2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge submissions
DEMOCRACY & GOVERNANCE
1) Cell By Cell Community Twitter
2) Freecycle.Org Global Smartphone/SMS Gift Economy
3) HarassMap - Reporting & Mapping Sexual Harassment On The Streets Via SMS
4) Khuluma
5) MobiChange: Using Mobile Social Networking For Enabling Social Change
6) Mobile News Network In Madagascar
7) Mobile Solutions For Monitoring And Evaluation Of Social Policy
8) Mountain Media
9) Out-Of-Poverty Coordination Games
10) QuestionBox - Democratizing Information And News For The Illiterate, Poor And Unconnected
11) LISTAENR Leveraging Integrated Sms For Target Audience ENhancement In Radio
12) SocialTxt
13) SurePower - Utilising Mobile Communications To Optimise Utility Distribution
14) Telecommunicating Democratisation
15) Virtual Community Center
1) Cell By Cell Community Twitter
Purpose: Make a Twitter-like program available for mobile phones to help slum communities stay connected.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented.
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: Not specified.
Funding Sources and Partners: None indicated.
Project URL: n/a
2) Freecycle.Org Global Smartphone/SMS Gift Economy
Purpose: Make it possible for people to give & get used items for free in their local communities via SMS/Smartphone.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. This project would be an extension to The Freecycle Network / Freecycle.org, which is currently keeping over 600 tons a day out of landfills via gifting.
Business model: Supported by grants and volunteers.
Tech approach: SMS/smartphones.
Funding Sources and Partners: The Freecycle Network
Project URL: http://www.freecycle.org/
3) HarassMap - Reporting & Mapping Sexual Harassment On The Streets Via SMS
Purpose: Implement a system for women in Egypt to report incidences of sexual harassment via SMS messaging.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. This service would augment "The Street Is Ours" project in Egypt, which addresses the issue of sexual harassment of women in the streets.
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: SMS.
Funding Sources and Partners: NiJeL, The Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights.
Project URL: n/a
4) Khuluma
Purpose: Connect youth who are heads of households in Swaziland via mobile phone teleconferences so they can collectively determine how development and government funds can be used to effectively and sustainably support them.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. Research has begun in Swaziland to determine the mobile phone habits of young heads of households.
Business model: Yet to be determined.
Tech approach: VOIP teleconferences.
Funding Sources and Partners: YouthAssets
Project URL: www.youthassets.org
5) MobiChange: Using Mobile Social Networking For Enabling Social Change
Purpose: Use mobile voice and SMS to support local communities and enable social change through an open-source, multi-lingual mobile social networking platform.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. Project envisioned for African and Asian communities.
Business model: Revenue will derive from an ad-supported consumer version of the mobile social network, built on the MobiChange platform, designed for mass market adoption (www.mobitalk.org).
Tech approach: Mobile voice and SMS.
Funding Sources and Partners: None indicated.
Project URL: http://mobichange.org
6) Mobile News Network In Madagascar
Purpose: Create a network of citizen journalists using SMS and Twitter in Madagascar.
Where it has worked: Over 10 months, the project trained 100 youths to join the Citizen Media in 4 large cities in Madagascar.
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: SMS and Twitter.
Funding Sources and Partners: Rising Voices from GlobalVoicesOnline
Project URL: http://club.foko-madagascar.org/
7) Mobile Solutions For Monitoring And Evaluation Of Social Policy
Purpose: Use mobile phones to improve efficiency of public service provision through better monitoring and evaluation.
Where it has worked: The Mexican Ministry of Social Development hired the project to develop technology to apply a national satisfaction survey on physical safety conditions. The project hired 170 “supervisors” and provided them with mobile phones with the installed software to conduct the study.
Business model: The project is supported by leasing the software.
Tech approach: Mobile phone software.
Funding Sources and Partners: The Mexican Ministry of Social Development
Project URL: n/a
8) Mountain Media
Purpose: Use videophones to empower mountain communities to network across geographic distances and communication barriers and represent themselves in democratic processes and policy discussions on regional, national and global scales.
Where it has worked: Earth Island Institute’s Sacred Land Film Project (SLFP) has recently begun to support community video production through a partnership with Mana Studios and its ongoing work in enabling remote indigenous communities to produce their own video media.
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: Videophones used to make short presentations, overcoming illiteracy barrier.
Funding Sources and Partners: Sacred Land Film Project, Mana Studios, Pachamama's Path
Project URL: n/a
9) Out-Of-Poverty Coordination Games
Purpose: Help individuals in poor communities to find collective solutions to common problems using mobile phones and ‘coordination games,’ a mathematical model.
Where it has worked: Project has worked in Brazil to help people find jobs (bring together disparate, long searches into joint, quick searches) and to repair homes (disparate, costly repairs into neighborhood, cheap repairs).
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: Mobile phones and computer modeling.
Funding Sources and Partners: None indicated.
Project URL: http://www.coordgames.org/
10) QuestionBox - Democratizing Information And News For The Illiterate, Poor And Unconnected
Purpose: Provide rural populations without Internet connectivity access to online information through mobile voice calls to Internet-connected calling centers.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. Pilot planned for Uganda.
Business model:
1. Physical Question Box. Initially free but potentially asking a nominal fee for calls, like a phone booth.
2. Call/Mobile. The mobile number would be free to the user and ad-subsidized.
3. SMS. The caller pays a low fee to their carrier who we'd have an agreement with.
Tech approach: Mobile phones and calling centers.
Funding Sources and Partners: None indicated.
Project URL: http://www.questionbox.org
11) LISTAENR Leveraging Integrated Sms For Target Audience ENhancement In Radio
Purpose: Create a handy integrated mobile SMS application to enable two-way communication between Community Radio Broadcasters and their audience. Listener messages are tagged and summarized for the broadcaster. Broadcaster’s messages are distributed to listeners.
Where it has worked: OneWorld South Asia in India has utilized SMS during its weekly broadcasts to receive feedback regarding programming.
Business model: Cost-based subscription from community radio stations for the service.
Tech approach: SMS.
Funding Sources and Partners: International OneWorld
12) SocialTxt
Purpose: Promote a messaging platform that uses the 120 "unused" characters of a 'please call me' (PCM) message to broadcast a social call to action, a public service announcement, advertisement of services, or other message.
Where it has worked: SocialTxt currently leverages approximately 1 million HIV-AIDS-messages each day (from 1 Oct 2008 to 29 Sept 2009) to link South Africans to the National AIDS Helpline.
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: SMS.
Funding Sources and Partners: National AIDS Helpline
Project URL: http://praekeltfoundation.org/products-and-services/socialtxt
13) SurePower - Utilising Mobile Communications To Optimise Utility Distribution
Purpose: Use a mobile messaging system to notify the public of impending local power disruptions or natural disasters.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. Workshops are ongoing with management of the main power distributing utilities in South Africa.
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: SMS alerts
Funding Sources and Partners: Foundation for Building Sustainable Communities
Project URL: http://www.iwe.param.mobi/
14) Telecommunicating Democratisation
Purpose: Develop a digital networked platform to enable public discourse in the context of the decentralised operationalisation of legislative instruments for right to information, livelihood and food security in rural India.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. Research is ongoing.
Business model: Not specified.
Tech approach: An Internet-enabled Wiki with support for mobile phones and multimedia.
Funding Sources and Partners: Mahiti- Free and open source software developers for civil society
Project URL: n/a
15) Virtual Community Center
Purpose: Provide a space where organizations can meet, share information, and collaborate on common goals. The Virtual Community Center is accessible by computer or mobile phone, and features mapping, blogging, data exchange and links to other tech tools.
Where it has worked: Not yet implemented. Research is ongoing with the Burmese community in Thailand, Bangladesh, India, and China, as well as Cuba, Armenia, Mali, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Israel.
Business model: Depends upon support from grants and volunteers.
Tech approach: Mobile and online.
Funding Sources and Partners: Open Society Institute, Arca Foundation.
Project URL: http://www.dtwo.org
view or download the PDF version of the Democracy and Governance submissions
