Lacuna Fund seeks Expressions of Interest (EOI) from organizations interested in developing training and evaluation datasets for African languages.
Lacuna Fund helps data scientists, researchers, and social entrepreneurs create new labeled datasets to address an underserved community or problem, enrich existing datasets to make them more representative, or update old datasets to make them more sustainable. All datasets created will be developed and held locally, and they will be readily accessible to the international community while following ethical and privacy best practices.
However, Lacuna Fund aims to make its funding accessible to as many organizations as possible in the AI for social good space and cultivate capacity and emerging organizations in the field.
Eligibility
To be eligible for Lacuna Funding, organizations must:
- Be either a non-profit entity, research institution, for-profit social enterprise, or a team of such organizations.
- Have a mission supporting societal good, broadly defined.
- Have all necessary national or other approvals to conduct proposed research. The approval process may be conducted in parallel with grant application, if necessary. Approval costs, if any, are the responsibility of the applicant.
- Have the technical capacity to conduct dataset labeling, creation, expansion, and/or maintenance.
- Be sufficiently stable to ensure the sustainability of the dataset or have Individuals must apply through an institutional sponsor.
Additionally,
- Individuals must apply through an institutional sponsor.
- Partnerships are welcome but only the lead applicant will receive funds.
Application Process
To apply for the Lacuna Fund: Machine Learning Datasets for Languages in Sub-Saharan Africa-2021, click here.
Deadline: December 1, 2022.
For more information on Lacuna Fund: Machine Learning Datasets for Languages in Sub-Saharan Africa-2021, visit the official site.
