Empowering Grassroots NGOs through Mobile Technology

IREX Speaker Series: Technology Serving Civil Society

Presents

Ken Banks

Founder of kiwanja.net, Developer of FrontlineSMS

with

Alex Ngalande

Home-Based Care Nurse, Saint Gabriel’s Hospital, Namitete, Malawi

on

On the Digital Divide’s Frontlines:

Empowering Grassroots NGOs through Mobile Technology

When: March 19, 2009, 12:30 - 2:00 pm

Where: IREX, 2121 K Street NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC

RSVP by March 16 to: techseries@irex.org or call Swathi at (202) 628-8188, x140

Light lunch will be served

There has been a lot of excitement recently about mobile technology’s potential to help close the digital divide, yet many grassroots NGOs struggle to understand and access it. While mobile phone usage in developing countries increases dramatically, opportunities for organizations to create dynamic communications links with target populations increases as well.

In this talk, kiwanja.net founder Ken Banks will talk about the array of challenges in developing and implementing mobile technology interventions in the developing world. Banks will also discuss his FrontlineSMS messaging application, a field communication system designed to empower grassroots non-profit organizations. Specifically, the FrontlineSMS software enables its NGO users to exchange text messages with large groups of people through mobile phones. Fellow presenter Alex Ngalande will elaborate on the role of FrontlineSMS at Saint Gabriel’s Hospital in Malawi’s Lilongwe district. Ngalande runs the Mobiles in Malawi program—a text message-based communications network for the hospital and its Community Health Workers (CHWs) that has improved emergency care, patient tracking, testing outreach, and HIV/AIDS support group networking.

Through kiwanja.net, Ken Banks specializes in the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world. He has spent the last 15 years working on projects in Africa. Recently, his research resulted in the development of FrontlineSMS. Ken graduated from Sussex University with honors in Social Anthropology with Development Studies, received a Reuters Digital Vision Fellowship in 2006, and named a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow in 2008. Ken's work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Institute; he is the current recipient of a Hewlett Foundation grant.

Alex Ngalande is Saint Gabriel’s home-based care nurse and manager of Mobiles in Malawi. In October, he presented at the MobileActive 08 conference in Johannesburg, South Africa.

IREX is an international nonprofit organization providing leadership and innovative programs to improve the quality of education, strengthen independent media, and foster pluralistic civil society development. IREX’s Technology Serving Civil Society speaker series was initiated in April 2007. The series hosts practitioners with grassroots experience using technology in innovative ways to increase the effectiveness of community and civil society initiatives throughout the developing world. This event will also involve dozens of IREX-administered telecenters throughout Eurasia. Virtual participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and submit comments beforehand. For more information about this series, please contact IREX at the email address above.

This speaker series is funded by the People Technology Foundation USA and contributions from Friends of IREX.

TIC et agriculture

http://www.blogger.com/profile/12677159905633525586

Sample research proposal

http://lirneasia.net/2008/08/call-for-ict4d-grant-proposals/

‘Participation, ICT & Local level Good Governance’is the name of my action research proposal. We are already piloting with one union parishad in south west Bangladesh.We are providing virtual services on agriculture to the farmers, health, education etc. This union parishad is now email connected.Biggest need here is around micro borrowers in order to make their investment profitable so that they can repay loans and make livelihood out of loan operation.Since we are located in union parishad building our understanding of union parishad operation is deepening and trying to specify where exactly union parishad role can be interfaced in between community empowerment and ICT.Or how to enhance Union parishad capacity to facilitate the process.

Ministry of Local Government,Bangladesh with support from a donor consortium, is going to support fifty unions very soon . We are negotiating nine unions [union parishad is lowest tier of government administration in Bangladesh]where union parishad will remain responsible for the project captioned UIC [Union Information Center].We are curious to learn from the action process - what are the relative weightage of community empowerment and information [ICT] in bringing changes in various sectors including agriculture, health, education etc with active role of union parishad.

One hypotheis is - without community empowerment demand led ICT will not be achivable. ICT itself has in born tendency of being supply led,crippling sustained impact.Initial positive outcomes must be transformed into longterm sustained impact.Computer itself is not Aladin’s lamp.However, potentially it is Aladin’s lamp,if manouvered properly.Local governance so far worked as extension of central government. New opportunities have been created in Bangladesh for enhanced space for local governance. Such initial euphoria will not last long without investment in capacity building of union parishads through participatory research and participatory planning where community takes lead in identifying their own issues and make decisions to interact with officials of local govrnment. ICT brings here additional muscle of information- connecting villages with the global village in this flat world.

From GonoGobeshona [participatory research]a registered NGO in Bangladesh, working since 1988, is hereby registering interest to work on relative weightage of Participation [ experiential learning of the people], ICT [external Information]in bringing change and ending poverty.Role of union parishad as institution comes because some where these grassroots learning has to be stored and conituously refreshed from the field ideas to fix in the next round of planning and implementation. In our situation union parishad is best suited to institutionalize such new knowledge generated out of people’s own experintial learning and extrnal information viz ICT.

Course ICT4D

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* COURSES*
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* Unique Course Offering: ICT4D - The World is Our Classroom, Literally
http://www.clintrogersonline.com/blog/2009/02/06/unique-course-offering-ict4d-the-world-is-our-classroom-literally/

Help for poor to access banking

Article from BBC news Friday, 20 February 2009

Bill Gates' charitable foundation has pledged $12.5m (£8.6m) to help the world's poor access banking services.

Working in conjunction with the mobile phone industry, the foundation aims to help provide a basic service that local banks are unable or unwilling to give.

It is thought that more than a billion people worldwide do not have a bank account but do have a mobile phone.

The foundation says that extending banking services to the world's poor is vital for economic progress.

There are commercial benefits for network operators, too.

Research by consultants McKinsey estimates that the mobile money market for people without a bank account could grow to $5bn over the next three years.

Rob Conway, chief executive of the mobile phone industry trade body, the GSMA, said the developing world was a growth area.

"This represents a huge opportunity and mobile operators are perfectly placed to bring mobile financial services to this largely untapped consumer base.

"We believe that mobile money for the unbanked has the potential to become a multi-billion market opportunity over the next three years."

Making the award, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it saw mobile technology as a means to help people "manage life's risks and build financial security".

The foundation, set up by the founder of Microsoft, has earmarked money for 20 projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Some experts have cited the success of the M-Pesa system in Kenya, set up by Vodafone and local communications firm Safaricom.

There, a network of more than 7,000 agents - mostly shopkeepers - was set up to take deposits and issue cash, with users authorising payments on their mobile phone using a Pin code.

Five million M-Pesa account holders transferred more than $50m in January. The money can be sent to non members who get a text message asking them to contact their local M-Pesa agent.

Eden Zoller, an analyst at research group Ovum, says the M-Pesa model could be emulated elsewhere.

"There is already strong evidence that mobile payments in emerging markets can be successful for all parties concerned," said Ms Zoller.

Vodafone is in the process of rolling out its M-Pesa system in other countries, including Tanzania and Afghanistan.