Category: News

ICT, emergencies and conflicts

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Following their recent examination of the mHealth landscape, the UN/Vodafone Foundation partnership today turned their attention to a new topic – “New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts“. The new study, available for download on the UN Foundation website, examines how authorities and humanitarian/aid organisations balance the opportunities and challenges of exploiting different technologies at key stages during the timeline of a crisis.

The report provides a useful overview of the topic, and gives a number of good examples of how social media tools are being deployed on the ground in emergency and crisis situations. The report also highlights a number of mobile-related tools and services – including FrontlineSMS and Souktel – and provides a number of examples of how Ushahidi has been deployed in trouble spots around the world.

Update: Release of the report was also covered on the BBC News website – check out “Aid agencies must use new tools” for more.

Mountain-top texting for charity

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In the seventeenth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts, Laura Hartstone – one of the organisers behind the “3 Peaks 3 Weeks” Challenge – talks about their plans to use FrontlineSMS to provide daily climbing updates to supporters around the world via SMS

The 3 Peaks 3 Weeks Challenge is an annual all-female climbing event which aims to summit three of Africa’s highest peaks in less than three weeks raising money and awareness for the three peak issues currently facing Africa; environment, education, and health.

The challenge is organized in partnership with Save the Rhino International (SRI). They help with event management and logistics as well as collecting and distributing raised funds to the three pre-selected non-profit organisations in Africa.

Photo courtesy Laura Hartstone

3 Peaks 3 Weeks provides an opportunity for women around the world to experience the diverse culture and beauty of East Africa while contributing to ongoing development efforts. To date the event has raised over half a million dollars. On January 9th, 2010 the third annual team will take on the challenge. Eleven women from Canada, USA, UK, Australia and Ireland will unite in Africa. The task will be difficult – and their effort, monumental.

Over the past year the team has held events, fundraisers, and walked the streets of their hometowns seeking donations to support grassroots initiatives in East Africa. Even during the current economic hardships, they have managed to raise over $100,000. With passion to help make poverty history, and outstanding commitment to social responsibility, these women are inspiring people around the world.

The 3 Peaks 3 Weeks team will now use FrontlineSMS to stay in touch with supporters, friends and family while on the mountain. The team will carry a mobile phone and send a LIVE update via SMS to base camp. From base camp, the SMS will instantly reach supporters around the globe using FrontlineSMS’ ‘auto-forward’ functionality. Hear which girls are getting altitude sickness, who can’t sleep at night, what food they are being served, and when they make it to the summit! You can subscribe to the live updates by texting the word CLIMB to +255 688 905 872. You will get an automated reply either immediately, or within a day or two, confirming your subscription! Thanks.

More information is available here:

The “3 Peaks 3 Weeks” website: www.3peaks3weeks.org
More on live updates: http://3peaks3weeks.wordpress.com
Contact me: laura@3peaks3weeks.org

Social mobile gets its own “roadmap”

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After three workshops on three continents, conversations and meetings with countless NGOs, academics, researchers and technologists, and many hours of conference calls, W3C this week released their “Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap”, a comprehensive document which sits at the heart of the wider work of the Mobile Web for Development Interest Group (MW4D).
According to the Roadmap document, its purpose is to help:
“… understand the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones, evaluate existing technologies, and identify the most promising directions to lower the barriers of developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear”
The Roadmap is split into two distinct sections. The first covers challenges and issues in developing mobile tools for social development, and the second looks specifically at technology options. The primary audience are individuals, organisations and entrepreneurs interested in social mobile; the mobile industry itself; academics; international organisations and, finally, policy makers and regulatory bodies.
The Roadmap is very much a work-in-progress, and the MW4D Interest Group welcomes comments, recommendations and suggestions to help shape it as the work moves forward.

After three workshops on three continents, conversations and meetings with countless NGOs, academics, researchers and technologists, and many hours of conference calls, W3C this week released their “Mobile Web for Social Development Roadmap”, a comprehensive document which sits at the heart of the wider work of the Mobile Web for Development Interest Group (MW4D).

According to the Roadmap document, its purpose is to help:

“… understand the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones, evaluate existing technologies, and identify the most promising directions to lower the barriers of developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear”

The Roadmap is split into two distinct sections. The first covers challenges and issues in developing mobile tools for social development, and the second looks specifically at technology options. The primary audience are individuals, organisations and entrepreneurs interested in social mobile; the mobile industry itself; academics; international organisations and, finally, policy makers and regulatory bodies.

Question time in Sao Paulo (2008). Other meetings were held in Bangalore (India) in 2006, and Maputo (Mozambique) in 2009. Photo: Ken Banks, kiwanja.net

The Roadmap is very much a work-in-progress, and the MW4D Interest Group welcomes comments, recommendations and suggestions to help shape it as the work moves forward.

A fast track to SMS success

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Earlier this year, Ashoka deployed FrontlineSMS in four African countries to help promote one of their Changemakers campaigns. In Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania and Senegal, members of the public were invited to nominate a great teacher – a champion of quality education – who had made a profound impact on their lives. Previous campaigns had used more traditional media. When Ashoka decided to try text messaging for the first time, they turned to FrontlineSMS.

Ashoka advertisementThe campaign was a success. Ashoka said at the time: “We are very excited that we are using this technology. We are reaching out to an audience we couldn’t have accessed otherwise. We received over a hundred SMS in the first day and only one email”. Since then, kiwanja.net and Ashoka have collaborated further, starting with the creation of the Social Changemaking with Mobile Phones Group in May.

With interest in text messaging continuing to rise, Changemakers raised the idea of creating a guide, based on their experiences, to explain to other organisations in their network how to get SMS campaigns up-and-running in the shortest possible time and with the minimum of fuss. There are numerous SMS guides and reports on the web, but few talk NGOs through a simple set of steps to help them physically set up their own messaging hub.

With the help of the Group we’d set up earlier in the year, and input from other FrontlineSMS users, Ashoka released the completed “SMS Quick Start Guide” last week.

SMS

Two further collaborative reports will be released in the coming months. For now, the “SMS Quick Start Guide” can be downloaded here (PDF, 1Mb).