We are excited to share that Nava Labs has been selected as one of nine finalists for the Robin Hood AI Poverty Challenge award! This $100,000 award will support our research on how artificial intelligence (AI) might expand access to public benefits. It also brings us one step closer to being selected as one of three finalists, which would come with a $1 million award for our project.
Nava Labs is a philanthropically funded division within Nava focused on prototyping policy and systems changes within government programs and advocating for their adoption. With funding from the Robin Hood award, we’ll pilot an assistive chatbot that may help navigators such as caseworkers, call center specialists, community health workers, and other community partners connect families with critical public benefits.
“We’re honored that Robin Hood selected Nava Labs as a finalist for the AI Poverty Challenge award, out of 200+ organizations that submitted proposals,” Alicia Benish, Nava Labs' Partnerships and Evaluation Lead, said. “This speaks to the potential impact of our assistive chatbot, which specifically aims to improve enrollment and participation in early childhood programs.”
For the past year, our Nava Labs team has been researching, prototyping, and piloting various AI-enabled tools to support benefits navigators in helping families identify and enroll in benefit programs. Through experimentation and user research with navigators, experts, and families, we identified the assistive chatbot as a promising solution to pilot.
