The Praekelt Foundation was founded in 2007 as the nonprofit/NGO offshoot of Praekelt Consulting. The NGO now runs three programs that work to better the lives of people living in poverty in South Africa. Each of those programs (Young Africa Live, SocialTXT, and TXTalert) use mobiles to achieve that goal.
Gustav Praekelt founded Praekelt Consulting in 2003; the company provides digital solutions to clients who want to tap into the mobile and online markets. Praekelt realized that a lot of the technology he was building on the consulting side for for-profit clients could be adapted to the non-profit space. The company began exploring how to use open-source technology in order for NGOs, and the Praekelt Foundation was born. Praekelt explains that although the for-profit and non-profit are separate organizations, they do inform each other: “They’re very similar – on the for-profit side we develop mobile technologies that deliver content and information to clients in emerging economies, and the non-profit we do exactly the same, develop technology to improve people’s lives socially.“
All of the Praekelt Foundation’s programs are different and target a different audience, but the common theme among them is the commitment to providing free information and support to anyone with a mobile.
Young Africa Live:
Young Africa Live is the newest project of the Praekelt Foundation. Launched in December 2009, the mobile platform gives young Africans a place to learn about HIV/AIDS, health, sex, relationships and life in am entertaining way. The site has two main sources of content: static content, which is focused on informative material, and dynamic content, youth-oriented blogs written by young people to engage their peers. The blog posts rotate daily. Some of the more popular posts have over 3000 comments in the short time the program has been running. Says Marcha Neethling, Project Manager of the Praekelt Foundation, “We’ve really been overwhelmed by the response we’ve seen.”
Young Africa Live came about because the Praekelt Foundation noticed a distinct lack in accessible HIV/AIDS information. Neethling explains, “We work a lot with all the mobile operators [in South Africa] and we searched on all their platforms to see if they have any information about HIV and AIDS and we couldn’t find anything. We found that quite shocking. We are the country with the highest [mobile] penetration [in Africa] and the country with the biggest HIV problem in the world.”
The Foundation decided that there needed to be a way for young Africans to access information about HIV/AIDS on their mobiles. The planning led them to build a portal based around discussions – for example, following the scandal around Tiger Woods’s extramarital affairs, the site posted the celebrity gossip and followed up by asking readers if Woods and his wife needing HIV/AIDS testing and how the readers would respond in a similar situation.
The site has taken off almost entirely based on word-of-mouth; the only advertising was a one-day banner ad that appeared on Vodafone Live’s main page on World AIDS Day (December 1) that announced the launch of Young Africa Live. The word-of-mouth system has been effective. From December to 15 March, the total number of page hits was 3,940,397 with 127, 602 comments on stories and 85, 671 unique visitors.
Young Africa Live is a partnership between the Praekelt Foundation and telecommunications company Vodacom. The Young Africa Live portal is hosted by Vodafone Live and it’s free for site visitors to access, download, and surf the site. Neethling credited Vodafone Live’s popularity as critical to the success of the Young Africa Live site saying, “I think part of the success is that Vodafone Live as a platform is so popular already, so we were lucky in the sense that we had a lot of existing users that go to that portal every single day.” However, only mobile users who use Vodacom as their service provider can access the site; Neethling says that ideally Young Africa Live will be accessible to all mobile users, regardless of their service provider.
She said that the development of the portal took roughly six weeks, and that the long-standing relationship between Praekelt Consulting/the Praekelt Foundation and Vodacom helped make the process smoother. Neethling says, “We work a lot on the for-profit side with their portal infrastructure – so we knew how their systems worked. It was easy for us to integrate the portal onto Vodafone Live and manage that technical process.”
The rapid popularity of the portal did create some challenges, however. The Praekelt Foundation realized that it would have to produce more content in order to capture repeat users and keep the content fresh. They partnered with several NGOs for static content, and the bloggers rotate stories daily. Neethling credits the popularity of the portal to the site’s laid-back, youth-orientated feel. She explains, “ We said, ‘we don’t want to create something called The AIDS Portal’ because of a lot of stigma being associated with the disease. […] We wanted to create something that’s more fun, interactive – it gets the information across, but in a provocative, entertainment-oriented way, and not in a talk-down way where you preach to people and just give them reams and reams of information.”
SocialTXT:
We’ve already covered SocialTXT in a previous post (read our previous take here.) The project, which has been in operation since October 2008, takes an inventive approach to the unused space in “Please Call Me” messages. The “Please Call Me” messages are popular with mobile owners all around the world who have used up their airtime and want to speak with someone; the person who doesn’t have airtime sends a free message requesting a call back. Please call mes provide the information about the cal request but also have 120 characters of unused space in the message.
SocialTXT capitalizes on this space with social messages; in each of the messages its puts the national AIDS help line number. All messages are phrased as a question. For example, below the typical “Please Call Me” message, recipients would see something along the lines of:“ Are you feeling sick and worried you might be HIV positive? Call the AIDS help line to find out where you can be tested.”
The Praekelt Foundation rotates the messages weekly, with each new message covering a different aspect of HIV/AIDS awareness such as testing, dealing with stigma, where to find treatment and more. The program runs in six local South African languages in order to best target users.
Neethling says that from October 2008 to January 2010, the Praekelt Foundation has sent out 3.4 million messages over the “Please Call Me” system. She says that before SocialTXT began incorporating the phone number for the National AIDS Helpline, the helpline received about 1000 calls a day; now they average roughly three to four thousand calls a day.
TXTalert:
TXTalert is a program that sends automated SMS reminders to patients on chronic medications. It was originally piloted for patients with HIV/AIDS in order to remind patients about appointments and allows them to send “Please Call Me” messages to the clinic if they needed to reschedule or needed help making an appointment. This year the program is expanding to prove that it can be used for any type of diseases that requires regular doctor follow-ups or medication reminders – the expanded version will contact patients with TB, malaria, diabetes, and any other chronic illness that needs long-term care.
TXTalert works by sending an appointment reminder two weeks in advance of an appointment, and then a second reminder the day before in order to keep patients on track with their health care. According to Neethling, the group has seen a large return on the SMS reminders. She says, “In one of the clinics where we work we’ve driven down missed appointment rates from 30% to about 4%, and it’s currently stable at 4% for the past year or so, so we know that the tool is really working to help remind people.”
The pilot ran with 10,000 patients who volunteered to opt in to the program, and currently only operates in Johannesburg. However, the Praekelt Foundation recently partnered with the NGO Right to Care in order to expand TXTalert to other clinics across the country.
The TXTalert system works in conjunction with electronic records systems, so the Praekelt Foundation has faced challenges in expanding the project to rural areas where systems are not yet digitalized. Neethling explains that the main challenge in these cases is the fact that TXTalert does not hold any clinical data of patients (for confidentially purposes), so without an electronic system with which to link, TXTalert was limited to clinics that were technologically compatible. However, the Praekelt Foundation has now built its own electronic booking tool that clinics can use to input the data into a calendar. Although the tool hasn’t been released yet, Neethling hopes that the incorporation of this tool will make TXTalert available to many more areas.
The Praekelt Foundation’s large-scale programs are a great example of how corporations can embrace the non-profit world so that both sides benefit. Praekelt says that having both for-profit and non-profit branches gives his developers more freedom: “Quite often, your client in the for-profit space has much shorter term goals. We can create great tools, but you don’t really have the time to work really long-term. With the non-profit, it’s the opposite. We don’t have a lot of money, but we have the long-term commitment from our partners. The overlap is quite interesting – the for-profit can fund a lot of the development of software, and the non-profit can provide the long-term view.”
According to Neethling, the Foundation plans to focus on expanding their projects accessibility, continuing to foster open source development, improving on client interaction. She says, “What we’re trying to do is build cost-effective, scalable solutions that will improve the lives of people living in poverty. Everything we do, we try to keep that focus in mind always.”
Praekelt Foundation: Young Africa Live, SocialTXT, and TXTalert Locations
The Praekelt Foundation was founded in 2007 as the nonprofit/NGO offshoot of Praekelt Consulting. The NGO now runs three programs that work to better the lives of people living in poverty in South Africa. Each of those programs (Young Africa Live, SocialTXT, and TXTalert) use mobiles to achieve that goal.
Gustav Praekelt founded Praekelt Consulting in 2003; the company provides digital solutions to clients who want to tap into the mobile and online markets. Praekelt realized that a lot of the technology he was building on the consulting side for for-profit clients could be adapted to the non-profit space. The company began exploring how to use open-source technology in order for NGOs, and the Praekelt Foundation was born. Praekelt explains that although the for-profit and non-profit are separate organizations, they do inform each other: “They’re very similar – on the for-profit side we develop mobile technologies that deliver content and information to clients in emerging economies, and the non-profit we do exactly the same, develop technology to improve people’s lives socially.“
All of the Praekelt Foundation’s programs are different and target a different audience, but the common theme among them is the commitment to providing free information and support to anyone with a mobile.
Young Africa Live:
Young Africa Live is the newest project of the Praekelt Foundation. Launched in December 2009, the mobile platform gives young Africans a place to learn about HIV/AIDS, health, sex, relationships and life in am entertaining way. The site has two main sources of content: static content, which is focused on informative material, and dynamic content, youth-oriented blogs written by young people to engage their peers. The blog posts rotate daily. Some of the more popular posts have over 3000 comments in the short time the program has been running. Says Marcha Neethling, Project Manager of the Praekelt Foundation, “We’ve really been overwhelmed by the response we’ve seen.”
Young Africa Live came about because the Praekelt Foundation noticed a distinct lack in accessible HIV/AIDS information. Neethling explains, “We work a lot with all the mobile operators [in South Africa] and we searched on all their platforms to see if they have any information about HIV and AIDS and we couldn’t find anything. We found that quite shocking. We are the country with the highest [mobile] penetration [in Africa] and the country with the biggest HIV problem in the world.”
The Foundation decided that there needed to be a way for young Africans to access information about HIV/AIDS on their mobiles. The planning led them to build a portal based around discussions – for example, following the scandal around Tiger Woods’s extramarital affairs, the site posted the celebrity gossip and followed up by asking readers if Woods and his wife needing HIV/AIDS testing and how the readers would respond in a similar situation.
The site has taken off almost entirely based on word-of-mouth; the only advertising was a one-day banner ad that appeared on Vodafone Live’s main page on World AIDS Day (December 1) that announced the launch of Young Africa Live. The word-of-mouth system has been effective. From December to 15 March, the total number of page hits was 3,940,397 with 127, 602 comments on stories and 85, 671 unique visitors.
Young Africa Live is a partnership between the Praekelt Foundation and telecommunications company Vodacom. The Young Africa Live portal is hosted by Vodafone Live and it’s free for site visitors to access, download, and surf the site. Neethling credited Vodafone Live’s popularity as critical to the success of the Young Africa Live site saying, “I think part of the success is that Vodafone Live as a platform is so popular already, so we were lucky in the sense that we had a lot of existing users that go to that portal every single day.” However, only mobile users who use Vodacom as their service provider can access the site; Neethling says that ideally Young Africa Live will be accessible to all mobile users, regardless of their service provider.
She said that the development of the portal took roughly six weeks, and that the long-standing relationship between Praekelt Consulting/the Praekelt Foundation and Vodacom helped make the process smoother. Neethling says, “We work a lot on the for-profit side with their portal infrastructure – so we knew how their systems worked. It was easy for us to integrate the portal onto Vodafone Live and manage that technical process.”
The rapid popularity of the portal did create some challenges, however. The Praekelt Foundation realized that it would have to produce more content in order to capture repeat users and keep the content fresh. They partnered with several NGOs for static content, and the bloggers rotate stories daily. Neethling credits the popularity of the portal to the site’s laid-back, youth-orientated feel. She explains, “ We said, ‘we don’t want to create something called The AIDS Portal’ because of a lot of stigma being associated with the disease. […] We wanted to create something that’s more fun, interactive – it gets the information across, but in a provocative, entertainment-oriented way, and not in a talk-down way where you preach to people and just give them reams and reams of information.”
SocialTXT:
We’ve already covered SocialTXT in a previous post (read our previous take here.) The project, which has been in operation since October 2008, takes an inventive approach to the unused space in “Please Call Me” messages. The “Please Call Me” messages are popular with mobile owners all around the world who have used up their airtime and want to speak with someone; the person who doesn’t have airtime sends a free message requesting a call back. Please call mes provide the information about the cal request but also have 120 characters of unused space in the message.
SocialTXT capitalizes on this space with social messages; in each of the messages its puts the national AIDS help line number. All messages are phrased as a question. For example, below the typical “Please Call Me” message, recipients would see something along the lines of:“ Are you feeling sick and worried you might be HIV positive? Call the AIDS help line to find out where you can be tested.”
The Praekelt Foundation rotates the messages weekly, with each new message covering a different aspect of HIV/AIDS awareness such as testing, dealing with stigma, where to find treatment and more. The program runs in six local South African languages in order to best target users.
Neethling says that from October 2008 to January 2010, the Praekelt Foundation has sent out 3.4 million messages over the “Please Call Me” system. She says that before SocialTXT began incorporating the phone number for the National AIDS Helpline, the helpline received about 1000 calls a day; now they average roughly three to four thousand calls a day.
TXTalert:
TXTalert is a program that sends automated SMS reminders to patients on chronic medications. It was originally piloted for patients with HIV/AIDS in order to remind patients about appointments and allows them to send “Please Call Me” messages to the clinic if they needed to reschedule or needed help making an appointment. This year the program is expanding to prove that it can be used for any type of diseases that requires regular doctor follow-ups or medication reminders – the expanded version will contact patients with TB, malaria, diabetes, and any other chronic illness that needs long-term care.
TXTalert works by sending an appointment reminder two weeks in advance of an appointment, and then a second reminder the day before in order to keep patients on track with their health care. According to Neethling, the group has seen a large return on the SMS reminders. She says, “In one of the clinics where we work we’ve driven down missed appointment rates from 30% to about 4%, and it’s currently stable at 4% for the past year or so, so we know that the tool is really working to help remind people.”
The pilot ran with 10,000 patients who volunteered to opt in to the program, and currently only operates in Johannesburg. However, the Praekelt Foundation recently partnered with the NGO Right to Care in order to expand TXTalert to other clinics across the country.
The TXTalert system works in conjunction with electronic records systems, so the Praekelt Foundation has faced challenges in expanding the project to rural areas where systems are not yet digitalized. Neethling explains that the main challenge in these cases is the fact that TXTalert does not hold any clinical data of patients (for confidentially purposes), so without an electronic system with which to link, TXTalert was limited to clinics that were technologically compatible. However, the Praekelt Foundation has now built its own electronic booking tool that clinics can use to input the data into a calendar. Although the tool hasn’t been released yet, Neethling hopes that the incorporation of this tool will make TXTalert available to many more areas.
The Praekelt Foundation’s large-scale programs are a great example of how corporations can embrace the non-profit world so that both sides benefit. Praekelt says that having both for-profit and non-profit branches gives his developers more freedom: “Quite often, your client in the for-profit space has much shorter term goals. We can create great tools, but you don’t really have the time to work really long-term. With the non-profit, it’s the opposite. We don’t have a lot of money, but we have the long-term commitment from our partners. The overlap is quite interesting – the for-profit can fund a lot of the development of software, and the non-profit can provide the long-term view.”
According to Neethling, the Foundation plans to focus on expanding their projects accessibility, continuing to foster open source development, improving on client interaction. She says, “What we’re trying to do is build cost-effective, scalable solutions that will improve the lives of people living in poverty. Everything we do, we try to keep that focus in mind always.”
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