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Chandra Shekar, a farmer who grows crops such as tomatoes and carrots and raises cows and other animals, lives in a remote village in Kolar, India in the state of Karnataka. For the past year, he's received daily voice messages with advice which have helped him to keep his sheep healthy, control diseases that threaten his crops and know what medicines to feed his animals. He has also had access to a helpline that allows him to ask questions to experts, while standing in the field of his farm, next to his animals. "Messages on animal husbandry are serving like daily doctor to me," Shekar said. "When cow was suffering from bloating, it was effectively controlled by making cow to drink groundnut oil which was given in the message."
Data collected by multiple field workers can be submitted by phone, together with GPS data, to a common web database and can be displayed and analysed, along with previously collected data, using Google Maps (or Google Earth). Similarly, data from the web database can be requested and displayed on the mobile phone, again using Google Maps.
Adapted from Tactical Tech's Mobiles-in-a-Box Toolkit.
Before starting your mobile advocacy programme, it is worth spending some time thinking about and profiling your audience and how that audience uses mobile phones. For example, if your audience is sharing handsets it may not be advisable to send or receive confidential or sensitive information.
In order to use mobiles effectively for advocacy, it's vital that your organisation keep an accurate and up-to-date record of the mobile phone numbers of your staff, members and supporters and that people agree to let their mobile number be used to contact them. If you have sufficient resources it's worth investing the time in setting up a database for the mobile numbers. You need to be sure that people opt in to receive messages and that you provide a way for them to easily opt out of receiving any messagig from you.
Vodafone Americas Foundation
Rebtel
InterMedia
KICS-UET Lahore