Environment
Posted by CorinneRamey on Feb 26, 2008
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.
Other MobileActive YouTube playlists include Mobile Phones in Citizen Media, Mobile Phones in Disasters and Relief, Mobile Phones in Education and Learning, Mobile Phones in Elections and Participation, Mobile Phones in Poverty Alleviation, and many others.
Check out the new MobileActive YouTube channel and add your videos on the mobile revolution!
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Jan 29, 2008
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Jan 03, 2008
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Jan 02, 2008
Happy New Year, MobileActives!
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Dec 19, 2007
Mobile social adverts - and the winner is here. MTV Networks International and Nokia teamed up earlier this year in a new campaign called MTV Switch to to inform, entertain and encourage climate-conscious behaviour amongst global youth, driving traffic to MTV.
During the 2007 Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, Young Creative Film Competitors on a 48 hour mission to shoot a 30-second advert using the Nokia N93i to be used on TV, mobile and the web that encourages 15-25 year olds to adopt new energy-saving lifestyles, making it cool to be green. All submissions shot on the Nokia N93 are here - judge for yourself!
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Dec 05, 2007
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Dec 05, 2007
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.
Continue to the White Paper.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Dec 04, 2007
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.
Posted by CorinneRamey on Nov 30, 2007
A new mobile application, mobGAS, can be used to track individual emissions of greenhouse gases. The application, developed by scientists in the European Union, tracks the emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane based on information on daily activities entered by the user. Users can enter the information on a website and then compare their emissions with national and international averages.
Posted by CorinneRamey on Nov 30, 2007
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Nov 29, 2007
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?
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Nov 24, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Nov 21, 2007
Mainstream press in the United States is picking up on the mobile revolution. In an article yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, Fish Phone, Sex Info, our friends in San Francisco, and medicine compliance programs are profiled:
In England, women have received text reminders to take their birth-control pills. In Australia, texting helped AIDS patients adhere to complicated drug regimens. And German researchers are examining how text messages can offer psychological support to bulimics. A recent study in New Zealand found that smoking-cessation programs were more effective in conjunction with supportive text messages.
Text reminders and health and consumer info lines are exploding in popularity, paving the way for innovative prorams in other areas as well that pertain to point-of-purchase consumer information, and using textig for civic and advocacy information that we are, of course, particularly interested in.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Nov 05, 2007
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Oct 11, 2007
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.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Oct 02, 2007
MobileActive.org series on mobiles in development continues. Here is guest writer Abi Jagun from the University of Manchster who deconstructs the hype on mobiles in civil society:
By the end of 2007 about half of the world’s population will be using mobile phones; and it is likely that this proportion will continue to increase as more people - predominantly in developing countries - get connected to mobile telecom networks.
The benefits of mobile phones continue to be widely publicised. In particular, they allow people to receive and communicate information interactively and/or simultaneously by voice and data -- beyond the physical limitations imposed by geography. But is the hype useful for a throughtful exploration of the potential of mobiles in development, or, in fact, a hindrance?
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Sep 19, 2007
Owning a mobile is becoming an indispensable element of young people's lives all around the world. This well-done 30-min video focuses on mobiles in education, explores whether mobiles are a force for good, or an example of technology gone awry; and offers a lot of cultural analysis of how young people use mobiles.
Produced by teachers.tv about young people's use of mobiles (albeit UK-focused), it is a good look at the world of young people with mobile phones, and the impact on schools and education. Young people are mobile natives and schools and NGOs better take heed.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Aug 01, 2007
HGgry 4 fsh? FishMS, a text service in South Africa helps consumers choose environmentally safe seafood. Watch the Video and read on.
A new tool from Sassi (The Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative) helps consumers make informed choices about the seafood they buy. Here is how it works: A consumer texts in the name of a fish to the number 079-499-8795 and gets back a message indicating "whether to tuck in, think twice or avoid completely."
According to a release from the World Wildife Fund:
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Jul 07, 2007
LiveEarth, the global music event taking place today, is launching one of the most ambitious mobile campaigns in its effort to organize people worldwide on climate change.
Live Earth is broadcast to more than two billion people with concerts in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, and Hamburg.
Concert goers and those watching online and on television in four countries will be able to 'answer the call' via sms by texting in a key word in one of six issue areas, pledging to change their behavior to save the earth from climate destruction. Keywords such as home, job, shop, ride, share, and lead can be texted in to short code 82004 in the Unites States and UK, to 70707 in Germany, and 199 66 777 in Australia.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Jun 11, 2007
Protest campaigns in recent weeks in China and Pakistan are pointing to a quickening pace of social activism primarily enabled by mobile phones.
On May 31, 2007, authorities in Xiamen halted construction of a large petro-chemical plant, following a furious Internet, street, and text campaign. The story began on a few local blogs, spread wide on the Internet with sites like antipx.com, and street graffiti.
On March 25, according to news reports in the Asia Sentinel, Sydney Morning Herald and others, a text message began circulating:
Posted by KatrinVerclas on May 09, 2007
Ethan Zuckerman has written a solid overview of mobile phones in international activism. It is re-posted here under its Creative Commons license. For additional resources, see also the mobileactive.org Strategy Guides on using mobile phones in elections, advoacy, and fundraising.
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