A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
Bloggers, activists and organizers in Pakistan are using SMS - short test messages - to coordinate protests and send updates on the political situation since Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf imposed martial law on November 3. Only 12% of Pakistanis have access to the internet and therefore mobile phones are a particularly useful communication tool in the current media blackout, imposed since emergency rule was imposed. Bloggers in Pakistan report that November 3 had the "highest number" of SMS messages sent -- an average of about 10 per mobile phone.
Understanding a housing mortgage isn't easy, especially within today's so-called subprime mortgages filled with legalese, deceptive interest rates and dishonest brokers. Having English as a second language doesn't make it any easier. Jeremy Liu and Tad Hirsch, the developers of Speakeasy, are using mobile phones to help non-English speakers fight the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States with an Asian-language specific foreclosure prevention hotline. MobileActive interviewed Liu for more information on this still-developing project.
Liu and Hirsch have developed a hotline that will connect Asian-language speakers faced with foreclosure or subprime mortgages with information in their native languages. Liu said that although similar hotlines exist in Spanish, there is no language-specific hotline for Asian languages. This leads to an information gap for Asian homeowners with subprime mortgages, many of whom don't know where to turn for foreclosure prevention assistance.
We reported a few days ago on the use of a text-to-screen campaign by the advocacy coalition It's OUR Healthcare! (IOH) in California. Now that the campaign is over, we've interviewed the organizers for more details on this innovative use of SMS in political advocacy.
Matt Lockshin, the online organizer for the It's OUR Healthcare! campaign sat down with us for a conversation. Lockshin told us that although the campaign dealt with some technical challenges, he was pleased with the quantity of SMS messages received and the response from media, political advocacy groups, and people in California.
Imagine buying drugs to cure malaria, only to find that the ineffective medicine contains a mixture of chalk and starch. Or imagine taking counterfeit birth control and finding yourself pregnant, or getting inoculated for meningitis -- as was the case with 2,500 people in Niger -- and finding that the vaccine was deadly.
California Activist Coalition It's OUR Healthcare has launched a new SMS campaign broadcasting text messages on a screen in Sacramento. The campaign is in response to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest health care proposal, which IOH says disregards issues of affordability, deductibles and coverage. The legislature is holding its first hearing on the issue today.
Sanjana Hattotuwa, on the ICT4Peace blog, mentions our recent article on the Reuters/Nokia collaboration in the context of his work in Sri Lanka. Hattotuwa writes:
Reading Reuters/Nokia Collaboration Has Potential for Citizen Journalists on MobileActive echoed what I’m currently facilitating in Sri Lanka with the help of the CPA Media Unit.
We are using a Nokia N93i phone to capture content that is feeding into Sri Lanka’s first citizen journalism YouTube channel, the Vikalpa YouTube Video Channel. The channel will be formally launched in the near future with more content added online.
Reuters and Nokia Research Center have teamed up to advance the usage of mobile journalism with the release of a new mobile toolkit and reporting try-out. Although the initiative is currently aimed at professional reporters, the project has implications for citizen journalists around the world.
Abu Sufian's small room in Fultola, Bangladesh looks like a standard Internet cafe. There are four workstations -- each with a mouse, keyboard, and monitor -- where customers can check email or browse the Internet. But this isn't just any Internet cafe -- the center is all made possible by one mobile phone.
According to this article from Telecentre.org, this "Community Information Center" only has one computer, which acts as a server for the other workstations. Internet access is provided by the EDGE-enabled (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) mobile phone. From the article:
The rural mobile market is growing, and carriers are working to meet the unique demands and challenges of this sector of the population. Even in the poorest countries -- like Sierra Leone, which ranks 176 out of 177 countries on the UN's 2006 Human Development Index -- mobile phones have become a growing necessity, creating a unique set of cultural norms and practices. According to a recent article in Africa News, "It is no secret that Sierra Leone has one of the largest mobile network services although said to be the least developed country in the West African Sub-Region." Mobile service in Sierra Leone is covered by three carriers -- Mobitel, Celtel and Millicom. Although the network has increased dramatically since the civil war ended in 2000, there is still demand from rural customers for more comprehensive coverage in poor rural areas.
Mobile use and prevalence is exploding throughout the developing world. As Tim Kelly writes in id21 insights's September newsletter, in 1990 there were only 14,200 mobiles in Africa, which by, 2005, grew to a total of 137 million. Id21 predicts that the majority of the world's poor will have mobile access within the next generation. This number continues to increase, showing just how important mobile phones have become in development.
In our ongoing series on mobiles in development -- m4dev, as we are calling it, we are pleased to see that id21 focuses its current newsletter on mobiles used in development, with articles profiling mobiles used in countries including Nigeria, Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Zambia.
MCX (Pty) Ltd
Advirtek
student
Ben Freda Consulting