A resource for activists using mobile technology worldwide.

Guest Blogger Sanjana Hattotuwa from ICT4Peacebuilding/ICT4Peace is reviewing Frontline SMS, a software that allows you to run an SMS campaign from your computer.  It is one of a class of do-it-yourself SMS campaign tools that we have previously reviewed on MobileActive.org. Sanjana took a look at the new release of Frontline SMS and had this to say.  

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Two organizations in the MobileActive community were recently awarded Knight News Challenge Grants, given annually to fund "innovative digital projects around the world." There were 16 awards given in all to projects that use digital and open source technology to provide public-interest news.

Bev Clark, the co-founder of Kubatana.net, was awarded the largest grant in the Challenge for Freedom Fone, a way to distribute news and independent media:

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Mobile phones are transforming economic life for consumers in developing countries, says a new report by David Lehr. The report Going Wireless: Dialing for Development, focuses on "base of the pyramid" consumers and the ways that mobile phones have the potential to change economies in the developing world. Lehr writes,

The mobile phone has established itself as the communication and networking platform of choice for billions of the world’s consumers, most of whom are at the base of the global economic pyramid.

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Mobile phones are nothing new for Greenpeace Argentina. The organization has used mobile phones multiple times to mobilize its now 350,000 person-strong mobile list to successfully lobby for important environmental legislation. One of Greenpeace's significant accomplishments was the passage of the Ley de Bosques, or Forest Law.

According to a recently UN/Vodaphone report, Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, before the law was passed forests in Argentina were being quickly destroyed.

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In a mobile phone game in India, a cricket match is played between the teams Demons XI and Safety XI. A report about the game describes it as a “cricket-based game involving balls in the form of condoms, faithful partners, information on HIV and the symbolic AIDS red ribbon.” A team wins by avoiding “googlies and doosra balls - unsafe sex, infected blood transfusions, infected syringes and the company of bad friends.”

The game is part of a growing market of "edutainment" mobile phone games -- games that are designed to provide entertainment and be educational at the same time.

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Mobile phones aren't just for texting. An emerging field of research uses mobiles for "urban sensing," allowing phones to collect scientific data in new and innovative ways. The recently released UN/Vodaphone report, Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, describes this new field.

According to the report,

Mobile sensing—also known as ‘participatory sensing,’ ‘urban sensing,’ or ‘participatory urbanism,’—enables data collection from large numbers of people in ways that previously were not possible. By affixing a sensory device to a mobile phone, mobile sensing provides the opportunity to track multiple data points and collect dynamic information about environmental trends from ambient air quality to urban traffic patterns. “sparse sensing strategy does little to capture the very dynamic variability of air quality that depends on automobile traffic patterns, human activity, and output of industries.”

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Mobile technology is transforming the way advocacy, development and relief organizations accomplish their institutional missions. This is nothing new to readers of MobileActive. Our recent report Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, released today by the United Nations Foundation and The Vodafone Group Foundation, brings this point home.

Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use was written by Sheila Kinkade (ShareIdeas.org) and Katrin Verclas (MobileActive.org), and commissioned by the United Nations Foundation-Vodafone Group Foundation Technology Partnership. The report examines emerging trends in “mobile activism” by looking at 11 case studies of groups active in the areas of public health, humanitarian assistance and environmental conservation.

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Imagine you're in Bangladesh and you want to buy a cow. You pull your mobile phone out of your pocket and start sending text messages to 3838, the shortcode for CellBazaar, a mobile phone marketplace which some have called the "Craigslist of Bangladesh." You look through the relevant ads and look at the ages, locations, and number of teeth of the 187 cows that are currently for sale. After another SMS, you are connected with the phone number of the the seller, ready to make your new purchase.

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Mobile advocacy efforts are just beginning around the world. What are we learning from these emergent campaigns what works and what does not in using mobile phones to advance a cause or an issue?

Of course, we think that advocacy organizations should start to pay serious attention to using mobiles in their work. There is increasing evidence that mobile social marketing works in increasing brand awareness and moving people to actions. It is also becming an increasingly effective way to engage users and constituents. Here are a few pointers from what we have learned to date. (NOTE: This pertains to US-based campaigns).

1. What's happening in the mobile (social) marketing market that advocacy organizations should pay attention to?

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In the United States, a used mobile phone is likely to end up in the trash can, or more likely, in the back of a desk drawer for several years, collecting dust. But in the rest of the world, this just isn't the case. Mobile phones -- or even parts of mobile phones -- are reused, recycled, and refurbished.

Jan Chipchase, a phone anthropologist for Nokia, has seen the way that old mobile phones transform into new ones while traveling for Nokia around the world.

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