact indicators along our journey. For now, communications, storytelling, new models and narratives are key to bringing about systems change. We’re also documenting what we have learned while co-creating and enabling the Flying Labs network. We are doing this through multiple channels including publications and research. We seek to inspire others to adapt and adopt at scale the models we have co-created for radical inclusion.

Storytelling

Sharing our successes, challenges, inspirations and motivations openly allows others to learn and hopefully get inspired to either shift power (international organisations) or reclaim leadership and power (local experts). Our main storytelling tool is our blog.

We have published 284 blogposts since 2019.

Experience Sharing

In addition to storytelling, we also publish learning reports and share our experience by contributing to working groups and publications created by other organisations. Sharing our most important learnings and pitfalls hopefully allows others to build on our experiences to create more impact for themselves.

We have contributed to 16 external resources and groups since 2019.

  • Learning Reports
  • Participation in publications
  • External Working Groups

Models & Frameworks

The ultimate way of packing all our knowledge and experiences into a format that other organisation can then replicate is by creating models. Up to today, we have created and are openly sharing following models (click on the picto to access the models):

Flying Labs Local Model

Flying Labs Global Model

We are updating our impact
numbers on a quarterly basis.
Last update: February 2021.

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