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When the climate crisis hits, nonprofits show up first. They have been there for years, earning trust, gathering data, finding solutions. What they often do not have is the technology to scale them. That is what the Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab was built for. This Earth Day, five climate-focused organizations are graduating from the program with working AI solutions already reaching millions of people. Here is what they built.
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The Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab is a partnership between Lenovo and Tech To The Rescue (TTTR) that launched in September 2024 as part of the AI for Changemakers Accelerator Program. Lenovo serves as associate sponsor, contributing hardware, AI tools, expert mentorship, and a skilling curriculum to nonprofits selected for the program. Twelve organizations have participated across the full program, working across health, education, and climate.
The Lab in numbers
"The Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab is more than just a tech boost. It brings strategic added value to Tech To The Rescue's broader AI for Changemakers program. While the AI for Changemakers accelerator offers mentorship, strategy, and community support to help nonprofits integrate AI into their missions, the Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab ensures that selected organizations have the cutting-edge tools and resources needed to make that integration a reality."
Jacek Siadkowski, Co-founder and CEO, Tech To The Rescue
"Our goal with the Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab is to help grassroots solutions scale, by making sure they are equipped not only with knowledge, but with the right tools to build."
Santiago Mendez Galvis, EMEA Head of Philanthropy, Lenovo
This Earth Day, five climate-focused organizations are graduating from the program. Each was selected because their intervention was already proven. What they received through the Lab was the technical partnership to scale it.
Brazil Flying Labs built an AI platform that turns complex satellite imagery into clear, actionable answers for land managers making forest restoration decisions. When wildfires tear through a forest in Brazil, a field manager can now ask "Which regions need urgent restoration?" and receive a response in seconds, without waiting for outside experts or slow manual analysis.
Before the platform, teams relied on manual analysis that was slow, costly, and often incomplete. The platform now supports up to 1,000 land managers across Sao Paulo conservation units and indirectly benefits over 15 million people in fire-prone regions. It is being validated across multiple countries through the global Flying Labs network.
"Participating in the Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab was a pivotal moment for our team. The program strengthened our technical capabilities through access to cutting-edge resources and mentorship, while helping us refine how we apply AI to real-world environmental challenges."
Diego Ferruzzo, Brazil Flying Labs
Reboot the Future supports 22,000 teachers in the United Kingdom bringing sustainability and values-led education into their classrooms. The organization had built a library of over 1,600 educational resources, but finding the right resource was slow and inconsistent. Manual tagging could not keep pace with the volume, and a small team was spending time cataloguing instead of improving content quality.
Their AI solution reads and understands each resource automatically, tagging it by subject, age group, and sustainability theme. Teachers find what they need faster. With each teacher reaching approximately 30 students, the platform carries a potential reach of 660,000 learners across the UK.
"Working with the Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab has been transformational for Reboot the Future. Lenovo's support helped us design a solution that not only streamlines content management but also makes resources more discoverable for educators. This partnership has laid the foundations for scalable impact for teachers."
Anthony Bennett, CEO, Reboot the Future
Justdiggit restores degraded land in Tanzania and across East Africa by teaching farmers regreening techniques that work. The bottleneck has never been the method. It has been reaching enough farmers with it quickly enough, in places where trained agricultural advisors are scarce.
Through their app Kijani, Justdiggit built an AI tutor that answers farmers technical questions instantly, guides them to the right content, and checks their understanding in the field. What previously required a trained facilitator in person now happens in a farmer pocket in rural Tanzania. Around 1,500 farmers have already used the solution, and full integration is not yet complete.
"Lenovo gives us something we don't always have: the space to try things, get it wrong, and figure out what actually works at scale."
Carl Lens, Head of Digital Regreening, Justdiggit
Reap Benefit mobilizes young people across India to tackle local civic and environmental challenges. The work is real: organizing waste drives, advocating for clean water, fixing community infrastructure. What has not been real, until now, is how that work appears on a resume.
The organization AI-powered Skill-Translator engine processes field reports from young activists, maps their actions to recognized professional micro-skills, and builds each person a verified Changemaker Portfolio that employers and educators can read. The system has already processed 47,000 real-world environmental actions from 25,000 young people across India.
"The Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab has been a catalyst in moving us from fragmented data to an integrated, AI-powered ecosystem. This partnership has allowed us to build the internal muscle needed to ensure that grassroots climate action is finally recognized as a high-value professional asset."
Gauthamraj Elango, Tech Leader, Reap Benefit
The Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) has spent decades improving water security and agricultural resilience across thousands of villages in India. Smallholder farmers need timely, localized advice on crops, weather, and pests. Traditional agricultural extension systems are too slow and too generic to deliver it consistently at village level.
FarmPrecise GPT, an AI assistant embedded in WOTR existing app, lets farmers ask questions in natural language and receive context-aware answers in real time. The pilot is running with 1,000 farmers in Maharashtra state. WOTR estimates a potential reach of 120,000 users across 8 states once the solution scales through the full FarmPrecise app.
"The Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab has enabled WOTR to transition from exploring AI to actively embedding it within our programs. This support has strengthened our internal capabilities and accelerated innovations like FarmPrecise GPT, helping us bring timely, actionable insights to smallholder farmers."
Crispino Lobo, Co-founder and Managing Trustee, WOTR
The Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab is one model for what structured corporate engagement in social impact AI can produce. Lenovo did not write a check and step back. They contributed hardware, deployed their technologists, built a skilling curriculum, and stayed involved across more than two years. The result is 42,000 people using solutions built with their support and five organizations that can now reach people they could not reach before.
This is what meaningful corporate AI partnership looks like in practice. Not awareness campaigns or one-off grants, but long-term technical engagement where your company expertise, tools, and people are the contribution. At Tech To The Rescue, we structure these partnerships so that both sides get something real: the nonprofit gets what it needs to scale, and the corporate partner gets direct involvement in outcomes they can stand behind.
We work with over 200 tech company partners globally. If your company has AI capabilities, hardware, or technical talent and wants to put them to work on proven social interventions, learn how to partner with us.
The Lenovo AI for Social Impact Lab is a partnership between Lenovo and Tech To The Rescue (TTTR) that launched in September 2024 as part of TTTR AI for Changemakers Accelerator Program. Lenovo contributes hardware, AI tools, expert mentorship, and a skilling curriculum. Twelve nonprofits across climate, education, and health have participated across more than two years of collaboration, with 42,000 people now directly using solutions built through the program.
Tech To The Rescue works with social impact organizations that have a proven intervention with real users and measurable results. TTTR AI for Changemakers Accelerator Program and AI Impact Scaling Program both require a working intervention as a starting point. Organizations still developing their model are encouraged to apply once their approach is established. Learn more at techtotherescue.org/social-impact-organizations.
Selected organizations receive Lenovo hardware, access to AI tools, direct collaboration with Lenovo technologists, expert mentorship, and a structured skilling curriculum. They also participate in TTTR broader AI for Changemakers Accelerator Program, which provides mentorship, strategy support, and a peer community alongside the technical resources Lenovo contributes.
42,000 people are directly using solutions built through the Lab. More than 7 million people benefit indirectly through the broader interventions these organizations run. The five graduating climate organizations operate solutions in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Tanzania, and India.
Tech To The Rescue connects mission-driven corporations with social impact organizations through structured pro bono technology partnerships. Corporate partners contribute expertise, hardware, tools, and technical talent to support nonprofit AI development. TTTR has worked with over 200 pro bono tech company partners globally since 2020. Companies interested in building a partnership can get in touch at techtotherescue.org/for-software-agencies.
