Our Blog — FrontlineSMS

Making Mobile Money More Inclusive

FrontlineSMS:Credit is a sister project of FrontlineSMS, which aims to make every formal financial service available to the entrepreneurial poor in 160 characters or less.

Recently, FrontlineSMS:Credit re-launched their website, where you can find out more about their work. The FrontlineSMS:Credit team have also taken on two Social Impact Fellows to research new opportunities for enterprise use of mobile payments, and the accessibility of mobile payments in East Africa. They will be sharing their findings on the FrontlineSMS:Credit blog over the summer.

Here, Nathan Wyeth, FrontlineSMS:Credit Project Director, shares some of his own ideas on how to make mobile money inclusive.

"During a recent trip to Washington, DC, I met with a range of people working with NGOs and private organizations interested in mobile money in various forms.  I spoke with them about applications of FrontlineSMS software to make it easier for development programs to use mobile money; both for work with beneficiaries as well as for internal administration. But one of the most interesting questions I got was: How can mobile money systems be designed to be more financially inclusive, and what would a financial inclusion 'wish list' look like for mobile money platforms? I spoke with my colleagues in Nairobi about this, and identified the below ideas.

1. If bank involvement is required, enable agency banking and keep requirements realistic for rural areas.

If bank involvement is required, agency banking contracted to mobile money operators, combined with KYC requirements that are realistic for rural areas, can keep mobile money systems accessible. Requirements like photocopies of ID cards do little if anything to promote security of the banking system and simply create a serious barrier to rural customers.

2. Encourage mobile money for commerce by creating small businesses accounts.

In many cases nothing exists between personal accounts and corporate accounts for bill payment and the like. This means that small and medium enterprises will accept mobile payments, but to personal accounts of employees and within the transaction limits set for individual users. While mobile money can easily be a tool for improved financial and business management and customer interaction, paying to personal accounts creates headaches at best and opportunities for fraud, theft and customer mistrust at worst.

A small business account would be an easy thing for mobile payment operators to create. This could include features like:

  • Opened in the name of the business by the owner or authorized agent
  • Higher daily account limits – for example, to pay salaries – with option for account owner to set custom limits below this to prevent fraud/theft.
  • Retrieve account history via SMS for security and financial management

3. Make it easy to get an enterprise connection to a mobile money account.

It is not enough to make it possible for urban, sophisticated banks and corporations to build real-time, web-based connections to payment systems so that they can handle transactions at volume. Account updates should be easy to obtain via web and SMS and in formats (APIs, etc.) that make it possible for any organization using payments at volume that do have their own electronic recordkeeping to bring this data directly into such systems.

4. Ensure that mobile payments conform to financial industry standards

Employing industry-wide standards will hasten the adoption of mobile money alongside the existing architecture of the financial industry and increase the comfort that regulators have with this new form of money transfer. This includes standardized data format methods for enterprise connections (ISO 8583) and data security standards in line with those used by payment cards (PSI-DSS).

Read more on making mobile money inclusive in the full version of this post on FrontlineSMS:Credit's blog.

Internship opportunity: Do you have what it takes to be a FrontlineSMS Hero?

New internship vacancy available at FrontlineSMS! Based in London, UK.

Here at FrontlineSMS we are lucky to have a growing number of individuals who are happy to contribute their time to our organisation, because they feel passionately about the work we do. These people provide heroic amounts of support to help us keep things running successfully, and  so we have a page on our website dedicated specifically to these FrontlineSMS Heroes, and we now provide T-shirts for all Heroes too (as pictured). As interest in FrontlineSMS grows, we continue to build our increasingly international team, and we’re now looking to fill an exciting new internship position based in London.

Since FrontlineSMS is a fast growing organisation, interns are provided with a valuable opportunity to get involved in many different areas of our work and gain an in-depth understanding of the information and communications technology for development (ICT4D) sector. FrontlineSMS interns are able to get involved in key projects, from developing communications materials to supporting project design and consultation, and many things in between.

Current Community Project Assistant Nsonje has this to say about his internship:

“Working for FrontlineSMS has been excellent. They are a vibrant team who are passionate about ICT4D, and as an intern I have been provided with a certain level of responsibility as well as ongoing support. My time here has provided me with real opportunities for career development and achievement.”

So, if you think you have what it takes to be a FrontlineSMS Hero, please visit our Jobs and Internships page for details on the current vacancy. To learn more about our current FrontlineSMS Heroes you can visit this page on our website.

FrontlineSMS to bring new mobile tools to journalists around the world with $250,000 Knight News Challenge grant

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FrontlineSMS will develop new tools to enable digital news gathering anywhere there’s a mobile signal with $250,000 awarded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The support is part of the Knight News Challenge, an annual media innovation contest founded and run by Knight Foundation, and supported this year by Google. You can read the Knight Foundation's page about the announcement here.

With the award, FrontlineSMS, an initiative of the Kiwanja Foundation, will build two key products for journalists and broadcasters: one to facilitate participatory journalism, interaction and collaboration from community members and audiences, and one to enable journalists to use their simple mobile phones as powerful reporting tools. Throughout the project, the FrontlineSMS team will benefit not only from Knight’s financial support, but also its extensive global network of journalists and media innovators, people whose insights and experience will help shape the development and deployment of these tools.

According to Ken Banks, the creator of FrontlineSMS, “Working with our user community, we've seen the challenges that last-mile populations face in sending and receiving critical information.  Thanks to an incredible group of innovative journalists and other partners, we've also seen the potential of mobile technologies to improve the quality and quantity of news all over the world.  With the generous support of Knight Foundation, FrontlineSMS will build tools that bridge the gap between challenge and opportunity, engaging previously under-served communities in the news and conversations that affect their lives."

“FrontlineSMS has been a trail blazer for the creative application of mobile technology in low-bandwidth rural areas,” said John Bracken, director of digital media, Knight Foundation. “We’re excited to help them to apply their knowledge and tools towards addressing the information needs of rural communities.”

The award itself was presented during a ceremony at the 2011 Knight-MIT Civic Media Conference on Wednesday, June 22, at 2:30pm EDT. Sean McDonald, FrontlineSMS’ Director of Operations: Americas, accepted the award. You'll hear more from Sean about the event in an upcoming blog post.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged.

For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org

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FrontlineSMS @ Africa Gathering 2011

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By Nsonje Siame and Hussain Abdullah

Africa Gathering is a unique platform which allows NGOs, donors, journalists and academics to come together to connect and explore ideas on "positive change in sustainable development, technology, social networking, health, education, environment and good governance in Africa." The most recent Africa Gathering was hosted at the London-based Guardian building on Monday 20th June 2011. The chosen theme for this event was "New Media Revolutionizing Africa", and it inspired interesting ideas, insightful discussions and some energetic debates between the presenters and delegates.

Sharath Srinivasan, co-founder of FrontlineSMS:Radio presented at the event  about how simple and adaptable solutions can be the most effective in promoting dialogue and interactive communications in Africa. Sharath argued that new social media's relevance in Africa hinges on an understanding of context. What is necessary is what Sharath referred to as a 'pull method,' understood as the ways in which technology is shaped by those using it.

Tami Hultman, co-founder of allafrica.com, emphasized the desire from African's to have the tools necessary to tell their story, and it is this same desire that underpins the ethos of FrontlineSMS:Radio – the objective of empowering people. The social issues in any given country are best understood by its citizens and so too are the solutions.

Many of the participants at the conference agreed that IT literacy, and indeed infrastructure, are not yet at a level for new forms of social media to overtake other existing communications tools. The consensus was that there continues to be an important place for traditional media. Some discussion was dedicated to the continuing conflicts in North Africa, for instance, as it was recognised that while the rise in use of new, internet based tools such as Facebook and Twitter have facilitated communications channels for social mobilisation to increasing numbers of people; there is a danger of creating new forms of inequality. In many contexts, new media does not have the same pervasiveness or reach as mediums such as newspapers, radios and mobile phones. At the local level, the tools required for change are often already in people’s hands; the challenge is making them work effectively to meet the needs of the context.

It was argued that change must be bottom-up, and begin by supporting grass roots initiatives to acquire the tools which suit their needs. If kept simple, social media devices such as the traditional radio combined with simple, cheap low-spec devices, like a mobile phone, can enhance the interactivity of radio to produce better intra-community experiences. By removing barriers of communication between community members and leaders, it becomes easier to foster a strong and engaged civil society.

For more information on Africa Gathering visit: http://www.africagathering.org/

Mobile technology and the last mile

em>By Ken Banks, FrontlineSMS Founder. Re-posted from www.kiwanja.net Since our founding in 2003, kiwanja.net has been primarily focused on serving the needs of the smaller, local, grassroots NGO community. FrontlineSMS is testament to that approach – a low-tech, appropriate technology which works on locally available hardware and without the need for NGOs to employ the services of teams of technical experts. We haven’t got everything right, and FrontlineSMS remains a work in progress, but we’re excited about where we are, how we got here and where we’re headed.

We were recently approached by Philip Auerswald, Editor of “innovations“, to write an article on that journey, and our approach to mobiles-for-development. The result was a tri-authored piece by three members of the FrontlineSMS team – Sean McDonald, Flo Scialom and myself. A PDF of that article – “Mobile technology and the last mile” - is available here.

About “Innovations”: “The journal features cases authored by exceptional innovators; commentary and research from leading academics; and essays from globally recognized executives and political leaders. The journal is jointly hosted at George Mason University’s School of Public Policy, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship”.

Many thanks to Phil and the “Innovations” team for inviting us to contribute

The FrontlineSMS message reaches new audiences

It has been an exciting few days for FrontlineSMS in terms of media recognition for the work we do. Recent coverage of FrontlineSMS has included an article in Wired magazine, a guest opinion piece in CNN World, and an interview with FrontlineSMS founder, Ken Banks, in National Geographic Traveler magazine too.  As a result of all this attention there has been a dramatic rise in downloads of FrontlineSMS, with almost 200 people downloading our free and open source software over the last two days - nearly five times more than normal. If you would like your own copy of FrontlineSMS you get it here today!

Check out brief extracts from these various articles below, and follow the links to read more!

Wired Magazine: Look Ma, No internet! Free Software Gives Text Messaging New Reach

"Back in 2005, all Ken Banks wanted was a simple way to use his cellphone to reach the community around South Africa’s Kruger National Park. Little did he know that his brainchild would help monitor nation-wide elections in Nigeria, provide market price information to fisherman in Indonesia, and just last week, become a finalist in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge for socially responsible projects and initiatives."

The National Geographic Traveler: Leapfrogging the internet

"Ten-dollar cell phones are easier to obtain than Internet access in many parts of the developing world. And now, thanks to software conceived by Ken Banks, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer, cheap phones are making the Internet unnecessary in those places. Grassroots groups are exchanging vital information from laptop to cell phone in areas the Internet doesn’t reach."

CNN World: The Reluctant Innovator

"The story of innovation is not complete without an appreciation of "real world" innovation, much of which is grassroots-driven and much of which goes unnoticed. It’s this “real world” innovation that I’d like to discuss... The rise of the Internet – followed more recently by the mobile phone – presents us with opportunities to solve human problems like never before.... I would also count myself as a reluctant innovator – FrontlineSMS (a piece of software being used by non-profits all over the world to run text message-based networks) was never planned – and the team behind Ushahidi would likely feel the same. They were simply responding to a crisis in their country. None of us went out looking for something to solve. A problem found us, and we felt compelled to solve it. This is a different kind of innovation to that taught in schools or harnessed in laboratories."

If you would like to read these articles in full follow the links below:

Wired Magazine: Look Ma, No internet! Free Software Gives Text Messaging New Reach

The National Geographic Traveler: Leapfrogging the internet

CNN World: The Reluctant Innovator

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Reaching Communities Through The Airwaves

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By Hussain Abdullah, Reposted from the FrontlineSMS:Radio blog
The simplicity of radio causes many to overlook its power as a communications tool. Yet as Joseph Sekiku discovered, radio plays a powerful and life-changing role in isolated communities. From a corner of his living room, Joseph pieced together his own radio station called FADECO Radio in Tanzania. The small desk, complicated with wires and radio equipment, hides the very simple set up of FADECO Radio. Using only his laptop, a mixer, a small transmitter and his mobile phone attached to FrontlineSMS with a custom made wire, Joseph Sekiku’s show reaches an audience of over 200 people. Using this homemade set up, he is able to share information on diverse topics, from agricultural advice to market information.

FADECO Radio is based in the Karagwe district of Tanzania, near Lake Victoria. The community development enthusiast in Joseph saw a serious need for an information infrastructure, since prior to his work, there were no newspapers, TV or internet meaning that the community of Karagwewas completely cut off from information flows. Read more on the FrontlineSMS:Radio website

Meeting the Challenge of Sustainable Design

By Ryan Jones, FrontlineSMS Grants and Fundraising Manager “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

The above quote, from famed designer Buckminster Fuller, sums up the motivation behind ‘Architecting the Future,’ three days of learning, sharing, and celebrating innovation for social change. I was proud to represent FrontlineSMS as one of four finalists for this year’s Buckminster Fuller Challenge, an award recognising ‘bold, visionary’ initiatives that are trying to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges.  While we didn’t come away with the prize, it was certainly an honor to know the jury considered our work ‘a truly comprehensive, anticipatory, integrated approach to solving the world's complex problems.’

FrontlineSMS was certainly in good company alongside the other extraordinary finalists, who all demonstrated comprehensive, specific design solutions to important problems. The overall winner of the Challenge, Blue Ventures, take a multifaceted approach to conservation and community development in Madagascar’s coastal communities, by tackling root causes of overfishing and poverty in the region. The remaining two finalists, the Rainforest Foundation’s participatory mapping project in the Congo basin and Tara Ashkar+, a creative technology-driven literacy program in India, take similar approaches, engaging whole communities and systems to maximize the impact, durability, and sustainability of their work.

Here at FrontlineSMS, you could say that we approach whole-systems thinking in a slightly different way. Our work identifies with a common context in which NGOs around the economically developing world work; recognising both the incredible rise of mobile phones and the concomitant challenge that poor infrastructure can still pose. Within this context FrontlineSMS provides a tool that skillfully and elegantly ‘just works’, and thus we can leverage the power of existing tools and the work of existing organisations many times over. Buckminster Fuller would have called a tool like FrontlineSMS a ‘trimtab,’ after the small flaps on ships and planes that can help create large changes in direction with very little force.

One particular Challenge juror noted the appeal of FrontlineSMS software was in its ubiquitous utility as opposed to what it actually is; and we agree. Today, FrontlineSMS is being used in many more ways than we ever could have imagined, and the dedicated people using it are a source of boundless inspiration.

That same inspiration was on display during the conference, serving as a reminder of why I love our work so much. While Al Harris, the founder of Blue Ventures, presented his work, my mind starting racing with ways he could use mobile phones and FrontlineSMS: better data collection of fish and octopus stocks, better community engagement on conservation issues, the list goes on and on. I hoped to convince him of their value after the event ended. Turned out Al didn’t take much convincing. Once I finished our presentation, he leaned over to me and said, “I’m downloading your software tonight.”

For more information on the Buckminster Fuller Challenge visit: http://challenge.bfi.org/

FrontlineSMS Photo Competition winners!

People say a picture speaks a thousand words, and this was the motivation behind our FrontlineSMS user photo competition, which opened towards the end of April. We are always keen to see the many innovative ways FrontlineSMS users have been using our software around the world. Photography is an excellent medium to show how FrontlineSMS is being used to in a variety of exciting and innovative ways, and it was great to receive photos and see projects in action!

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the FrontlineSMS Photo Competition is Molave Development Foundation, Inc. Based in the Philippines, Molave Development Foundation runs the valuable Safe Motherhood project, which was recently featured in our National Geographic blog series Mobile Message.  The project aims to reduce mother and infant mortality rates by  providing education and support to expectant mothers via SMS. Molave sent us lots of great photos of their work including midwives training on FrontlineSMS and expectant mothers receiving messages from FrontlineSMS. To see these photos visit our FrontlineSMS Facebook page here.

Many thanks to everyone who sent in there photos. Although the competition is now over we are still always looking for high resolution images of FrontlineSMS in action so please send along any photos you would like to share with us to florence@frontlinesms.com

Meanwhile, as worthy winners of our recent photo competition we will be sending Molave Development Foundation some of our brand new FrontlineSMS T-shirts as competition prizes!

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Future proofing child protection in Benin

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em>Regular readers of the FrontlineSMS blog may remember the FrontlineSMS case study we published last year, documenting Plan International's project on SMS Reporting and Tracking of Violence against Children (VAC) in Benin. In this re-post, from Linda Raftree's blog Wait... What, Paul Goodman talks about the tools he is using to support Plan Benin for more effective and sustainable programme management. There is more on the overall project and process via the links at the end of this post.

"Future proofing? Wishful thinking! There is of course no way to “future proof” an ICTD project. There are ways, however, to ensure that an ICT project has a fighting chance at sustainability. Here in Benin we’re revisiting the entire VAC Benin workflow in an effort to document the non-technical aspects of the project so that each person that touches this system fully understands the way that information moves through it. In addition to supporting training, this small but critical step will help drive consensus around how the project should and can work well into the future.

A succinct overview of this project:

The beginning of any development initiative is often marked by energetic optimism. At the onset, when a project enjoys the attention and enthusiasm of its creators and supporters, it is easy to forget that over time this attention will wane, priorities will shift, and critical personnel will undoubtedly take on new responsibilities or even different jobs. Purposeful problem definition and documentation can minimize the impact of these eventualities and only with a thorough understanding of the problem is it possible to discuss appropriate technology-enabled responses. And yes, in the real world, the problem often shifts over time as the situation changes or new information comes to light. But with a well-defined problem you have clarity around your intent and can face new challenges head-on.

Once defined, the problem and corresponding solution must be documented so that others may benefit from the insight gained during this process and apply that insight systematically. This seems elementary, of course, but in years of ICTD work I’ve found that the documentation of both technical systems and non-technical processes is often neglected in the rush to deploy or as a result of over-reliance on a few knowledgable individuals. Furthermore, in international development, documentation sometimes plays second fiddle to the production of reports and case studies.

Now I’ll happily get off my soap box and get back to business in Benin.

After sketching out the various aspects of the information flow with my colleague Elsie, I documented the workflow in a way that can be used to inform, train, and guide others as they interact with this project. I’m working on reference materials of different shapes and sizes including a number of graphics. Several of the graphics appear below; these are drafts and will be revised with Elsie, translated, distributed to the team, and revised again. These graphics represent the way we would like the system to work and are intended to be living documents."

In this graphic I included all the critical actors and their key responsibilities:

In this flow chart, I illustrated the way that messages should be processed:

In this graphic, I illustrated the way that reports should be created:

Finally, this flow chart will support report approval and verification:

Many thanks to Paul Goodman for allowing us to share his post here. Thanks also to Plan's Linda Raftree, whose personal blog 'Wait... What' is where the below was first published.

To read more posts by Paul Goodman you can visit his blog: www.pdgoodman.com

To read more from Linda Raftree visit her blog: http://lindaraftree.wordpress.com

Related posts from Linda Raftree's blog:

Update from Benin: charting a course forward (also by Paul)

Revisiting the SMS violence reporting project in Benin

Tracking violence against children in Benin video

Community-based child protection

Tweaking: SMS violence reporting system in Benin

Finding some ICT answers in Benin

7 (or more) questions to ask before adding ICTs

Fostering a New Political Consciousness on Violence against Children

Related links:

Text messages to help protect children against violence

Plan International case study: Helping children report abuse in Benin

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Text messages to help centuries-old Choco mining tradition

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Choco bioregion
Choco bioregion

This is a re-post from Columbia Reports website. Many thanks to Kevin Tse for kindly giving us permission to re-post on to our blog.

Artisanal mining traditions and culture dating back to when the Spanish first brought African slaves to mine the region known today as Choco, are being reintroduced into the 21st century marketplace with the help of a text message.

The Choco Bioregion stretches from Panama, through Colombia and into Ecuador along the pacific coast of the South American continent. It has some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Its human inhabitants are pre-dominantly Afro-Colombian, descendants of the slave trade. Dense jungle, heavy rains and poor infrastructure leave these inhabitants isolated from the rest of Colombia and the world.

Local economies are still very much stimulated by the centuries-old trade that forced their ancestors to Choco. Gold.

An elaborate gold panning process practiced by their ancestors remains alive today. Families dig shallow pits near streams and sift through the gold-rich sands to collect small, alluvial flakes. To separate the gold from the wet sand, the locals fetch the plant they call "Balso" that, when mixed with water, naturally separates the grains of gold from those that hold no value.

The mining process is second nature to the people of Choco. The difficulty lies in getting their gold to the international marketplace and guaranteeing legitimate deals for the miners.

How does an artisanal miner who might have to walk hours with no road through thick jungle to get to the nearest town, stay informed and competitive in the international gold market?

The Oro Verde Program created and implemented by two local Community Councils, Fundacion Las Mojarras and the NGO AMICHOCO piloted a project in May that uses mass text messaging (SMS) technology to inform artisanal miners in the region of the daily, London Fix price for gold.

Each morning from May 9 to May 27, 39 miners from the village of Tado, Choco received a text from a computer in Oro Verde's office in Medellin detailing the date, and the price of gold and platinum in Colombian pesos per castellano. A castellano is the colonial weight measurement for gold that locals still refer to in present day. One castellano is equal to roughly 4.6 grams.

The Oro Verde or Green Gold program has been operating in Choco since 2000. They are a link between the miners and the international gold market.

Born out of the ideas of local community leaders, Oro Verde, AMICHOCO, and the Community Councils (similar to Native American tribal councils) from the villages of Tado and Condoto work with artisanal miners to obtain internationally recognized Fairtrade certification, connect them with the international marketplace, preserve the biodiversity of the region as well as preserve the artisanal traditions of the miners.

AMICHOCO representatives Sandra Hernandez, Maria Luisa Villa and Kevin Tse told Colombia Reports that they deal directly with 5% of the mining populations in the two traditional mining towns of Tado and Condoto and with this new pilot program hope to increase miner participation and solidify loyalty with the miners, a process that according to the representatives takes time.

"The mentality of the people [of Choco] is cautious ... Historically they have been taken advantage of," said Kevin Tse who added, "It is a slow process to build trust."

Luis Gilberto Murillo, former governor of the Choco department, described the exploitation in the region during a 2001 speech in New York. "The exuberant rain forest, complex ecosystem, wealth of natural resources and preservation of our ancestral traditions and culture, have not been enough to pull us out of endemic poverty. Historically, large companies have reaped the wealth of our mining and forestry resources. They have left the people with extremely poor living conditions -the poorest in the country."

"This is our history, a history of State and private sector neglect and exploitation," said Murillo.

Beyond exploitation by the government and the private sector, Choco has also been terrorized by armed groups from both sides of the Colombian conflict.

The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported April 27 that, "In the past two months, more than 1,800 people in the Pacific Coast departments of Valle del Cauca, Cauca, Choco and Nariño have sought shelter in safer areas for fear of being caught in an increasingly violent struggle between illegal armed groups to control mining and coca growing activities."

Black market buyers nationwide --some with ties to illegal armed groups-- reportedly offer miners payments for gold that range roughly 20%-30% higher than the legal market price, apparently to facilitate laundering of illicit money.

For its part, Oro Verde along with AMICHOCO and the Community Councils of Tado and Condoto hope to enhance the economic and social prosperity of the villages by utilizing traditional mining methods mixed with current technology.

"We couldn't have done this five to ten years ago," said Tse who remarked that the cell phone technology has just recently become available and economically feasible for people in these rural areas.

The pilot is relatively inexpensive for both sides. There is no cost for miners to receive a text message, and a laptop with a USB modem and a SIM card with enough credit for 40 plus daily messages is all the program needs to function. The Frontline SMS software that sends the mass text messages is free of charge for NGOs and social organizations. If the plan takes hold and expands however, Oro Verde said they will require a sponsor for the SIM card credit that pays for the daily messages.

There is an incentive for miners and the community to use Oro Verde as a dealer to the international precious metals market. A premium of 15% (10% for Fairtrade and Fairmined and additional 5% Ecological premium) is paid to the miners by the program as part of their Fairtrade certification requirement. The miners are paid 2% of the premium directly when they sell their gold to the Community Council. The remaining 13% is deposited into community funds that are managed by the Council and put towards improvements in housing infrastructure, emergency preparedness and tools for the miners.

Oro Verde hopes this month's pilot program catches on with the miners so they can expand the use of the mass text technology, eventually incorporating information about workshops and safety tips for the miners. The Frontline SMS software has the capability to receive responses from the miners as well. Oro Verde hopes that in the future it will be possible for the miners to contact their office with the amount of gold and platinum they expect to sell that month so they can be prepared to present it to the international market.

According to the representatives, the market for Fairtrade and Fairmined precious metals is growing. People are becoming conscious of their purchases and how they affect the communities where the products originate. They believe that Choco gold and platinum, mined by hand using traditional artisanal methods of the Afro-Colombian people has an attractiveness to the conscious consumer.

Mining communities have been in the region since the early 16th century slave trade began in Colombia. Artisinal traditions have persisted through economic and violent discrimination from the Colombian government as well as illegal armed groups. Oro Verde stresses that the communities of Tado and Contodo built their craft over hundreds of years and that Oro Verde's function is to bring their fair traded, fair mined, ecologically friendly precious metals to the international market