Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Feb 08, 2010
The National Democratic Institute and MobileActive.org are hosting "New Tools for Better Elections", a conference on February 26th on new technologies for fair, representative and equitable elections. In preparation for the event, we sat down with Ian Schuler, Senior Manager of Information and Communications Technology Programs at the National Democratic Institute. Schuler specializes in the application of mobile technology for the advancement of democracy and human rights, He is the author of SMS as a Tool in Election Observation.
In this conversation, Schuler breaks down not only the differences between election observation, citizen reporting, and crowd-sourcing, but also explains why these distinctions matter and how mobile technology is changing the way elections are held. Read on for excerpts from our conversation, or scroll down to watch the interview in its entirety.
Q: You and NDI have done a lot of election monitoring around the world. Explain why election monitoring matters.
A: Elections are the main process by which people participate in their government by selecting their leaders. People expect that it’s going to be a fair process, and that it’s going to be an accurate process. So it’s important for people to have confidence to know that somebody is really systematically watching the entire process to make sure that it is good. Election monitoring prevents fraud by making it harder for the people who want to manipulate elections to do so; it detects fraud when it happens, and it lets people know if the process was good – and if it was not, what were the problems and what might be constructive, non-violent ways of remedying those problems, whether it’s simply improving the process for later or rerunning elections or whatever is warranted in that situation.
Posted by KatrinVerclas on Feb 04, 2010
This article was written by Jesse Feiler and edited by Katrin Verclas.
In the last few week, nonprofits in the United States have started to pay attention to fundraising via text - donations delivered to charities by donors simple sending a text message.
In aftermath of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake text donations to the Red Cross and other charities received enormous publicity, and generated a significant outpouring of donations. (SMS is an alternate term for text message – a160 character message sent over the mobile network)
Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Feb 03, 2010
Safe drinking water is a necessity for life. But according to a 2005 report published by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to quality drinking water.
In South Africa, a current project is monitoring water quality with SMS in a push to bring safer water to the area. Run by the University of Bristol and the University of Cape Town, the four year project is two-fold: 1) develop a new means of testing water quality and 2) develop a new means of reporting the results of these water quality tests.
Aquatest, the water quality testing system, is still under development, but the Water Quality Reporter is up and running – on mobile phones with reporting via SMS. The application allows field workers to cheaply and effectively transfer data about water quality to a centralized database, while receiving feedback about how to handle local water problems.
Says Melissa Loundon, a researcher at the University of Cape Town who worked with the development of the Water Quality Reporter,
“The main part of the project is to develop the water test. But the original project team at the University of Bristol realized that if you’ve got a water test that can be used by people who aren’t in the field, or people who aren’t specialists, it doesn’t really help them if they get a result and see that their water is not safe to drink. They may not have a whole lot of resources to do anything about it. So the point of the cell phone application is that once somebody has a result, they can communicate it to a central database and also to somebody in the area who can provide support.”
Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Jan 31, 2010
In South Africa, national unemployment stands at 24% – and that number is even higher in many areas outside of major cities. Mobenzi, a new tool created by South African company Clyral, is a project to target unemployed workers to allow them to work over their mobile phones. “Mobenzi agents” use mobile phones to complete tasks that are difficult for computers to process.
Mark Fowles, co-founder of Clyral, said in an interview with MobileActive.org that the pre-pilot run of Mobenzi at the end of 2009 went better than expected. The original plan was to start a formal pilot in April 2010, but the company decided to run a pre-pilot in order to test the feasibility of the program and to iron out any problems before the main run.
Posted by MHut on Jan 28, 2010
The Vodafone Americas Foundation is announcing the last call for nominations for the second annual Wireless Innovation Project, a competition to identify and reward the most promising advances in wireless related technologies that can be used to solve critical problems around the globe. Proposals will be accepted through February 1, 2010, with the final winners announced on April 19, 2010 at the annual Global Philanthropy Forum in Redwood City, California.
Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Jan 20, 2010
Note: This is the first of two articles about Mobile Voices, a project based in Southern California. The second article is here.
Voces Móviles / Mobile Voices is a Los Angeles-based citizen media project, a collaboration between the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California (ASC) and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA). Mobile Voices is "a platform for immigrant workers in Los Angeles to create stories about their lives and communities directly from cell phones. Vozmob helps people with limited computer access gain greater participation in the digital public sphere."
Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on Jan 19, 2010
In December 2009, US Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D – Illinois) introduced the Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America’s Security and Prosperity (CIR ASAP) Act of 2009 in the American House of Representatives. The bill is a major step in overhauling the American immigration system, providing greater protection for immigrants while ensuring that employers use fair and legal hiring practices.
As the legislative debate about this hot-button issue heats up, interest groups are increasing their advocacy to protect the rights of both documented and undocumented immigrants. With reform on so many people’s minds, two organizations have been using mobile technology to spread the word.
Posted by admin on Jan 14, 2010
In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, relief organizations in the United States and Europe have been able to collect substantial numbers of donations from SMS fundraising campaigns. Just like after the 2004 Tsunami in Southeast Asia, the numbers are impressive. Two charities alone, the Red Cross Foundation and Yele, collected more than $4.7 million by mid-day Thursday (less than 48 hours after the first earthquake hit). UPDATE: The Red Cross has raised close to $20 million via its SMS campaign as of January 17th.
Industry insiders had expected $2 million in text message donations for all of 2009 at the end of October. However, a natural disaster of the gravity and dimension of the earthquake in Haiti has jumpstarted the awareness of aid organizations as to the potential power of raising funds quickly via SMS.
Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Jan 13, 2010
Relief efforts are ongoing after a powerful 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti yesterday. Mobile phones play a huge part in relief efforts today, from supporting donations, citizen media coming from affected areas, to emergency relief coordination. Here are some links and information you might find useful in responding to and learning more about the Haiti earthquakes.
Mobile Donations
[This section last updated 01/15/2010 12:59 pm]
Text message donations are exploding in the aftermath of the earthquake, similar to what happened in 2004 after the Indonesian Tsunami. $9 million has already been donated by noon on Friday January 15 just to the Red Cross via the 90999 number.
A list of all short codes to text to to donate on your phone bill in the United States:
- Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross for Haiti efforts. You can donate $10 up to three times, and 100% of the donations will reach the Red Cross Foundation. This effort is run by Mobile Accord.
- Text YELE to 501501 to donate $5 to the Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation. 501501 is run by Give On the Go, a service provider for the Mobile Giving Foundation. Ashley Nay, who is in Business Development at Give On the Go told MobileActive on the phone that "100% of the donations go to YELE" from these donations.
- Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee.
- Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card.
- Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation.
- Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International.
- Text HAITI to 85944 to donate $5 to the Rescue Union Mission and MedCorp International.
A list of all the non-US short codes that we know are serving as donation lines.
- Germany: text HAITI to 81190 to donate $5 (out of which $4.83 will go to Aktion Deutschland Hilft).
- Denmark: text Katastrofe to 1231 to donate 150 kr, or call 90 56 56 56.
- Canada: text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army, again courtesy of the Mobile Giving Foundation.
- Italy: text to 48540 to donate to the Italian Red Cross if you are on the WIND or 3 networks. If you are on Vodacom or TIM, text 48451 to donate EUR 2 (Telecom Italia users can also call this number). (Read More)
- France: 80 222/Croix Rouge française, 80 333/Secours Populaire, et 80 444/Secours Catholique. One euro per SMS. (From a user)
- Mexico: Telcel users can text 8888, donations will go to the Carlos Slim Foundation (Thanks @sorrelkydd)
More organizations that are working in Haiti in relief efforts are listed on The NYTimes Lede Blog and more on MSNBC's How to Help page.
Ongoing Communications Efforts
[Update, as of 01/15/2010, ~1:30pm]
- A good source for ongoing communication information is the Ushahidi Situation Room. We reported about the Ushahidi map for Haiti (Ushahidi is a mapping platform for crowdsourced crisis information) earlier, and it is being actively updated by the situation room setup at Tufts' Fletcher School. The Ushahidi blog also lists many of the other map-based information collection systems that have been set up.
- This morning, Erik Hersman posted a mobile network update (01/15/2010, 10:03am) on the Situation Room page saying "Digicel is at 50% Voila & Haitel at 75%." USA Today reported yesterday that Jamaica-based Digicel has had problems getting themselves into Haiti, and that "the network is severely congested 'because of the number of people making calls and trying to receive calls.'"
- A story on MSNBC from yesterday details some of TSF's work in Haiti. From the article:
Telecoms Sans Frontieres is hooking up terminals to facilitate communications for U.N. relief workers in Haiti, and will eventually let Haitians make free two-minute phone calls to anywhere in the world. The group's U.S. representative, Paul Margie, said the biggest challenge isn't technology but security. "The security and logistics situation on the ground is pretty bad, so finding secure locations to do these things is hard," he told me.
[Following was the section as it was posted the day after the earthquake, 01/13/2010, ~1:00pm]
- We are hearing that Digicel, one of the main mobile operators, is intermittently working as of right now, and satellite telephone services has allowed many first-responders and witnesses to report via skype on the devastation in Haiti. Digicel has also committed $5 million for relief efforts. [WSJ]
- Telecoms Sans Frontiers is deploying a team for support with emergency telecoms. You can donate to their efforts at this page. From the article:
Port-au-Prince has been severely affected including critical services such as, electricity, water and phone lines. Communication appears to be almost impossible at this time, with phone lines down. Numerous buildings, including the United Nations building, are reported to have been seriously damaged.
Facing this humanitarian catastrophe, TSF has deployed an emergency team from the American base in Managua to provide a vital support in emergency telecoms. They are carrying satellite mobile and fixed telecommunications tools. Reinforcements will also be sent from TSF’s international Headquarters. In close contact with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid Department (ECHO), they are now flying to Saint-Domingue in order to rejoin Port-au-Prince as soon as possible.
At this stage there is very limited access because of debris and other obstacles on the roads. It seems that no communication can be made with the airport either, which is reported to be closed.
- The Crisis Commons wiki is documenting some of the News, Data, and Communications efforts. In particular, they report about two mobile communication service efforts (they seek confirmation whether these are working yet):
Information from the Ground
Twitter Lists
Twitter lists have become a quick-fire way to organize and aggregate information related to events and topics. Quite a few twitter lists have been set up by several news organizations after the Haiti earthquake. Here is a sample:
The twitter hashtag #haiti and a search for haiti on twitter yield lots of info.
US State Department/American Citizens
Barack Obama in speech to Americans this morning listed several ways in which the US government is trying to help relief efforts in Haiti:
- Americans seeking info on family in Haiti should call 1-800-407-4747
- Updates from the White House's efforts will be put on The White House Blog. From the Department of State, updates are coming on the official twitter-verified DipNote.
- DipNote also says: Americans in Haiti can call the Embassy’s Consular Task Force at 509-2229-8942, 509-2229-8089, 509-2229-8322, or 509-2229-8672.
Live Blogs / Other semi-live coverage
Many blogs are covering the happenings live, and incorporating photos and videos coming in from citizen reporters in Haiti:
- Reuters has a page offering live coverage of events. Includes picture reports coming in through twitter, as well as News from other sources.
- CNN iReport, a citizen journalism effort, is aggregating citizen-submitted videos and photos on this page.
- The Lede Blog at the New York Times has ongoing coverage.
- NPR also has ongoing coverage on its Two Way blog.
- The Guardian also has liveblogging efforts.
(More here). Compiling citizen voices in Haiti are on this Global Voices Online page, to be updated as more content comes in.
YouTube
Youtube's search on earthquake Haiti yields many videos, and there are some dedicated channels and playlists on the cause like this one from CitizenTube.
References for Relief efforts
We have also compiled some references for those interested in reading more about previous relief efforts and resources that might help organizations running relief efforts:
If you are aware of other efforts or updates, please leave a comment.
Posted by PrabhasPokharel on Jan 12, 2010
CellBazaar, often called the "Mobile Craigslist of Bangladesh", has provided a martketplace to buy and sell goods and service to Bangladeshis for three and a half years now. We reported on the organization previously in April 2008. Since then, the service has grown and has now user base of just under 4 million. Cell Bazaar processes 1000 posts/day, and founder Kamal Qadir was chosen by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2009.
I caught up with Kamal recently and talked to him about two things that I had wondered about CellBazaar that had not been emphasized in the coverage they have received.
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