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Featured Case Study

Demand Dignity: Amplifying Voices Across Multiple Platforms

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to amplify the voices of poor people around the world. Demand Dignity is an economic, cultural, and social rights campaign for the organization and the online platform, DemandDignity.org, was launched in May 2009. Since then, the site has collected 57,384 comments, or “voices,” from people around the world, via SMS, Twitter, and on the Demand Dignity website.

The campaign attempts to give a voice to people who are living in poverty or who have had their human rights violated, said Sarah Pyke, communications coordinator of the campaign. It enables people to be able to access their rights, hold their governments to account, and to be able to make their voices heard. These aims led to the creation of the DemandDignity.org platform, an interactive website where people can submit audio, video, or text reports and answer prompted questions such as What does living in dignity mean to you?

One response to this question, from Kenya, was, "living somewhere comfortably in terms of shelter, good health care and having sustainable education."

MobileActive.org spoke with Pyke and with Shehzaad Shams, Project Coordinator for onnline communities and e-activism, to hear more about the platform and how it leverages mobile tech.

How It Works

Shams and Pyke said that Amnesty International wanted to make use of the latest technologies in terms of social media, specifically in how technology could be used to amplify voices. The DemandDignity.org platform itself is available in four languages -- English, Arabic, French and Spanish -- and “voices” can be submitted in any language.

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Featured Mobile Tool

PoiMapper

The PoiMapper application allows a user to create a case-specific questionnaire, collect data, and upload it to a database. PoiMapper also allows the user to take photographs of specific points of interest (POIs) being recorded and these images are also uploaded to the database. Another feature is that the system can be used to update existing data.

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Featured How-to

Mobile Security Risks: A Primer for Activists, Journalists and Rights Defenders

Activists, rights defenders, and journalists use mobile devices and communications for reporting, organizing, mobilizing, and documenting.  Mobiles provide countless benefits -- relatively low cost, increased efficiencies, vast reach -- but they also present specific risks to rights defenders and activists.  




Additionally, information about other mobile uses, such as your photos or video, your data, the Internet sites you visit from your phone, and your physical location, are stored on your device and often logged by your mobile network. (The above graphic shows a schematic overview of the layers of the mobile networks to give you sense of the different elements that make up communications between two phones.)How much is this putting you at risk?  This Overview will help you evaluate your level of risk in regard to your mobile communications.

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