English in Action: Mobile Learning in Bangladesh

This post is the latest in the FrontlineSMS Mobile Message series with National Geographic. To read a summary of the Mobile Message series click here.

In her role as the Content Producer for the SOCAP conference series, Amy Benziger has the opportunity to interview innovators from around the world on how they are changing the landscape of social enterprise.

For this installment of Mobile Message, she interviews Sara Chamberlain, project director for BBC Janala, an initiative based in Bangladesh that incorporates on-screen English tutoring through a television drama and a game show combined with English lessons via the mobile phone that build on the content in the programs.

Mobile Message is a series of blog posts about how mobile phones are being used throughout the world to improve, enrich, and empower billions of lives.

By Amy Benziger

Most people know of the BBC as a source of reputable news from around the globe. Most don’t know about the action arm called the BBC World Service Trust, which uses the “creative power of media to reduce poverty and promote human rights.” I was first introduced to and amazed by the BBC World Service Trust through The 2010 Tech Awards where BBC Janala was honored as one of the winners of the Microsoft Education Awards.

BBC Janala educational fair in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Copyright BBC World Service Trust. (Used with permission).Janala is part of the English in Action campaign, which launched in November 2009. The initiative based in Bangladesh incorporates on-screen English tutoring through a television drama and a game show combined with English lessons via the mobile phone that build on the content in the programs. Janala’s three-minute mobile English lessons are equivalent to the cost of a cup of tea and accessible to those living on less than two dollars a day.

In my role as the Content Producer for the SOCAP conference series, I have the opportunity to interview innovators from around the world on how they are changing the landscape of social enterprise. I spoke to Sara Chamberlain, project director for BBC Janala, to learn more.

How did the BBC Janala program come about?

The Bangladeshi government was concerned about falling behind their neighbors, specifically India, because of a lack of English. The BBC World Service Trust was commissioned along with two other organizations to implement the “English in Action” program with a mandate to teach 25 million people English. I flew over to Bangladesh in 2007 to start the initial research.

The Janala program specifically targets adult education outside of the classroom. The goal is mass media saturation. We link the new lessons on the television show to written quizzes in the largest Bangladeshi newspaper to audio mobile lessons three times per week. Visual, writing, auditory learning create a fantastic package so that whether you are picking up a newspaper, turning on the TV or using your phone, there is engaging content available.

Mohammad Noor-e-Alam Siddiqui – 26 years old/Ghoshnogora, Tangail:

Siddiqui‘s father used to be a primary school teacher and always aspired for his son to be well-educated. However, due to financial constraints, Mohammad wasn’t able to pursue higher education. “Since my father always encouraged me to become highly educated, I still regret that I couldn’t achieve the optimum level although I had strong desire to. As a result I still consider myself as a learner and try to educate myself utilizing every opportunity I get.” Siddiqui has been using BBC Janala 3 times a week. He added, “In addition to ‘Essential English,’ I like the lesson of ‘How to Tell a Story.’ I can actually relate the stories to my real life and later tell my own stories in similar way.”

Why make English lessons available via mobile phone?

What is quite historic about BBC Janala is that we negotiated contracts with all 6 mobile operators in the country, so the service can be utilized on any handset, at any location and at any time. It opens up access that didn’t exist before for millions of people because once they left primary or secondary school, they’ve had no educational opportunities available.

There are English courses available from private tutors, but they are prohibitively expensive. On average each course costs 1500-6000 taka which is roughly $20-$80. Our service is 1.5 taka per lesson. The total cost of our course is 240 taka, which is under 5 dollars. It’s much more affordable and the quality is high. Having that flexibility to provide access to education at a very low cost is groundbreaking.

How do you measure success?

We have reached 4 million people in last 15 months via the mobile phone. You have to remember; we are targeting people who only very recently got access to mobile phones. Only 8-9% had received or sent SMS texts, so the quick uptake is amazing.

We are now a third of the way through the program, and we’ve started doing surveys of 8000 people in 4 out of 7 districts in Bangladesh. We are running a mobile specific panel giving participants oral tests every six weeks. We’ve been really pleased by their ability to reproduce the language and have conversations. They are scoring at 70% so there’s no doubt that the mobile service is teaching English.

Shafiqul Islam – 30 yrs old/Living in Mirpur:

“When I was in school English seemed very difficult to me and the village schools did not have teachers who were experts in English. They would just teach for the sake of teaching. Then BBC Janala came along and I saw the advertisements in TV. That’s when I started dialing 3000 and now I am a regular user. My willingness to learn English has led me to BBC Janala…English is always necessary; it doesn’t depend on past or future. We always need it. Now is the Internet time and in the future, the Internet will be used even more widely. If I want to pursue a teaching profession, I would want to use the Internet to collect all the latest information relevant to this field and to help my students. How will I do that if I don’t know English?”

BBC Janala educational fair in Chittagong, Bangladesh. Copyright BBC World Service Trust. (Used with permission).

How do you see mobile phones changing the learning landscape the developing world?

Many Bangladeshis have had a negative experience with education. Although the government is working towards the Millennium Development Goals of getting kids into the classroom, the challenge is that the quality is poor so they are dropping out as quickly as they’re going in. There is a very authoritarian approach to education so the fact that they can learn in private on a device that’s always with them when they’re waiting for a bus, walking home or for the few minutes at the end of the day is revolutionary.

Amy Benziger is the Producer focusing on content development for the SOCAP conference series. She is responsible for researching the social enterprise landscape, tracking trends and identifying thought-leaders to present at the annual event. For three years, SOCAP has brought thousands of individuals from over 40 countries to San Francisco to explore innovation in impact investing, venture philanthropy, design thinking, mobile technology, international development, public-private partnerships and food systems. Amy is a founding team member and strategic advisor to the Hub Bay Area, an incubator for social entrepreneurs dedicated to building solutions for social, economic and environmental sustainability as part of a global Hub community with 22 international locations. A lifelong traveler, she has lived and worked in Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Thailand. She currently lives in San Francisco, CA.

Mobile Message is produced by Ken Banks, innovator, anthropologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He shares exciting stories in Mobile Message about how mobile phones are being used throughout the world to improve, enrich, and empower billions of lives. Read all the posts in this series.

A positive message for diverse communities

Re-posted via the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO)

Who would have thought text messaging could be used to strengthen social change projects the world over? There are now six billion mobile phone connections globally, and many more people own a mobile handset than don’t. In large part due to this mass availability, mobiles are now being used to strengthen many non-profit initiatives.

FrontlineSMS is a social enterprise which enables projects to use the power of text messaging to their advantage, by providing free and open source software that gives the ability to turn a laptop and a mobile phone in to a mass messaging communications hub. Here in the UK, FrontlineSMS is being used by a nationally award-winning voluntary organisation called FolesHillfields Vision Project to strengthen their work building strong bridges between diverse communities in the city of Coventry.

The area that  FolesHillfields  works in is both “blessed by diversity, and struggling with disadvantage” (http://foleshillfields.org). This combination of factors can lead to tensions, which if not addressed can cause serious problems. When there is high competition for work in deprived areas people can often feel the need to blame those they perceive as separate to themselves; those who are living in the same area and sharing the same resources, but may be from a different country or religious background.

Diversity can clearly enrich societies, yet it can also be a source of tensions and animosity between people from different ethnic backgrounds, faiths, and areas of the world. Thus FolesHillfields works to counteract this kind of tension in Foleshill and Hillfields, two central Coventry neighbourhoods. The Project facilitates community events and activities which promote social inclusion by bringing different groups together to interact, listen to each other and develop an understanding of their differences and commonalities.

Often the Project will hold structured discussions in which people talk directly about their views on relevant topics, such as racism. Those present will be asked to actively listen to what each other are saying and give everyone a chance to speak, thus ensuring all views are heard. Some discussions focus on how local tensions relate to international issues, thus addressing the global context of any potential community tensions. In addition to these structured discussions the Project hosts lots of informal meet up opportunities for people to have lunch, do some gardening, and share tea together. These activities help to encourage a shared sense of social acceptance and understanding.

One major commonality amongst the diverse population in Coventry is that most people own a mobile phone. Therefore FolesHillfields Vision's organisers make use of FrontlineSMS to send out mass text messages to reach out and bring people together.

The free and open source software allows a single message to be sent to the hundreds of people the project is working with at the click of a button. The messages could be to remind people of key events, to inspire people to stay involved, or to send best wishes for many different types of holidays local people celebrate. For example, on the 21st March a text was sent to say ‘Happy Newroz’; the Iranian New Year. In addition FrontlineSMS allows the Project to split their contacts out in to different groups and text all of the women in the group, for example, with a reminder of International Women’s day celebration, or all of the volunteers with a reminder about the details of a particular event. “FrontlineSMS helps to strengthen the sense of community we are creating, and keep people involved and connected with what we are doing” says Mark Hinton, one of the Project’s founders.

FrontlineSMS software has been downloaded nearly 14,000 times and is being used in over 70 countries for many different purposes including provision health information, mobilizing human rights campaigns, and even monitoring elections. It is great to see effective use of the software here in the United Kingdom, to help support the important work of the FolesHillfieldsVision Project.

To find out more about FolesHillField Vision Project go to http://foleshillfields.org/.

FrontlineSMS Semi-Finalists in 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge

We announced a few weeks ago that FrontlineSMS is 'rising to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge.' Now, after a rigorous vetting process, FrontlineSMS has been selected from a pool of hundreds of entries from over 35 counties to become 2011 Semi-Finalists! Named "Socially-Responsible Design's Highest Award" by Metropolis Magazine, the Challenge awards $100,000 to support the development and implementation of a whole systems-based solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

FrontlineSMS was recognized for our work to bring the communication revolution to poor and remote regions, by harnessing the power and reach of mobile phones. Our software works without the internet, is easy to implement, simple to operate, and free to download. Results from a recent FrontlineSMS user survey help to illustrate our efforts to  design software to work for "100% of humanity." In the survey 84% of users said they found our software easy to use.* Results also demonstrated that FrontlineSMS is being used in over 70 countries, and is particularly useful in areas of the world where other forms of communication can be difficult to access. One FrontlineSMS user said,

"I was using Frontline SMS to communicate with administrators, principals, and teachers in 50 secondary schools. In the area I was working landlines and faxes were largely unheard of, postal services unreliable, and even road access was poor. FrontlineSMS allowed me to coordinate communication between these schools to organise various school events and programs."

At its core, FrontlineSMS software turns a laptop computer and a mobile phone or modem into a mass messaging platform, empowering users to gather and share information of any kind, in any place. We see FrontlineSMS as part of a strategy that grassroots organizations around the world can adopt to leverage mobile technology for the greater good.We focus on reaching the “last mile” by designing the platform to take advantage of basic mobile phones already in the hands of billions of people throughout the developing world.

While the core platform is use-agnostic, our team is committed to incubating sector specific solutions. For example, our sister projects work with FrontlineSMS to confront challenges in access to healthcare, education, financial credit, legal representation, and media. There are clearly many other sectors in which FrontlineSMS can be utilized too. In our user survey examples emerged from over 15 sectors, including conservation, human rights, and agriculture, amongst others.

For FrontlineSMS, winning the $100,000 Buckminster Fuller prize would provide critical support for developing Version 2 of the software; an upgrade that will improve and extend core functionalities, making the software even more user friendly and interactive. Version 2 will help users of FrontlineSMS do more with the software than ever before.

As one of the 21 Semi-Finalists, FrontlineSMS will be featured as a top tier project in BFI’s Idea Index for the remainder of the program cycle. Semi-Finalists will be reviewed and discussed by 11 distinguished jurors including Valerie Casey, founder of Design Accord; David Orr, writer and professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College; Andrew Zolli, producer of PopTech and Danielle Nierenberg, Project Director of State of World 2011; and Sim Vanderyn, visionary ecological design pioneer.

Finalists will be announced in May and the winner, runner up, and honorable mention will be announced at the conferring ceremony in New York in early June.

About the Buckminster Fuller Challenge

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is the premier international competition recognizing initiatives which take a comprehensive, anticipatory, design approach to radically advance human well being and the health of our planet’s ecosystems. The 2011 Semi-finalists are providing workable solutions to some of the world’s most significant challenges including water scarcity, food supply, health, energy consumption and shelter. The Challenge is a program of The Buckminster Fuller Institute which aims to deeply influence the ascendance of a new generation of design-science pioneers who are leading the creation of an abundant and restorative world economy that benefits all humanity. For more information visit: http://challenge.bfi.org/

*Our FrontlineSMS user survey received responses from 174 people

What is your Mobile Message? Sharing ideas via National Geographic

“Today, with over 500 million mobile subscribers across Africa alone, and more people around the world owning a phone than not, mobile phones seem to be everywhere,” points out FrontlineSMS founder Ken Banks in the opening post of  our National Geographic  blog series: Mobile Message. There has been a remarkable growth in mobile phone use in recent years, and increasingly mobile phones are being used for innovative social change projects. Last year Ken was awarded the title of National Geographic Emerging Explorer, in recognition of his work in the field of mobile for social change. In December 2010 FrontlineSMS launched our ongoing Mobile Message blog series via National Geographic, to help share exciting stories about the way mobile phones are being used throughout the world to improve, enrich, and empower billions of lives. Here we provide an overview of the diverse range of stories that have been shared in the series so far.

Mobile for development

In his introduction to the Mobile Message series Ken Banks traces the journey of mobile use in international development from 2003, when “he struggled to find much evidence of the revolution that was about to take place,” up to the present day, when mobiles are now being used globally in projects for health, agriculture, conservation and so much more. From his eight years experience in the ‘mobile phones for development’ field, Ken shares his knowledge on “the importance of building appropriate technologies, the importance of local ownership, and the need to focus some of our technology solutions on smaller grassroots users.” It is these principles that shape FrontlineSMS’s work, and these are also the themes that shape our Mobile Message series with National Geographic.

Mobile Technology gives Zimbabweans a Voice

Mobile phones often have the power to circumvent traditional forms of media, in areas where conventional news outlets are controlled or manipulated by the government. This was clearly shown in the second post in our Mobile Message series; entitled Mobile Technology gives Zimbabweans a Voice. In this post Ken Banks interviewed Bev Clark, founder of Zimbabwean civil society NGO Kubatana, and program director of Freedom Fone. Bev discusses how the use of mobile has helped address the challenge of state controlled media in Zimbabwe and “keep people informed, invigorated and inspired.”

Kubatana runs an SMS subscriber system using FrontlineSMS, and they have 14,000 people on their contact list. They use SMS to share news headlines and notifications of events, and also to encourage a two-way dialogue. They ask subscribers to respond with their views and opinions, by posing questions on social justice issues. By doing this, Bev explains, Kubatana is able to “extend the conversation to people living on the margins of access to information.”

Mobile Banking in Afghanistan

The global presence of mobile phones has also encouraged a wealth of mobile banking (m-Banking) and mobile finance, in areas you wouldn’t necessarily expect. Jan Chipchase, Executive Creative Director of Global Insights at Frog Design, tackled the topic of m-Banking in Afghanistan in the third post of our Mobile Message series. Afghanistan is an interesting case, as Jan explains, being “a country challenged by limited access to traditional banking infrastructure and widespread distrust of formal institutions.”

Jan conducted a field study in Afghanistan in 2010, which focused on use of m-Banking services such as M-Paisa. He looked at how “m-Banking has been extended to include bill payment, buying goods and services, and full-fledged savings accounts.” His study “aimed to highlight the sophisticated strategies that the poorest members of societies adopt in managing their limited resources.” Jan drew some interesting points from his research, and concludes his post by stating that “there will come a point when the idea of using mobile phones for banking will be as globally prevalent as credit and debit are in the U.S. today.”

Technology Helps Break Silence Against Violence in Haiti

Mobile technology is clearly used for incredibly diverse purposes. The fourth Mobile Message post looks at how SMS can be used to help break the silence against violence and human rights abuses in post-earthquake Haiti. Aashika Damodar, CEO of Survivors Connect, writes about how her organisation had worked alongside Fondation Espoir, a Haitian nonprofit organization, to establish a text message helpline to report violent crimes in Haiti.

The service, called Ayiti SMS SOS helpline, provides an option for anyone in Haiti to text if they witness or experience an act of violence. A team of trained helpline operators respond to the SMS, and direct people to relevant services needed to help. As Aashika points out “the need for a reporting system is dire. Thousands of displaced people still live in camps with little security or privacy, making them susceptible to threats and abuse.” Using SMS means help is more accessible to many of those who are vulnerable.

FrontlineSMS is used in this project to manage sending and receive messages. Aashika shares details of why this project chose to build their service around text messaging. “SMS is cost effective, discrete and fast, all of which work to the benefit of our target groups.” This summarises why many projects choose to use SMS to support their social change projects.

Supporting Africa's Innovation Generation in Kenya

As well as increased efficiency, advances in technology also encourage innovation. Erik Hersman, co-founder of Ushahidi, wrote the fifth Mobile Message post about iHub (Innovation Hub); a project that brings together Nairobi's entrepreneurs, hackers, designers and investors. He explains how “leapfrogging PCs, Africa's burgeoning generation of mobile tech-savvy entrepreneurs are bursting with ideas and practical inventions, from African apps for smart phones to software solutions that address uniquely local challenges.”

You can feel Erik’s genuine enthusiasm for the many new and exciting ideas emerging: “real-world solutions to problems found by micro-entrepreneurs and everyday Africans... Here, we see ingenuity born of necessity.” The i-Hub provides a communal space for over 2,500 members of the technology community in Kenya's capital city. There are a growing number of “smart, driven and curious technologists with a leaning towards all things mobile” in many major African cities like Nairobi, Accra and Lagos, and Erik makes clear that “it's an exciting place to be, and the future is very bright indeed.”

Mobile Technology Helps Every Person Count

The sixth instalment of Mobile Message comes from Matt Berg, a technology practitioner and researcher in the Modi Research Group at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Discussing the value of increased accountability and recording capacity provided by technology, Matt looks at how using tech can help “poor or homeless people be counted as individuals with needs and rights - and receive their share of social resources.”

An example shared in the post is that across the Millennium Villages in Africa mobile technology is improving people’s access to social care in a project called ChildCount+. Matt discusses how “community health care workers (CHWs) register pregnant women and children under five using basic mobile phones and text messages... Using these patient registries, CHWs can make sure that all their children are routinely screened for malnutrition and receive their immunizations on time.”

Through a variety examples of work being done in India and in Africa Matt makes the overarching point that the recording systems provided by technology can provide increased access to services for vulnerable people, who can often get left out otherwise. In short, as Matt puts it, “technology is making it increasingly possible to count things, and thereby to make people count.”

Award winning FrontlineSMS

FrontlineSMS continues to be acknowledged for its powerful work in the field of mobile technology for social change. The latest Mobile Message post is an interview with Ken Banks, based on his recent award of the 2011 Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest. Ken received the award for creating FrontlineSMS software, which is now used by thousands of non-profit organisations in over 70 countries across the world.

As we can see from this summary the power of mobile is reaching around the globe, being used in a remarkable variety of ways. Visit the National Geographic website to read any of the above posts in full, and keep an eye out for future posts which we will be reposting here on the FrontlineSMS blog.

Software in the Public Interest: FrontlineSMS Founder wins Pizzigati Prize

As the founder of FrontlineSMS, Ken Banks has been widely recognised for his work in giving grassroots groups the world over the capacity to interact, cheaply and simply, with constituents in remote communities. As a result of his impressive work Ken has recently become the fifth annual winner of the Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest.

The $10,000 Pizzigati Prize honors software developers who, in the spirit of open source computing, are fashioning exceptional applications for aid activists and nonprofits. Tides — a partner to philanthropists, foundations, activists, and organisations worldwide — hosts the prize selection process.

Ken created FrontlineSMS because it speaks directly to a global communications reality: Millions of people in remote areas have no access whatsoever to the Internet. But many of these millions do have simple mobile phones. FrontlineSMS enables grassroots groups to reach these millions, using only a laptop computer, a USB cable, and a basic mobile phone or modem device. And the constituents of these groups can use their own mobile phones to communicate back.

Since Ken developed FrontlineSMS in 2005, nonprofits have downloaded the totally free — and easy to use — software almost 13,000 times, for use in a strikingly varied assortment of projects across the globe. The first independent news agency in Iraq, for instance, is using the software to text message updates to readers in eight different countries.

Other users have a more targeted focus. Some groups are using FrontlineSMS to share fair market prices with local farmers, information that can help these farmers spot — and avoid — commodity traders out to cheat them.

In Azerbaijan, FrontlineSMS has helped mobilize the youth vote in national elections. In Zimbabwe, the software is enabling groups to monitor human rights violations. One group serving overseas Filipino workers is using FrontlineSMS as an emergency help line. (See our case studies section for further examples of how FrontlineSMS is used across the world).

Ken has based the entire FrontlineSMS effort on basic open source principles. This allows any organisation working on grassroots social change to have "the ability to build on and take advantage of the code we've developed."

This devotion to the open source ethos goes beyond just working with software programmers. "We're committed," says Ken, "to involving even non-developers among our users in the ongoing improvement of FrontlineSMS."

Ken, an anthropologist by training, has lived and worked all around Africa since the early 1990s. A long-time computer coder, he first started thinking about connecting computers and mobile phones while working on a conservation project in South Africa.

In 2005, Ken raised a small amount of money, bought some equipment and cables, and sat down, over five summer weeks, to write the first FrontlineSMS software. That October, Ken released his new code over the Web.

"What's happened since," he says, "has been pretty amazing."

A number of groups and organisations, ranging from National Geographic to the MacArthur Foundation, have noted the wide and positive impact that has been made FrontlineSMS. Ken himself is hoping that his work will have an equally positive impact on the next generation of software developers.

"Stories like mine — developing FrontlineSMS with very limited resources over a five week period — can inspire younger developers," he points out. "They prove that anyone with an idea can make a real difference if they stick with it."

Ken is currently in Washington, D.C to receive this year's Pizzigati Prize in a presentation during the National Technology Network's 2011 Nonprofit Technology Conference.

This year's Pizzigati Prize judging panel included three previous winners of the prize — Darius Jazayeri, Yaw Anokwa, and Barry Warsaw — and two veteran professionals who have each earned wide respect within the nonprofit computing world, Joseph Mouzon and Erika Bjune.

About The Pizzigati Prize

The Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest goes annually to an open source software developer who is adding significant value to the nonprofit sector and movements for social change.

The prize honors the brief life of Tony Pizzigati, an early advocate of open source computing. Born in 1971, Tony spent his college years at MIT, where he worked at the world-famous MIT Media Lab. Tony died in 1995, in an auto accident on his way to work in Silicon Valley.

To learn more about the prize and its judging criteria, visit www.pizzigatiprize.org.

About Tides

Tides, the Pizzigati Prize selection process host, partners with philanthropists, foundations, activists, and organizations across the United States and around the globe to promote economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected.

A nonprofit founded in 1976, Tides provides an array of services that amplify the efforts of forward-thinking individuals and organizations. For more information, visit www.tides.org.

FrontlineSMS:Legal - Running Justice’s House

By Sean McDonald. Re-posted from FrontlineSMS:Legal blog "Every day, dozens, if not hundreds, of people line up in front of each Justice House, seeking help to resolve life’s challenges.  They wait, patiently, for hours, to approach the information desk, where they receive a simple intake form (name, age, gender, address, mobile phone number, cause of complaint, etc.).  This form is then handed back to a lone information desk attendant, who dutifully enters all of these details into an Excel spreadsheet (and not the fancy kind), to form a simple list of visitors.  Each client is independently referred to the service provider, or providers, best suited to their needs.  There, they wait in another line, for the service provider to be available. It is first-come-first-served, because that’s the only way for it to be fair. This process repeats for every client, across every claim, and for every visit.

It is a wonder, with all that waiting, that much of anything gets done... Still, with FrontlineSMS:Legal at each information desk, these Houses could deliver so much more justice. Clients could fill out intake forms and schedule appointments via SMS, saving thousands of hours of wait time a week. Service providers could have a schedule that told them what they were doing when they went to work and show clients the respect of keeping appointments. Read more on the FrontlineSMS:Legal blog

Rising to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge

As one of 124 ideas submitted to the 2011 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, FrontlineSMS was recently added to their online Idea Index. Described as a “repository of whole systems solutions to the world's most pressing problems,” we think FrontlineSMS is in very good company. We encourage you to check out our application, explore other ideas in the index, and join the online community to interact with others who are interested in socially responsible approaches to the world’s most pressing problems.

Participating in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge gives us the opportunity to emphasize the spirit of “comprehensive anticipatory design science” that infuses our work and that Buckminster Fuller himself advocated. It was his intention “to make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation without ecological offense or disadvantage of anyone.”

FrontlineSMS is a mass messaging platform and more. We see our software as part of a strategy that organizations around the world can adopt to leverage mobile technology for the greater good. We are focused on reaching the “last mile” by designing our software to work without the internet and with phones already in the hands of billions of people throughout the developing world. We continue to develop and improve a simple, user-friendly, plug-and-go system that can be used to exchange ideas, share information and inspire cooperative action anywhere there is a mobile signal.

We also sustain a thriving ecosystem of users, partners and supporters that work together to maximize the impact of our work. While the core platform is use-agnostic, we are committed to incubating sector specific solutions that work with FrontlineSMS to confront challenges of access to healthcare, education, financial credit, and legal representation, and to create more participatory media.

Named "Socially-Responsible Design's Highest Award" by Metropolis Magazine, we are thrilled to be a part of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge review process. Of course we’d love to win the $100,000 prize, but in this case, we think it’s an honor just to compete.

To find out more about the Buckminster Fuller Challenge visit their website: http://challenge.bfi.org/

Mobile phones give harassment victims a voice in Egypt

An interview with Rebecca Chiao, co-founder of HarassMapBy Florence Scialom, FrontlineSMS Community Support Coordinator

Harassment is disempowering. Victims of harassment often feel they have had their voice taken away from them. One of the main aims of HarassMap - a recently founded organisation which uses FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi to map harassment on the streets of Egypt - is to provide victims with a way to be heard. “Sometimes you can shout and scream at someone for harassing you in the street, and it just makes their behaviour worse,” Rebecca Chiao, founder of HarassMap, tells me. I recently met with Rebecca at FrontlineSMS’s London office, where we discussed the formation of HarassMap and the involvement of FrontlineSMS in their work.

Having lived in Egypt for 7 years, working specifically on issues of gender discrimination, Rebecca is able to speak from experience about the frequency of harassment in Egypt, and attitudes towards it. “There is a social acceptability surrounding harassment on the streets; people will often stand by and let it happen” she says. Feeling the need to challenge this kind of tolerance for intimidation on the streets of Egypt motivated Rebecca and a like-minded group of 3 Egyptian friends to start HarassMap, with the help and support of tech partner, NiJeL.

Since launching in late 2010, HarassMap have used FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi to map the trouble spots on Egypt’s streets. Victims of harassment can send an SMS, showing their location, which is captured in FrontlineSMS and fed in to an online map via Ushahidi. HarassMap then organises groups of volunteers to go to the areas in which the most incidences have been reported and raise awareness about the problem on the streets. Volunteers hand out flyers with HarassMap’s SMS number, so people know they can contact someone if they feel threatened. In addition, HarassMap volunteers have one to one conversations with people in the neighbourhood, and run community based events, with the purpose of openly discussing the issue of intimidating behaviour in the area. The HarassMap team thus directly question the acceptance of harassment, and encourage neighborhoods to take more responsibility for activity on their own streets.

Click here to listen to a short audio interview with Rebecca

Why mobile?

The group behind HarassMap identified the need for people in Egypt to have a way to not just speak up, but feel heard when they get victimised on the streets. A mobile phone provides a very personal, accessible form of communication. “Everyone in Egypt has access to a mobile,” Rebecca explains, “even in poorer areas of the country most people have access to a mobile phone via street kiosks and by sharing phones.” Furthermore, Rebecca does not accept that most women do not have access to a handset, stating that “yes, some statistics show most mobile contracts are registered in a man’s name. However, that is often just for convenience because men are more likely to have paperwork needed to get a mobile contract; my phone for example, is registered in the name of a male friend” she tells me.

The fact is using text messaging as a form of communication makes reporting an incident to HarassMap an instantaneous option for a wide audience. Having the immediacy of being able to report an incident helps prevent a feeling of powerlessness. “The law can often seem a distant and inaccessible form of support when you get harassed; having a reporting system in place provides people with the agency to respond to the way they’ve been treated” Rebecca explains. In addition to mapping and recording reports the HarassMap team send back an automated SMS response through FrontlineSMS, with information on accessing support; ranging from accessible free legal advice to psychological help services.

What effect have recent political events had on HarassMap?

The political situation in the region of the Middle East and North Africa remains extremely tense, and the recent revolution in Egypt inevitably had an effect on HarassMap’s work. “At first, with the internet, phone lines, and power down, the revolution was a massive hindrance to our operations” Rebecca explains. “But the enthusiasm the revolution produced motivated more people to engage in taking care and ownership over their streets, and treating each other with respect, so once Egypt was back online interest in HarassMap surged.”

Women played a prominent role in the political events, and there was reportedly a sense of openness and respect on Egypt’s streets during the celebrations around the departure of Hosni Mubarak. Yet the streets of Egypt got in to the press for all the wrong reasons when American CBS journalist Lara Logan got assaulted in Cairo. In some ways this incident could be seen to underline the need for a service such as HarassMap all the more. “What happened to Lara Logan really did feel like the first slap in the face of a new Egypt; the people who contacted us were really shocked and saddened by the fact that this could happen,” Rebecca states, “and it has certainly motivated more people to become involved in helping HarassMap strengthen our service.” Extreme incidences of assault on Egypt’s street, such as what happened to Lara Logan, are relatively rare compared to verbal harassment and are thus a shocking occurrence; it is services such as HarassMap which can help to keep it that way.

What’s does the future hold for HarassMap?

It isn’t just Egypt that is in need of a service such as HarassMap; Rebecca and the team have received requests for the service to be replicated in over 15 countries, including Lebanon, Yemen, Pakistan, South Africa and many more. At present HarassMap is fully run by dedicated volunteers, so the next step is to fundraise in order to then get a full time member of staff in post to manage the massive demand they are receiving for their service.

HarassMap is using technology to both challenge the idea that harassment is acceptable, and to provide information on for victims of harassment to reach the services they need. Tools such as FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi are enabling the HarassMap team to tackle both casual attitudes towards the acceptability of harassment, and the detrimental impact harassment has on victims. This is an example using appropriate technology in a way that strengthens other local structures and civil society organisations. In this way HarassMap really is an amazing organisation, which has potential to be replicated in many other contexts.

Global learning at the speed of a text message

In a rapidly changing, globalised world education can help young adults to understand life beyond their own national borders. Here, in our thirtieth guest blog post, Alex Monk, School Linking Officer at Plan UK, discusses how FrontlineSMS is being used to support a project called Plan-ed. This project links schools across the globe, and thus helps deepen young people’s understanding of our world today.

“The Plan-ed School Linking programme has been running since 2008 and connects young people aged between 7 - 14 in the UK with their counterparts in China, Kenya, Malawi, Senegal and Sierra Leone. Schools exchange pen-pal letters, e-mails, videos and local artifacts. The Linking programme also allows children to share examples of work on mutually relevant topics such as climate change, successful enterprise and Children’s Rights. This helps the young people involved to learn about others their age living in different areas of the world; to recognise their similarities and appreciate their differences.

The Plan-ed project uses a variety of communication methods to help linking schools stay in touch, including sending post, video conferencing, interaction through their website, and more recently text messaging. Over the past six months schools in Malawi, Sierra Leone and the UK have been using FrontlineSMS to communicate with their partner schools. The schools use FrontlineSMS to send texts confirming receipt of posted letters and material. They also exchange text messages about ideas for new projects, and to organise travel for teacher exchanges as part of the linking project, and even to wish each other happy holidays.

The videos here show Headteachers from two schools who have been linked together as part of this Plan-ed project.

Orphent Kawonga (Zombwe School in Malawi) and David Lodge (Countess Anne School in the UK) have been on teacher exchanges to each others schools, to help strengthen their link. Here they discuss the benefits of the use of FrontlineSMS to support their link projects.

Ophent from Zombwe school on School Linking and FrontlineSMS from Plan UK on Vimeo.

David Lodge, Headteacher Countess Anne School from Plan-ed on Vimeo.

The benefit of using FrontlineSMS for the schools involved is that they have a way to regularly stay in touch with each other, and keep a record of their communications. FrontlineSMS has proved particularly helpful in the schools in Malawi in which the internet is not easily accessible, and the post can take a while to get through. Sending and receiving text messages is a quick and convenient way to stay in touch that helps the teachers maintain momentum in the linking school project, thus building sustainable connections between the schools.

Moving forward teachers in Malawi, Sierra Leone and the UK will continue using FrontlineSMS to support their connections with their Link schools. In addition, Plan-ed hopes to explore further ways to utilise FrontlineSMS. For example we are investigating the idea of using FrontlineSMS for more operational purposes; to help Plan-ed’s country coordinators stay in touch with the schools more regularly. It really is a great help to have a piece of technology such as FrontlineSMS, which helps facilitate quick communication in otherwise hard to reach areas of the world.”

For more information on Plan-ed visit: http://www.planschoolslink.org/