The Mobile Citizen Project, which aims to fund and support mobile initiatives for social change in Latin America, launches today. The program is a project of the Science and Technology Division of the Inter-American Development Bank, with the support of the Italian Trust Fund for Information and Communication Technology for Development. MobileActive.org is a media partner, powering the Program's "Ideas Box."
According to the project's press release, the "Mobile Citizen Program aims to accelerate the development and implementation of mobile services to address acute social and economic problems. We will provide support to develop citizen-centric solutions that target low-income groups in urban and rural areas of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region."
The program will provide funding in the form of grants ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 USD. These grants will be used to develop and implement a maximum of 8 mobile service projects to tackle concrete and severe problems affecting low-income population in cities and rural areas of LAC.
Currently, the project has a "call for problems," and is encouraging submissions from organizations that need funding for mobile products. The deadline for the first round is November 19. The main program objectives are:
- Strengthen local technical capacity to design and develop mobile services
- Seek empirical evidence of social and economic impact that can demonstrate the genuine potential of mobile services to policy makers and entrepreneurs
- Design and establish business models that would enable replication and scaling up of mobile services that are developed through the program
- The Fund will focus on the following areas, with special attention given to gender and diversity issues: health, education, government, commerce, social protection, and employment.
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