Preserving the Lacuna Fund Legacy with DSFSI

We are honoured to share that the Data Science for Social Impact (DSFSI) Lab has been entrusted with preserving the Lacuna Fund website and creating a home for the many datasets developed through Lacuna Fund-supported projects.

What is Lacuna Fund?

Lacuna Fund is the world’s first collaborative effort to provide data scientists, researchers, and social entrepreneurs in low- and middle-income contexts globally with the resources they need to produce labeled datasets that address urgent problems in their communities.

🌍 Where to find the resources:

• A frozen mirror of the Lacuna Fund website can now be accessed here: dsfsi.co.za/lacunafund-mirror/
• A dedicated dataset repository hosting past, present, and future Lacuna Fund datasets is available here: dsfsi.co.za/lacunafund-datasets/

This initiative ensures that the knowledge and resources generated through the Lacuna Fund remain accessible to the global community, fostering continued innovation and impact in equitable AI for all.

🙏 Acknowledgements
This milestone would not have been possible without the contributions and dedication of many individuals and teams:

• Zainab Abdulrasaq – website rehosting
• Jonas Nothnagel – deploying the Fair Forward open-source dataset repository for Lacuna Fund
• Jennifer Pratt Miles – tireless work to ensure the legacy continues
• Lacuna Fund and Meridian teams – for their leadership and trust
• University of Pretoria professional staff – for their support in making this possible

💡 Community-driven development
Both the website mirror and dataset repository are open to improvements from the community.
Feel free to open a GitHub issue on the website mirror or the dataset repository or submit a pull request to help grow and strengthen this collective effort.

✨ Urunana, hand in hand, we build for equitable AI for all.
A re tshwaraneng (Setswana: let us hold hands)!