Month: November 2014

Breaking the Learning Barriers for Deaf Children in Pakistan

This story started forty years ago. In 1975, young Michael Geary caught meningitis. He survived the disease, but lost his hearing for ever.

“We started working with deaf children”

The toddler’s parents were social workers in Manila, Philippines. “Because of Michael’s handicap we started working with deaf children to learn to help him,” explained his father Richard. With his wife, he launched a “small informal club for deaf teenagers, which we called Deaf Reach.” As it soon became popular, the Gearys started offering sign language education.

Ten years later, colleagues invited them to replicate their model in New Delhi. “In about two years, said Richard, we had 519 teenagers, from different parts of the country who were part of the club. We provided a forum where they could meet, learn English and different life skills, and we also assisted them in getting employment.”

In 1989, though, the Gearys had to leave the country for administrative reasons. “We went to visit a friend who was living in Karachi.” As they could not renew their visas to India, they decided to settle in Pakistan and start the Deaf Reach program one more time.

Being deaf in Pakistan

Hearing disorders are a major public health issue in Pakistan. Today, 5 percent of the population has some form of hearing loss; and 1.5 million children are profoundly deaf.

For these youngsters, life is tough. Too often, their parents believe they are cursed or mentally retarded. And because the majority do not know how to use sign language, they cannot communicate with their kids as much as they should.

In this context, it is not surprising that many hearing impaired children only develop basic language ability. Even the 10,000 deaf students lack communication skills, as the schools do not adapt to their special needs. Sadly, these learning impediments have lifelong consequences, and most of these children will not be able to reach their full potential.

That’s why, in 1989, the Gearys started by helping the deaf youth to gain life skills and get a job. One day, though, the couple was donated “two rooms in a building.” It encouraged them to open a small classroom. “We taught 15 primary-level deaf children, including Michael, from the slum areas of Karachi, said Richard. That grew slowly until we started a formal school in Karachi in 2007.” Since then, the Gearys have opened five other schools and empowered 1,200 deaf students, many of whom come from poor families.

Enriching the Pakistan Sign Language

One of the problems the Gearys have encountered is the scant educational materials for the deaf. The current Pakistani sign language covers daily life activities, but many academic words have no sign-equivalent.

To rectify this major issue, the Gearys took an ambitious, but judicious step. They decided to enrich the Pakistan sign language (PSL) by creating new signs in both the academic and professional fields. That’s how they started working on a PSL Visual Dictionary. They have already referenced or elaborated 5,000 words, but they thrive to include at least 10,000 terms in the lexicon.

And since the dictionary consists of online videos, it makes the learning process easier and more effective. Indeed, each word is signed by an actor, illustrated by a picture, and translated into English and Urdu. Of course, the PSL dictionary is designed to support the deaf in their studies, but it also enables their parents to finally learn how to sign and better communicate with their children.

Yes, they can!

In less than a decade, the Deaf Reach Schools have changed the deaf students’ lives for the best! Amanat, for instance, was five years old when he enrolled in the school of Karachi. “His parents were at their wits’ end as he was a very hyperactive child and they assumed him to be mentally handicapped, said Richard. He is now one of the school’s best students.”

But the Gearys are particularly proud of having contributed to enhance the employability of their students. Of course, many graduates become teachers in the Deaf Reach Schools, and they are among the best ones. But a fair number — 400 in 2013 — have found a job in a private company. In Karachi, five alumni run a KFC restaurant; others work as cooks at the Sheraton Hotel. Even a clothing design company, Artistic Milliners, has recruited 20 students.

These are a few success stories, but they all show that the Gearys have been right all these years. The deaf can not only integrate the labor market; they can also make a positive contribution to the community!

Using Cloud and Mobile Gaming to Fuel Creative Economy in Indonesia

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Positioned at the northern end of Sumatra, Indonesia, Aceh is a special province. It has a long history of political conflict and was one of the hardest-hit provinces during the 2004 tsunami (an estimated 221,000 people killed or missing). Reconstruction and rehabilitation projects have brought more technology and communications infrastructure to the region, and the province’s capital Banda Aceh is becoming a leader in adopting Internet and information technology.

The economic growth, however, is still slow. According to the Indonesia Statistics Agency, the province’s poverty rate of 18% is the 5th highest in the country and far above the 11% national average. Its unemployment rate (2012) was 9.10%, the 3rd highest in the nation, where the national average is 6.14%.

The Aceh Cloud and Mobile Gaming Boot Camp seeks to empower young people with marketable technology skills, empower them to see the internet as a self-development tool and increase local economic growth through creative economy. The project is in line with the Strategic Plan of Creative Economic Development Indonesia 2025 about the placement of software application development and digital gaming as part of a creative economy group that has been encouraged to grow in Indonesia.

While only 15% of Indonesians have internet access, the country has 281 million mobile subscribers. A Pew Global Research study finds that 78% of the Indonesia’s population has a mobile phone. Penetration of smart phones has reached 23%, providing online capabilities where traditional infrastructure is lacking. As internet and mobile applications gain popularity, cloud gaming can offer new opportunities for local youth to be self-employed and create their own business.

The main objective of the bootcamp is to train community members in developing cloud and mobile gaming applications in multiplatform environments, such as Windows 8, Android and iOs. Several technologies are used in the context of training:

  • Cloud Computing related technologies (Google Drive, Dropbox, Google App Engine),
  • Game Development (Game Engines) related technologies (Construct 2, Unity, Corona, Cocos2D),
  • Game Design related technologies (Photoshop, CorelDraw), and
  • Multi-platform development related technologies (CoconJs, CrossWalk, Titanium, PhoneGap).

After learning technologies and concepts, participants work in groups to develop cloud and mobile game applications. In additional to technical skills on game development and design, the participants are also taught technopreneurship knowledge on startup formulation and online marketing strategies for app monetization.

The first boot camps were held 12-20 April 2014 in two cities in Aceh province. 110 Indonesians from diverse backgrounds (secondary school, high school and university students, along with some professionals) participated in the camps. At least 25 cloud and mobile game applications were developed out of the boot camp and will be put forth to compete for the Banda Aceh Madani City Award (which organizers are planning as the last stage of implementation of the project). In addition, at least five game software personal edition licenses have been distributed to support sustaining the development of the games by the community members.

The inaugural camps received the support of international organizations, nation companies and institutions and local government and communities. The camps’ success led the mayor of Banda Aceh to allocate money in its yearly city program budget for future boot camps. Bootcamp 2014 also boosted the value of Banda Aceh’s technology development programs in its community and contributed to the city’s winning of the IDSA (Indonesian Digital Society Award) 2014 by the Ministry of Information and Communication of Indonesia.

DoctHERS-in-the-House: Improving health care for low-income women in Pakistan

Dr Sara Khurram is a young doctor from Karachi. In 2012, she got pregnant, and this led her to quit her residency and stop her medical career.

Sara’s story is common among Pakistani female doctors. While 80 percent of medical school graduates are women, only 25 percent ever practice medicine. Pakistan being a conservative country, many have to stop working once they get married or start having babies. That’s how an estimated 9,000 trained female physicians end up staying at home.

Pakistan’s medical crisis

This home restriction phenomenon puts an additional pressure on Pakistan’s collapsing medical system. With only 0.74 doctors for 1,000 people, active physicians are overwhelmed, and of course, this has a negative impact on the population’s well-being.

Pakistan is still struggling with poliomyelitis as well as with a high rate of stillbirth and tuberculosis cases. Moreover, the examples of malpractice and medical negligence are numerous. In Lahore, for instance, a toddler with a small burn on her hand passed away after a doctor injected her with too much anesthesia. A teenager had his appendix removed when in fact he was suffering from colon cancer. And every day, newborns with jaundice symptoms are misdiagnosed, making them either deaf or brain-damaged.

The main victims of this predicament are the 56 million Pakistani who earn less than three dollars per day. Whenever they get sick, they are left with three choices: get no treatment, go to an insalubrious public hospital, or visit the often unskilled local doctor. For pregnant women living in poverty, the situation is even more dramatic, as many refuse to be examined by a male doctor. Therefore, 95 percent cannot access quality health care; and in the countryside, 1 in 5 mothers dies every day, because she delivers at home, in an unsafe environment.

Bridging the gap between female doctors and female patients

While expecting her baby, Dr Sara Khurram had to spend most of her time on bed rest, and she was doing a lot of thinking. In particular, she thought about her own situation and the current medical crisis.

One day, she came up with a clever idea to circumvent Pakistan’s main socio-cultural barriers: she would open a telemedicine clinic! Thus, female physicians could stay at home, and yet, provide poor women with primary and OB/GYN cares. To lower the risk of misdiagnosis and enhance the human interaction, the young woman decided to rely on Lady Health Workers.

In Pakistan, there are about 90,000 of these community-based women, and they play a key role in preventive health care. Dr Khurram, therefore, thought she could hire some of them and train them further to assist the physicians.During an ante-natal visit, for instance, the nurse would conduct the patient’s examination, and since the entire consultation would be video-conferenced, the doctor would not only supervise her assistant. She would also see in real time what appears on the monitor, and thus, give accurate medical counsel.

At the time, considering opening a virtual clinic was a bold idea. For sure, telemedicine had been spreading across the world for a while. But it was far from having reached Pakistan, and it is well known that many people in the country are wary of ICTs. On the other hand, mobile penetration was already high (85 percent), and Dr Khurram believed mobile and video consultations were workable in most regions.

“On the seventh day, one patient came in”

It did not take long for the young woman to take the leap and give her ‘DoctHERS-in-the-House’ project a try. To test its feasibility and sustainability, she decided to start a pilot in Naya Jeevan‘s health center of Sultanabad, a conservative slum of 250,000 people in Karachi.

In May 2013, everything was ready, and Dr Khurram could open her virtual clinic, the first telemedicine facility in Pakistan. “For six days, she said, not even one patient came in; […] but on the seventh day, one patient came in.” Since then, the clinic has always been full, encouraging the young woman to hire more doctors and replicate her model throughout Pakistan.

It has turned out that video-conferencing is not an obstacle for the female patients. In fact, since DoctHERS-in-the-House started, women have been thrilled by this new type of consultation. For sure, they are happy to pay 50 percent less than they would do for an in-person visit. But what satisfies them the most is the good quality of the care they receive. In Sultanabad only, DoctHERS-in-the-House have provided 500 women with ante- and post-natal care. For 14 percent, they anticipated medical complications and sent their patients to a hospital, where they could get a safe delivery.

And this has certainly saved a few lives!

Overcoming School Failure in Rural Sri Lanka with Shilpa Sayura

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In Sri Lanka, the school is free, and the country has, therefore, an excellent educational record. Basic literacy rate is one of the highest in Asia, and the teacher-pupil ratio is up to 1:20.

And yet, when looking at the smaller picture, the situation turns out to be less glowing. In 2011, a study showed that 20 percent among the rural poor never make it to secondary school, dropping out before Grade 5.

This is in part due to financial reasons, as many rural parents cannot meet the hidden costs of their children’s education. School failure also comes from a lack of qualified teachers and educational resources. Ill-prepared, a majority of students fails to pass the junior high school entrance examination.

Helping his daughter out

In 2004, Niranjan Meegammana witnessed his daughter’s failure at school. His family used to live in a rural town, but at the time, he was working in Colombo. He could not provide daily support to Poornima, and her academic performance slipped.

Had Niranjan been uneducated, the girl would have never got to junior high school. But her father was the first person in his village to ever graduate from college, and he believed education was important. As he could not afford private tuitions for his daughter, he turned to the Internet.

The Shilpa Sayura journey

Being a web specialist, Niranjan had heard of e-learning, and he decided to give it a try. He created an online course based on his daughter’s textbook. Immediately, Poornima’s grades improved. At the end of the school year, she passed her O level exam, and she was even top of her class.

Niranjan was impressed by her daughter’s achievement. He also started believing he could help other rural kids succeed in their studies. He made the leap in 2006; it was the beginning of the Shilpa Sayura journey. A few dedicated teachers got involved, and together, they designed an innovative e-learning program. Eight years later, their impact on rural education in Sri Lanka has been unprecedented.

Educational pragmatism

In 2006, Niranjan’s priority was to improve the learning experience of the students. Being a practical man, he decided that all the lessons would be in Sinhalese and Tamil, Sri Lanka’s primary languages. He also adapted the content to the local context and developed interactive movies and animations to make studying more exciting for these rural kids.

In a country where the national curriculum is based on the British teaching model of the 1950s, the Shilpa Sayura method was somewhat of a revolution. But for the students, it made the difference. They could not only relate to the content; they could also study at their own pace, either by themselves or with their friends. As a result, they have become more engaged in their studies, and the retention rate has skyrocketed!

Reaching the rural youth

Niranjan’s other achievement is to have actually reached the rural youth. In that respect, the partnership with the “Nenasala Telecenters” has been a critical move.

These Telecenters were launched in 2005. It was an initiative of the Prime Minister who aimed at expanding the access to ICTs. There are now 700 Telecenters, and they are disseminated throughout the country, even in the most rural areas.

Today, the Shilpa Sayura program is available in 150 Telecenters. Students are free to come and use the computers to further train themselves or upload the materials onto their SIM card. And since there are more than 14,000 lessons and 7,000 tests covering both the primary and secondary curricula, Telecenters have become highly popular!

New opportunities for the rural youth

Since 2007, 80,000 young people have taken part in the Shilpa Sayura program. And everywhere, grades have improved.

In Siyambalanduwa, for example, the pass rate for the O level exam in mathematics has increased from 51.2 to 78.2 percent. In Lahugalla, a war-affected and poor village, some two students got a high distinction for their results in math. And in Thalakumbura, young priests even managed to pass the examination for national school.

As for Poornima, she made her way to college, developing over the years amazing creative skills. In 2011, she became an Adobe Youth Voices scholar, and she recently produced an award-winning short movie on child soldiers in Sri Lanka!

Sinar Project: Promoting Governmental Accountability in Malaysia

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Malaysia has been governed by the same political party, Barisan Nasional, since it gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. Barisian Nasional’s policies, which strongly favor ethnic Malay’s, have begun to lose support among young and minority voters, culminating in the 2013 elections when opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim won the popular vote. Despite the polling results, and amid allegations of voter fraud, Ibrahim lost the election.

The 2013 elections were a high-level indicator of the systemic lack of transparency and accountability in the Malaysian political system. According to the World Bank’s Governance Indicators, Malaysia is in just the 37th percentile for “voice and accountability.” These measures indicate an individual’s ability to participate in selecting their government, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and a free media.

The Sinar Project, an ISIF Asia award winning non-profit organization, is seeking to fill the void in governmental transparency and accountability in Malaysia via open-source technology. Sinar is producing platforms which help monitor all levels of government, from local municipalities to parliament.

Corruption Monitoring

In Ernest and Young’s 2013 Asia-Pacific fraud survey, almost 40% of respondents said that corruption and bribery are widespread in Malaysia. That figure is nearly double the average of the rest of the region. In order to bring awareness to the corruption of the Malaysian political system, Sinar launched their Accountable platform in 2012.

Accountable is a web application which actively tracks the people, issues, and organizations related to Malaysian corruption. The data is presented in a searchable, tab separated manner, allowing the Malaysian public to easily monitor the activities of, and allegations against, their elected officials. Sinar will soon add an additional monitoring feature to Accountable, indicating the status of individual cases, including data on the case out come (i.e. false allegation, money returned, and criminal charges brought).

A second anti-corruption tool that Sinar has developed is their Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) database. Corruption in the Malaysian construction industry is at a “serious level”, according to the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission.

Utilizing scrapers, the CIDB monitors and aggregates construction project data in real-time, producing a readable CSV document. The CIDB database provides detailed information on all public-private projects, including contact information for company directors, budgets, contractor details, and registration numbers.

Governmental Accountability

Sinar’s most advanced accountability project, AduanKu, was launched in January of 2014. The platform enables users to report problems (think potholes, faulty street lights, etc.) directly to their local municipalities. Problems can be reported through a web portal with a smartphone or computer, and an app-based platform is coming soon. Once a user submits a problem, AduanKu sends an official report via email to the relevant Council. These reports contain mapping info of the problem location, a detailed description, and photographs when available.

The local user is then able to monitor their council’s response, and utilize a feature in AduanKu to publicly comment on whether appropriate action was taken. This interaction makes local municipalities directly accountable to their taxpayers, with municipal performance data publicly available through AduanKu. The Subang Jaya Municipal Council, for example, has had 292 problems reported, fixing 115 of them. AduanKu is currently available in a limited number of municipalities, but Sinar plans to expand the service throughout Malaysia.

Sinar also has a variety accountability projects on the national scale. Their BillWatcher application enables Malaysian citizens to monitor the status of upcoming bills in both the national parliament and state assemblies. Their Malaysian Representatives project aims to provide citizens with background information on all members of Parliament, including contact information, work history, and known assets.

While these applications are informational in nature, they help create transparency in the Malaysian political system by educating the voting public about the actions of their elected officials. For a nation with a voter turnout of over 84%, this sort of transparency can go a long way to bringing about change.

All of the Sinar Project’s code is open source, and can be found on GitHub here.

SafeCity: Mapping Sexual Violence in India’s Public Spaces

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Examples of similar indecent behavior abound from all around India. For women, going outside is often a nightmare: it exposes them to men’s comments, catcalling, harassment, and even abuse.

“While traveling in the bus, the man standing behind me was trying to touch me.”

According to the Crime Record Bureau, a sexual assault occurs every three minutes throughout the country; and every 20 minutes, a woman is raped. How frightening these figures are, they are largely underestimated. For decades, many victims have had no choice but to remain silent. Even now, 80 percent of them have never been to the police. They fear retaliation; or they believe the authorities will not deal with their complaint.

Mentalities are changing

It took a tragic incident in New Delhi for the mentalities to start changing. On December 16th, 2012, Jyoti Singh Pandey, a 23-year old physiotherapist intern, went to the movie with her boyfriend. On their way back home, it was dark already, and six men attacked them. The man was beaten; the girl was gang raped. She never recovered from her injuries, and two weeks after her ordeal, she passed away.

This tragedy shocked the collective conscious of India. In the following days, thousands of people took to the street to protest against what some call an epidemic of rape and sexual abuse.

Else, Surya, Saloni, and Aditya — four young social entrepreneurs — were outraged too. Soon, they wanted to act, and they suggested to tackle the issue using a crowdsourcing model. They had heard of the HarassMap initiative in Egypt, and they agreed to develop a similar project in India.SafeCity was born.

Breaking the women’s silence

SafeCity’s top priority is to break the victim’s silence. A culture of quiet acceptance has expanded over the years in India, and it has created a vicious circle. Too often, the perpetrators never get prosecuted, which increases a sense of impunity amongst them. After a while, some tend to move on from indecent behavior to sexual assault. That’s why SafeCity aims at encouraging women to share their personal stories, at least on the Internet.

Else and her friends have designed an easy-to-use platform, and the victims don’t even have to reveal their name. For sure, anonymity makes it difficult to verify the testimonies; on the other hand, it helps the women to speak out. And it has been effective. Since the website was launched in December 2012, more than 3,500 people have reported experiences of sexual violence in the public space. This includes: verbal comments (1,847 stories), touching/grouping (1,109), sexual invites (300), and rape/assault (83).

Prevention

The only requirement for the user is to enter the time and exact location of the incident. The data are, then, aggregated to highlight local trends and map the unsafe areas. This enables women to check the safety rating of their destination before deciding to go there.

SafeCity’s founders claim that this is critical, as harassers and abusers tend to stay in their “comfort zone.” For example, in April 2013, a photojournalist was gang raped in an isolated compound in Mumbai. It turned out that the group had already perpetrated four rapes at the same place. Had the victims reported these crimes, the girl’s employer would have probably not sent her on an assignment there.

What is more, the administration or the community could have taken action. To induce the local authorities to do something, SafeCity’s founders have tried to involve them as much as possible. In Bandra, Else collected several stories of sexual violence in a 10-street area. After she showed them to the local police, they responded by changing patrol times. They also had the street lighting repaired and CCTV cameras installed in key locations.

A first step towards positive change

Of course, some could say this initiative is a drop in the ocean. In India, only 130 million people have access to the Internet, and in the countryside, the penetration rate is low.

Well aware of this digital divide, the founders of SafeCity have, thus, taken action at various levels. They launched an awareness campaign in Mumbai and Delhi and organized workshops in universities. In the near future, they plan to enable women without Internet access to report incidents using their mobile phone.

For sure, SafeCity will not put an immediate end to the issue of sexual harassment and abuse on the streets of India. But if women start speaking out, we can hope the change will come.At last.