The FrontlineSMS team is pleased to announce a new level of premium support and consultancy services to help users design mobile engagement strategies, build capacity for professional adoption and automate communication workflows. Engaging people on new platforms can be a complex process and it can be a challenge to find a recipe for success. New technologies mean new communication patterns which are inherently personal and constantly changing.
Low tech adaptations for a community communications system
For the past month, I’ve been in Sudan working to set up the information flows and tech that will support SUDIA’s Community Communications System. From the tech and information management perspective, SUDIA’s System is interesting because it adapts to a low tech environment by integrating SMS and radio, and processing information largely offline. The System collects and disseminates information useful to communities that live along the migratory routes in Blue Nile State. It focuses on information that communities themselves can use to make their livelihoods more sustainable and more peaceful. In other words, the System is not aimed at organizations (Government or non-Government) that can use information to provide services or design interventions. Rather, it is aimed at communities helping themselves, and provides information that is useful to community leaders in organizing local community responses to livelihood challenges.
FrontlineSMSat7: Mobile Money made easy and accessible
In the sixth of our seven blog posts celebrating the month that FrontlineSMS turns 7, Enock Musyoka, our FrontlineSMS: Credit Project Assistant, shares the impact FrontlineSMS:Credit's PaymentView has on Nunguni Financial Service Association and its members. The power of owning a mobile phone is beyond SMS messages; PaymentView makes it easier to manage payment plans.
News Participation Starts at 'Home'
Seemingly every major news event worldwide is heightening participation in news. People are eager to share updates and photos of an unfolding news event, ask questions of media outlets, and share important information. But there are two important aspects to this type of participation: (1) people are most interested in sharing news about the community around them, specifically with others in their community and (2) the mechanism by which they choose to share information is dependent upon personal habits and access. In other words, people write about their immediate world using their 'home' or go-to platform.
FrontlineSMSat7: Your Health is in Your Hands
In the fifth of our seven blog posts celebrating the month that FrontlineSMS turns 7, Sila Kisoso, our Community Support Manager, shares her first inspiring encounter with FrontlineSMS - at her previous role with the Innovations for Poverty Action Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (IPA-WASH) Benefits Project in rural Kenya.
FrontlineSMS case study featured in new Rockefeller Foundation report: Learning from experimentation
The Rockefeller Foundation recently launched a new website, Capacity to Innovate.org, which examines lessons from a number of organizations including Ushahidi and Internews, and encapsulates them in three short reports which are well worth a read. FrontlineSMS is featured in the 'Learning From Experimentation' report, available from the website. Here's an excerpt, but we really recommend the whole report as a very readable and thought-provoking set of examples.