Apps For Development: Lessons From mPowering

Posted by MelissaUlbricht on May 31, 2011

Non-profit organization mPowering is developing customized mobile apps to help reach the ultra poor -- people living on less than $2 a day -- and connect them with funding opportunities and programs in the developed world.

Reaching individuals and supplying resources in remote regions has huge challenges. The goal of mPowering is to leverage existing mobile infrastructure to open up channels of access. The organization has ongoing programs in Nepal and India which provide incentives to poor individuals for reporting to school or work, via mobile application. The organization is also working to create a mobile donor app to further connect the poor with funding opportunities.

Before a mobile app can be developed and deployed, the mPowering team conducts field research and partners with local institutions. We spoke with Kamael Ann Sugrim, Co-founder and CEO of mPowering, to find out how an app is developed.

Programs in Nepal and India

The mPowering organization is a year old and currently has two programs underway which utilize mobile apps. In Bhaktapur, Nepal, women earn points for reporting to work, and the points can be redeemed for food, clothing, and medicine.

In Orissa, India, 175 children in the village of Juanga earn points for attending school and can redeem the points for food, clothing, and medicine. Teachers have been supplied with donated Android phones with the mPowering application. Through the app, they can “scan” children in for attendance.

The program is expanding to 400 children this year and the mPowering app will allow teachers to enter additional information on grades and attendance. The new program will provide a daily lunch to the participating students who have successful attendance. 

The mPowering App: Develop with the User in Mind

Before an mPowering application is developed, such as the one being used in Orissa, the team conducts field research in program locations. It takes about 3 months from deploying a program to actually going live, which includes the time spent developing the actual Android application. Sugrim said she hopes to reduce this to about a month as the organization grows.

Observation and listening are key when it comes to creating the app. “Technology-wise, it wasn’t difficult to design once we took a step back and we listened and actually observed the people we were designing for,” Sugrim said. A team of volunteer developers based around the world help build the mPowering apps. The first app was built under a proprietary license, but new programs will be open source, Sugrim said.

In developing mobile apps, there are many things that mPowering keeps in mind:

  1. The local language. In remote regions where the ultra poor live, local dialects are often spoken. mPowering apps are meant to transcend any language barrier.
  2. Ease of use. mPowering focuses on smartphones because “we knew that SMS can present challenges. With text messaging, if one letter or one character is off, you’ve lost them,” Sugrim said.
  3. Pictures over words. mPowering apps are also meant to transcend literacy rates. So, apps are picture-based.
  4. Follow “intuitive behavior.” If a normal day for a child is to come to school and then take part in roll call, the app will follow the same behavior: a student comes to school and then scans in via mobile.
  5. Include all potential users. Another goal of mPowering is to make apps easy to adopt. “We also want to incorporate women into our program and they are the most shy when it comes to some technologies.” Sugrim said. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t create something that had them taking five steps ahead of what they already use a mobile phone for.”

The applications currently run on the Android platform. In Juanga, though, most people don’t have smartphones, so mPowering supplied donated Android mobile phones to local teachers in the program.

As far as working with local mobile providers, “we stayed pretty neutral,” Sugrim said. It costs 98 Rupees (about $3 USD) to put a data plan on a phone in India. The cost was built into the mPowering program model and the organization is currently not “beholden to any carrier.” In the future, however, the organization would like to investigate having data plans donated by mobile providers.

Partnerning is Key

mPowering is based in San Mateo, California in the United States so Sugrim and her team employ local individuals to help operate the programs in Nepal and India.  They also hold training sessions for families and individuals who receive mPowering phones, and supply phone chargers at check-in locations.

Local partners, such as the Citta Foundation in India, also help monitor and lead programs after mPowering employees implement the project and leave the field.

Design and Data Collection

A recurring challenge for mPowering is mobile access and service. In some program locations, service can be limited and it can be difficult to figure out how to collect data via the app.

There have been some design challenges, too, which stem from a push versus pull approach.

“I think mPowering is turning the way mobile apps are being used on it’s head. Today, mobile apps are used to push information to individuals. But when you push, you have to think about training in terms of consumption,” Sugrim said.

“We turned this on its head and said, how about pulling information out of these areas for economic development?” With this comes design difficulties -- a mobile donor app that is under development, for example, has to incorporate photos and videos and make it easy to connect donors with sponsored school children. It’s not as easy as a traditional push app,” Sugrim said.

The donor app will provides pictures and updates of children that are sponsored. And it is customizable -- donors can select how often they wish to receive updates (daily, weekly) and on what platform (via the mobile app, SMS, or on the mPowering website).

The goal of mPowering is to help people reach above the poverty line, but through the use of mobile technology, the organization is also collecting interesting data. The team has data on student attendance for three months in Orissa and Sugrim said that those children who were part of the incentive program had a near perfect attendance compared to those who were not in the program.

“We have a lot of valuable demographic data,” Sugrim said.  Data from the school in Orissa, for example, comes in to mPowering servers on a daily and weekly basis. At 8 pm in California, the organization receives data from the 8 am attendance scan in Juanga.  “That’s a really powerful and exciting thing. That’s real-time data from a remote village.”

Photo Credit: Gabriel Gastelum Photography for mPowering

 

Basic Information
Organization involved in the project?: 
Project goals: 

The goal of mPowering is to help people living below the poverty line by leveraging mobile technology and developing unique mobile applications for development.

Brief description of the project: 

Non-profit organization mPowering is developing customized mobile apps to help reach the ultra poor -- people living on less than $2 a day -- and connect them with funding opportunities and programs in the developed world.

Reaching individuals and supplying resources in remote regions can present challenges. The goal of mPowering is to leverage existing mobile infrastructure to open up channels of access. The organization has ongoing programs in Nepal and India which provide incentives to the poor for reporting to school or work, via mobile application. The organization is also working to create a mobile donor app to further connect the poor with funding opportunities.

Target audience: 

Two ongoing programs are taking place in Bhaktapur, Nepal and Orissa, India. In Nepal, mPowering is working with women, and in India, with school children.

Detailed Information
Status: 
Ongoing
What worked well? : 

Before an mPowering application is developed, such as the one being used in Orissa, the team conducts field research in program locations. Also, parterning has proved key. mPowering employs local individuals to help operate the programs in Nepal and India. The organization also holds training sessions for families and individuals who receive mPowering phones, and supplies phone chargers at check-in locations.

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

A recurring challenge for mPowering is mobile access and service. In some program locations, service can be limited and it can be difficult to figure out how to collect data via the app. There have been some design challenges, too, which stem from a push versus pull approach.

 

Apps For Development: Lessons From mPowering Locations

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Apps For Development: Lessons From mPowering data sheet 3213 Views

Non-profit organization mPowering is developing customized mobile apps to help reach the ultra poor -- people living on less than $2 a day -- and connect them with funding opportunities and programs in the developed world.

Reaching individuals and supplying resources in remote regions has huge challenges. The goal of mPowering is to leverage existing mobile infrastructure to open up channels of access. The organization has ongoing programs in Nepal and India which provide incentives to poor individuals for reporting to school or work, via mobile application. The organization is also working to create a mobile donor app to further connect the poor with funding opportunities.

Before a mobile app can be developed and deployed, the mPowering team conducts field research and partners with local institutions. We spoke with Kamael Ann Sugrim, Co-founder and CEO of mPowering, to find out how an app is developed.

Programs in Nepal and India

The mPowering organization is a year old and currently has two programs underway which utilize mobile apps. In Bhaktapur, Nepal, women earn points for reporting to work, and the points can be redeemed for food, clothing, and medicine.

In Orissa, India, 175 children in the village of Juanga earn points for attending school and can redeem the points for food, clothing, and medicine. Teachers have been supplied with donated Android phones with the mPowering application. Through the app, they can “scan” children in for attendance.

The program is expanding to 400 children this year and the mPowering app will allow teachers to enter additional information on grades and attendance. The new program will provide a daily lunch to the participating students who have successful attendance. 

The mPowering App: Develop with the User in Mind

Before an mPowering application is developed, such as the one being used in Orissa, the team conducts field research in program locations. It takes about 3 months from deploying a program to actually going live, which includes the time spent developing the actual Android application. Sugrim said she hopes to reduce this to about a month as the organization grows.

Observation and listening are key when it comes to creating the app. “Technology-wise, it wasn’t difficult to design once we took a step back and we listened and actually observed the people we were designing for,” Sugrim said. A team of volunteer developers based around the world help build the mPowering apps. The first app was built under a proprietary license, but new programs will be open source, Sugrim said.

In developing mobile apps, there are many things that mPowering keeps in mind:

  1. The local language. In remote regions where the ultra poor live, local dialects are often spoken. mPowering apps are meant to transcend any language barrier.
  2. Ease of use. mPowering focuses on smartphones because “we knew that SMS can present challenges. With text messaging, if one letter or one character is off, you’ve lost them,” Sugrim said.
  3. Pictures over words. mPowering apps are also meant to transcend literacy rates. So, apps are picture-based.
  4. Follow “intuitive behavior.” If a normal day for a child is to come to school and then take part in roll call, the app will follow the same behavior: a student comes to school and then scans in via mobile.
  5. Include all potential users. Another goal of mPowering is to make apps easy to adopt. “We also want to incorporate women into our program and they are the most shy when it comes to some technologies.” Sugrim said. “We wanted to make sure we didn’t create something that had them taking five steps ahead of what they already use a mobile phone for.”

The applications currently run on the Android platform. In Juanga, though, most people don’t have smartphones, so mPowering supplied donated Android mobile phones to local teachers in the program.

As far as working with local mobile providers, “we stayed pretty neutral,” Sugrim said. It costs 98 Rupees (about $3 USD) to put a data plan on a phone in India. The cost was built into the mPowering program model and the organization is currently not “beholden to any carrier.” In the future, however, the organization would like to investigate having data plans donated by mobile providers.

Partnerning is Key

mPowering is based in San Mateo, California in the United States so Sugrim and her team employ local individuals to help operate the programs in Nepal and India.  They also hold training sessions for families and individuals who receive mPowering phones, and supply phone chargers at check-in locations.

Local partners, such as the Citta Foundation in India, also help monitor and lead programs after mPowering employees implement the project and leave the field.

Design and Data Collection

A recurring challenge for mPowering is mobile access and service. In some program locations, service can be limited and it can be difficult to figure out how to collect data via the app.

There have been some design challenges, too, which stem from a push versus pull approach.

“I think mPowering is turning the way mobile apps are being used on it’s head. Today, mobile apps are used to push information to individuals. But when you push, you have to think about training in terms of consumption,” Sugrim said.

“We turned this on its head and said, how about pulling information out of these areas for economic development?” With this comes design difficulties -- a mobile donor app that is under development, for example, has to incorporate photos and videos and make it easy to connect donors with sponsored school children. It’s not as easy as a traditional push app,” Sugrim said.

The donor app will provides pictures and updates of children that are sponsored. And it is customizable -- donors can select how often they wish to receive updates (daily, weekly) and on what platform (via the mobile app, SMS, or on the mPowering website).

The goal of mPowering is to help people reach above the poverty line, but through the use of mobile technology, the organization is also collecting interesting data. The team has data on student attendance for three months in Orissa and Sugrim said that those children who were part of the incentive program had a near perfect attendance compared to those who were not in the program.

“We have a lot of valuable demographic data,” Sugrim said.  Data from the school in Orissa, for example, comes in to mPowering servers on a daily and weekly basis. At 8 pm in California, the organization receives data from the 8 am attendance scan in Juanga.  “That’s a really powerful and exciting thing. That’s real-time data from a remote village.”

Photo Credit: Gabriel Gastelum Photography for mPowering

 

Basic Information
Organization involved in the project?: 
Project goals: 

The goal of mPowering is to help people living below the poverty line by leveraging mobile technology and developing unique mobile applications for development.

Brief description of the project: 

Non-profit organization mPowering is developing customized mobile apps to help reach the ultra poor -- people living on less than $2 a day -- and connect them with funding opportunities and programs in the developed world.

Reaching individuals and supplying resources in remote regions can present challenges. The goal of mPowering is to leverage existing mobile infrastructure to open up channels of access. The organization has ongoing programs in Nepal and India which provide incentives to the poor for reporting to school or work, via mobile application. The organization is also working to create a mobile donor app to further connect the poor with funding opportunities.

Target audience: 

Two ongoing programs are taking place in Bhaktapur, Nepal and Orissa, India. In Nepal, mPowering is working with women, and in India, with school children.

Detailed Information
Status: 
Ongoing
What worked well? : 

Before an mPowering application is developed, such as the one being used in Orissa, the team conducts field research in program locations. Also, parterning has proved key. mPowering employs local individuals to help operate the programs in Nepal and India. The organization also holds training sessions for families and individuals who receive mPowering phones, and supplies phone chargers at check-in locations.

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

A recurring challenge for mPowering is mobile access and service. In some program locations, service can be limited and it can be difficult to figure out how to collect data via the app. There have been some design challenges, too, which stem from a push versus pull approach.

 

Apps For Development: Lessons From mPowering Locations

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Supporting the Poor Nigerians

Please, how can the poor Nigerians benefit from this initiative. I would like this in Nigeria as an opportunity for the poor to lift our of poverty.

 

Thank you.

PEACE NGO, PAKISTAN mPOWERING

We,PEACE NGO, KPK, Pakistan looking of mPowering support to develop customized mobile apps to help reach the ultra poor in KPK of Pakistan -- and connect them with funding opportunities and programs in the developed world.

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