As we've written before, QR codes (a mobile bar code like the one in the image) have great potential for use by nonprofits and advocacy organizations to provide "just-in-time" issue information, be used as a recruitment tool, or provide an easy way to connect with an organization or make a donation. As QR codes become more widely used in the commercial sector, and as more people download the necessary software on their phones to be able to read the codes, nonprofits are likely to take advantage of the codes as well.
MobileActive was in an article in the Boston Globe yesterday, titled "Ringtones with a conscience." The reporter took her stories from the MobileActive blog and compiled them into an article that describes some of the ways that mobile phones are being used for social good. The article is below, with links to the original MobileActive stories.
In 2005, Samsung released a phone designed especially for women. The phone, with a "curvaceous, feminine design" included applications like a fragrance and aromatherapy guide, a shopping list, a calorie counter, a biorhythm clock, and a calendar to help women keep track of their periods. "Almost every woman will desire it," wrote one reviewer, in a piece entitled "High tech for the ladies."
Those marketers and reviewers have it all wrong.
For women around the world, mobile phones are not about sexy designs and knowing when it's that time of the month. Mobile phones are slowly changing the lives of women who use them and the communities in which they live. They've created a path out of poverty for many women in the developing world, as microfinance and "phone ladies" running businesses increase in numbers. Mobiles are enabling translation for victims of domestic violence in the United States, provide Ukrainian sex workers a way to safety, and protect Philippine domestic workers in the Middle East. Mobile phones are giving voice to female reporters in Africa and encouraging free speech in Egypt. And as mobile phones become increasingly ubiquitous -- they're already at 3.3 billion and counting -- they are likely to continue to influence the lives and societies of the women who use them in the future.
When Matthew Kam first went to India, he noticed the lack of English literacy of children that had studied English for three or four years. Most couldn't read, didn't know simple words, and sometimes couldn't spell their own names. "We realized that those students who had taken English for three years couldn't read every letter in the alphabet," Matt said. "Teachers who were teaching English couldn't speak English themselves." However, the English literacy of these same children improved dramatically when presented with a unique learning tool: a mobile phone.
As part of his research for a computer science Ph.D., Matt is working with a team of researchers and students at the University of California at Berkley in the United States. The project, called MILLEE, or Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies, works to develop mobile phone games aimed at teaching literacy to children in India.
We are happy to announce MobileActive08, a three-day conference on mobile technology for social impact to take place October 13-15 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Organized with our amazing colleagues at Sangonet in South Africa, the theme of the 2008 event is "Unlocking the Potential of Mobile Technology for Social Impact." MobileActive08 will convene 250 civil society, development and technology practitioners interested in the use and application of mobile technology in civil society. This will be the largest international civil society event to date focusing on this topic.
Participants include non-profit practitioners using mobile phones in innovative and creative ways or considering mobile applications in support of their activities, mobile technologists, researchers studying the use of mobile phones, government officials, donors and representatives from the telecommunications industry.
We are especially pleased to welcome IDRC as a major supporter of the event. IDRC has been conducting research in how mobile telephony is advancing development and civil society goals, and is emerging as the major knowledge center of research on mobiles in health and development.
Two upcoming conferences will address issues relating to mobile phones in development.
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a Canadian organization focused on helping organizations in developing countries use technology, will be hosting a conference on mobile phones used to improve access to health services in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The conference will be held on March 17 and 18 in Florianópolis, Brazil. More information is available on the IDRC website.
A WC3 workshop on the "Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social Development" is currently accepting proposals. According to the website, "The goal of the workshop is to understand specific challenges of using mobile phones and Web technologies to deliver services to underprivileged populations of developing countries."
MobileActive has aggregated dozens of videos focused on the use of mobile phones in civil society on our new MobileActive YouTube channel.
The MobileActive channel features playlists about mobile phones used in a variety of different fields. On the Mobile Phones in Advocacy playlist, you can watch videos about Greenpeace Argentina's work to pass the Ley de Bosques (Forest Law) by using mobile phones and an advertisement for FishMS, a South African SMS infoline that allows users to text in the names of fish and get a rating about their environmental sustainability. Watch the Mobile Phones in Global Development channel for videos on mobile banking, the Village Phone program, and the growth of mobile phones in the developing world. Check out the Mobile Phones in Human Rights playlist for a variety of videos of human rights abuses taken on mobile phones, including the mobile videos of Egyptian police brutality by blogger Wael Abbas.
This Valentine's Day, forget the chocolate, roses, and poetry-filled greeting cards. Instead, consider surprising your love with ringtones of animal mating calls available for download to North Americans at eNature.com.
The site features 20 different ringtones with more to come in the future. Current animals include a lovelorn howler monkey, a horny tree frog, a lonely African lion, various birds, and many other species. The ringtones can be downloaded at no cost. And if you are curious and want to learn more, each mating ringtone page contains a description of the animal's mating habits and calls. We are sure you'll be able to delight your love there.
Can I get HIV after having sex for the first time? So goes one of the ten thousand SMS messages that teenagers in Nigeria have sent to Learning about Living.
Learning About Living is a project by One World UK, Nigerian NGOs, the MTN Foundation, and the Nigerian Department of Education using computers and mobile phones to teach Nigerian teenagers about sexuality and HIV/AIDS prevention.
This report about the reality of the One Laptop Per Child initiative in one of the poorest countries on earth, the mobile revolution, the reality of radio, and what this all means for children was written by Martin Lucas in Malawi, and posted on a mailing list. We are publishing it here in its entirety for its insights and opinion. We'd love to hear from you - tell us what you think!
One Slate per Child by Martin Lucas
I have been reading with interest the discussion of the 'hundred-dollar laptop' and the One Laptop per Child initiative as I sit in Malawi, a small landlocked Southern African nation lodged between Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania. According to Wikipedia, the OLPC effort has its philosophical base in the idea that children with laptops will be able to do a certain kind of thinking that isn't possible without the computer - exploring certain areas - particularly in math and science where computer access offers a qualitatively superior learning experience. Making such machines available at low prices should allow developing countries to bridge the 'digital divide', and leapfrog learning. Countries that have signed on include Uruguay. India has given a definite no. Either way, the OLPC initiative is an aspect of 'development' even 'IT for Development.' How does the initiative square with the reality of a small African nation?
We are occasionally commissioned to write introductory articles about the mobile revolution and implications for NGOs for various publications. Here is one broad overview of some areas where mobiles are deployed in civil society.
Cellphones have become the most ubiquitous communication device in the hands of human beings. There are an estimated 3.5 billion mobile phones in use and there is coverage in even remote corners of the world. Cellphones have revolutionized not just the way we work and organize within cultures and societies, but have the potential to change how NGOs (non-governmental organizatios) operate.
Mobile phones are already experimentally used in multiple ways by NGOs. We at MobileActive.org have been tracking how organizations in areas such as health and disease prevention, economic development, humanitarian relief, democratic participation, and advocacy are using mobile phones to make their work more effective and efficient.
Following are a few examples of what we have seen and where we think mobile phones have potential to be used more strategically by NGOs.
We are very pleased to announce the first set of translations of MobileActive's Strategy Guides into Arabic. Thank you to the National Democratic Institute for its pro-bono support for the translation.
Mobile phones have become a powerful emerging tool for participation in civil society. The MobileActive series of Strategy Guides, now in Arabic, examines the effectiveness of civil society organizations using mobile phones to build their constituent lists, influence political causes, and raise money. In the Guides we aggregate strategies, case studies, and lessons learned to encourage the adoption of mobile phones by nonprofits.
This series of Strategy Guides is designed to equip organizations around the world with the know-how to deploy effective mobile campaigns for a variety of types of activism and advocacy.
To ring in the New Year, MobileActive is conducting, with the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation, a global survey of more than 25,000 civil society groups about how these organisations are using mobile phones in their work.
"Please Call Me" messages are a popular cultural form of mobile communication in South African society. These USSD messages are used to advertise everything from car insurance to domestic airlines to the local corner store. Today, thanks to a recent project by SocialTxt, these free messages are used for the first time ever for social marketing: to encourage South Africans to get tested for HIV and obtain AIDS information.
I attend an increasing number of keynotes where CEOs and EVPs of both major mobile handset manufacturers and mobile operators trumpet their role in bringing the internet to the bottom of the pyramid in the developing world. It's a total fallacy.
Remember the 'coup de text' in the Phillipines in 2001? How about the text message joke circulating right before Poland's elections last month that read "Steal your grandmother's ID"?
Anyone following protest movements in the last few years has witnessed how mobile phones have become an integral part of the mass organizing of protests and demonstration. In the Philippines, South Korea, Nepal, Bolivia, China, the Ukraine, the United States, and most recently Burma and Pakistan, cell phone have connected activists and ordinary people, giving civic voice to individuals and creating communication channels for organizing, mobilizing, and reporting.
In this MobileActive.org White Paper on Mobile Phones in Mass Organizing, we describe the tactical uses of mobiles in organizing, security for activists and NGOs, and address some of the realities and myths that have surrounded the rise of the mobile phone as a tool in mass organizing.
MobileActive's last event in Brazil is over but the coverage continues: Evgeny Morozov writes in the current issue of the Economist about the pioneers of using mobile phones in advocacy and civil society.
He writes: "At a recent conference in São Paulo on “mobile activism”—a term that embraces humanitarian work as well as protest—there was much talk about how to “go beyond text” when using mobile phones. And it became clear that exuberant practice was galloping ahead of theory.
He notes rightly what MobileActives already know: "Mobile activists have never lacked imagination, and many of them are already hard at work, thinking of clever new uses for those little devices—mostly rather crude, five-year-old models—that have become part of daily life in the poorest parts of the world." Read the article.
QR codes have been in the news recently, bringing news stories, animated zoo animals, and nurtrition facts from tiny barcodes to the screens of mobile phones worldwide. By linking print media with mobile phones, the codes are helping to bridge the connection between old and new media and have impliations for social mobile campaigns.
A QR -- or Quick Response -- code is a two dimensional bar code that can be used for tracking or link to information such as a website or text message. When a user scans the code with a camera phone the code then links to the destination URL or other information. The codes were first created by a Japanese corporation in 1994 for tracking parts used in car manufacturing, but today are found in everything from newspapers to business cards to advertisements. QR codes can hold several hundred times more information than conventional bar codes.
The numbers speak for themselves: There are currently 236 million cell phone users in the U.S. – an astounding 76% penetration. In December of last year alone, 18.7 billion text messages were sent — up 92% from 9.7 billion in December 2005. Estimates for this year are topping 195 billion text messages sent in 2007. That is 600 million text messages a day.
Needless to say, fundraisers and nonprofits are salivating at the potential of reaching all of these people where they are, at the moment they are moved by a cause, and when they are able to GIVE – with their thumbs.
Mobile fundraising for worthwhile causes are indeed beginning to make headlines. So what is the truth behind the hype? What can fundraisers and nonprofits promoting a cause do and expect as results, and what creative ideas have gone untapped so far?
Nonprofits from Around the World Gather for MobileActive07 at Mobilefest on Use of Mobile Phones in Economic Empowerment and Civic Participation
Sao Paulo, Brazil, November 23, 2007 – Ring, ring …Social Change is Calling: MobileActive is convening technologists and activists using mobile phones and text messaging for economic empowerment, advocacy, environmental and democracy campaigns from around the world.
MobileActive07 will take place in conjunction with Mobilefest in Sao Paulo, Brazil November 24 and 25th, 2007. “Mobile phones have become innovative tools for social innovation,” said Katrin Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive. “With close to 3 billion phones in circulation around the work, in many countries mobile phones are the easiest and least expensive way to communicate and are far more pervasive than the Internet. As a result, mobile phones have been harnessed by individuals and organizations to monitor elections, protect the environment, for citizen journalism, for urgent alerts, and for economic empowerment and advocacy campaigns all over the world.
Google announced today Android and of the Open Handset Alliance, throwing wide open the field of mobile applications for commercial and social and civic causes and potentially much cheaper handsets that are especially important in developing countries. We here at MobileActive.org think that this will spur developments for the social sector that are faster and cheaper -- an "Android for Good."
The Open Handset Alliance is a consortium of more than 30 tech and mobile companies and Android is its open platform. Google's support of the project and development of the new mobile app software stack that includes an operating system, moddleware and open applications development is significant and seen as a major competitor to other mobile platform providers such as Microsoft, RIM, and Symbian.
HIV/AIDS is one of the most significant human, health, and development issues facing Africa today. NGOs and health care providers are increasingly turning to mobile phones to address the unique challenges of AIDS awareness, prevention and treatment. "HIV/AIDS is arguably the most pressing development problem facing South Africa – and Africa," asserts a report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF ) and Women'sNet, a South African network of people who use ICTs in gender-related advocacy and support. The report, titled "Rapid Assessment of Cell Phones for Development," is available here on the UNICEF website.
Hoy introduce MobileActive un recurso nuevo para los activistas movilistas. Esta guía de estrategia en español tiene información detallada sobre el uso de los teléfonos celulares en América Latina y estudios sobre los celulares usados por el activismo social en varios países latinoamericanos.
Today MobileActive introduces a new resource for mobile activists. Our first Spanish-language Strategy Guide provides detailed information about the use of mobile phones in Latin America and case studies of mobiles used for social activism in different Latin American countries.
