Code for the common good – Page 3

Event Participation: ICTD 2015

Four ISIF Asia grant recipients and two mentors on project evaluation and communication attended the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2015) conference http://ictd2015.org/, in Singapore from 15 to 18 May 2015. ICTD 2015 Post conference report is available at http://ictd2015.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/ICTD2015-Full-Report.pdf. Participation was possible thanks to the Seed Alliance, a collaboration established between the FIRE, FRIDA, and ISIF Asia grants and awards programs, that provided support for 23 representatives from Latin America, Africa and Asia.

ICTD Conference provides an international forum for researchers and practitioners exploring the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social, political, and economic development. The conference reflects and deepens the multidisciplinary nature of ICTD research in a broad range of areas including computer science, anthropology, communication, design, economics, electrical engineering, geography, information science, political science, health, sociology, and many others. Held for the first time in the Asia Pacific region, ICTD 2015 aimed to showcase the impact ICT has had on society with a multidisciplinary research-focused conference that reflects the Millennium Development goals.

The Seed Alliance organized a session during the conference, called “Seed Alliance: helping ideas grow”. Facilitated by Sylvia Cadena (ISIF Asia/APNIC), Gaelle Fall (FIRE/AFRINIC) and Lara Robledo (FRIDA/LACNIC), this session introduced the Seed Alliance as a platform to support Internet development in the global south through a variety of funding mechanism, capacity building strategies, and networking opportunities. Grant recipients from FIRE, FRIDA and ISIF Asia shared about their projects and the challenges they faced to bring about positive change to their communities through ICTs.

ISIF Asia Grant recipients Jacqueline Chan (Operation ASHA, Cambodia), Vin Samnang Charlie (Operation ASHA, Cambodia), Pheng Votey (Operation ASHA, Cambodia), Tariq Zaman (ISITI, Malaysia), Gurpreet Singh (Punjabi University, India) and Teddy Mantoro (Suria University, Indonesia), mentors Vira Ramelan, Sonal Zaveri attended and participated in workshops relevant to their work, as well as presenting their demos (list of demos http://ictd2015.org/demos/) at the conference, and joined the vibrant start-up community in Singapore at an Open House event at the JFDI.Asia incubator space.

Untitled — Operation ASHA team in Demo Session

Jacqueline Chan, Vin Samnang Charlie, and Pheng Votey from Operation ASHA (Cambodia, 2014 ISIF Asia Grant recipient) work providing disadvantaged communities with Tuberculosis (TB) care via eDetection App serves in Cambodia. The team was selected to present a demo session at the ICTD 2015 Conference. Their expectation of the presentation was to encourage the use of mobile technology for other communicable diseases and to generate more awareness about TB in Cambodia. The team also attended sessions from the program such as Public Access ICT, Disability Accessibility and Infrastructure, ICT and Development in Myanmar, and Persistence of Paper in Low-resource Setting. “It is not often that you meet a donor who is fully invested in your work and keen to build up your capacity, ISIF is one of these donors”, Jacqueline said. Jacqueline valued a networking dinner for Seed Alliance recipients. In the relaxed and confortable atmosphere, participants from different projects and evaluation mentors shared their experiences and got inspiration from each other. Operation ASHA’s team also highlighted a pre-conference session for Seed Alliance recipients about fundraising strategies and the need to engage different stakeholders, facilitated by Mr Michael Lints (Venture Partner at Golden Gate Ventures).

Tariq Zaman from the Institute of Social Informatics and Technological Innovations, (Malaysia, 2014 ISIF Asia Grant recipient), is working on developing and designing appropriate ICT tools for preservation and digitalization of sign language of Penan. Tariq presented the paper “Reviving an indigenous rainforest sign language: Digital Oroo’ Adventure Game” (PDF of article http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2737885) during the Notes session of the conference. He attended the IPID Symposium where he facilitated an open session. The most interesting additional activity for Tariq was to pitch the Oroo’ project at Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI) http://www.jfdi.asia/. He also attended Papers and Notes presentations and ICTD Innovation Accelerator: connecting ICTD researchers and practitioners. Tariq participated at the ICTD 2013 in Cape Town, South Africa. He commented how, compared to 2013, in ICTD 2015 the major question they discussed in peers groups was the effectiveness of “ICT tools” vs “user’s will” and innovative “use” of these tools. In addition to experience sharing, Tariq reported, “This conference gave me an opportunity to strengthen my networks. It was a professionally rewarding experience”.

Gurpreet Singh represented Punjabi University (India, 2014 Grant recipient), who contributes to facilitate electronic and written communication between Sindhi people living in India and Pakistan through the development of a bi-directional web based Sindhi Language Transliteration Tool. Gurpreet attended open sessions “Understand the impact of mobile money in development”, “Delivering health service through ICT in rural communities”, and “ICT and Development in Myanmar”. More importantly, he arranged an online demo of Sindhi transliteration system, where participants tried the tool. He also presented and discussed their project at JFDI with prospective sponsors. One of the he most valuable moments for Gurpreet was that he met Gouri Mirpuri, wife of Ashok Mirpuri, Singapore’s ambassador in USA. She highly appreciated Sindhi transaction project and exhorted Gurpreet’s teem to extend the work for Kashmiri language, as Kashmiri is also written in both Perso-Arabic and Devnagri scripts.

Teddy Mantoro from Suria University in Demo Session

Teddy Mantoro from Suria University (Indonesia), who invented “Surelator”, a statistical machine translation between English and Bahasa Indonesia. He was selected both for the demo session and poster session during the conference. After the demo session, at least three possible investors have shown their interest with Surelator product innovations. The poster session happened in two days, where Surelator booth was visited by lots of audience. They discussed and showcased about the background of Surelator, delivery of real-time demo and off-line demo, packaging of the product, movies of how to use Surelator, and the possible impact to Indonesian community. Surelator was planned to be a commercial product but during this conference. However, after the discussions with various stakeholders, Teddy’s team adjusted the plan to develop a limited version of Surelator to be available for free for Indonesian community. Teddy commented, “ICTD conference is a place to understand these interactions, and to examine, critique, and refine the persistent, pervasive hope that ICTs can be enlisted by individuals and communities in the service of human development. Teddy won the ISIF Asia award in 2013 for his work on the HajjLocator.

Vira Ramelan and Sonal Zaveri were the mentors of Utilization-Focused Evaluation (UFE) & Research Communication (ResCom) for the ISIF Asia program from 2013-2015. During that period, they supported three of ISIF Asia funded projects to develop their capacity in both evaluation and communication. From the perspective of project evaluation researchers, they found the most interesting part was that the conference was multi-disciplinary and embraced a variety of development issues. They organized a poster session with DECI-2 posters on UFE, which was very well received. They had discussions with participants from various development projects from about how to evaluate using the UFE &
ResCom specific approach.

As Vira suggested in her review of ICTD 2015 journey “this event involves effective capacity building activities, I wish that ISIF Asia could stay committed to provide support for grantees to attend this kind of conference”.

The day before the ICTD2015 conference started, the Seed Alliance organized a session where Mr Michael Lints (Venture Partner at Golden Gate Ventures) presented fundraising strategies and the need to engage different stakeholders to scale-up and grow. The ISIF Asia mentors got a chance to share with the FIRE and FRIDA coordinators and funding recipients, about their experience providing UFE & ResCom mentoring to three projects in Asia Pacific.

Overall, the event provided unique networking opportunities for Seed Alliance recipients, as well as a place to share their innovations with the academic sector researching about technologies for development. ICTD 2016 will be hosted at the University of Michigan, USA, from June 3rd to 6th, 2016 http://ictd2016.info/cfp/.

Apply Now for 2015 eNGO Challenge

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The 2015 eNGO Challenge Award aspires to create an ecosystem by recognizing and honouring NGOs which are using Information Communication Technology (ICT) and digital media tools for good governance and practices that are benefiting societies and communities at large. It is a joint initiative of Public Interest Registry (PIR) and Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF).

The eNGO Challenge is open in six categories for best use of ICT, mobile, digital media & new or social media by an NGO for:

Best Use of Website & Internal Tools (Website):website
This category focuses on NGOs that are using website to showcase their activities, projects and local content to get networking and support from funding agencies. This category also welcomes NGOs that create awareness on certain issues through campaigning.

Best Use of Mobile content & Apps (Mobile):mobile
This category focuses on NGOs that have used mobile tools/Apps for their internal &external communication to drive social change. For example,an NGOis eligible to apply under this category that uses connectivity through mobile phones, sms, video calling or any other means to engage and empower communities at large.

Best Use of e-Commerce (e-Commerce):ecommerce
This category focuses on NGOs who have used ICT and digital media tools such as e-Commerce, mobile phones, online shopping and social media networkssuch as Facebook & Twitter to promote their business meant for the benefit of a community. For example, an NGO is eligible to apply under this category that usesa website or social media networks for the promotion and trading of products for the benefit of a community.

Best Use of Software Automation & Networking (Tools):tools
This category focuses on NGOs that use digital media tools for improving and enhancing their organizational efficiency by using networking and software tools such as Wi-Fi, Skype, Tally etc. For example,an NGO is eligible to apply under this category thatuses video-conferencing technology to connect with their regional partners or does staff capacity building program with various ICT tools.

Best Use of social Media (Social Media): Slocial Media
The category focuses on NGOs that use social media as a tool to get solutions for and from the communities. For example, an NGOis eligible to apply under this category that uses Facebook and twitter to engage communities or inform them about issues.

Best use of e-Content (incl. Audio / Visual / Radio): econtent
The category focuses on NGOs that empower people to use video or radio to help communities raise their voice for their problems. For example,an NGO is eligible to apply under this category that facilitates people to record video or participate through community radio to share messages or register complains or highlight social issues.

The eNGO Challenge Award is open to any registered NGO from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. There are no charges applicable for the eNGO Challenge Award Nomination process.

Your NGO should fulfill the conditions of being an active & ICT based organization. Interested entities can take part in eNGO Challenge by either applying online or contacting expert panel for the nomination process through [email protected]

Apply Now: 2015 ISIF Asia Awards

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The ISIF Asia Awards seek to acknowledge the important contributions ICT innovators have made with creative solutions to the social and economic development of the Asia Pacific region. The ISIF Asia Awards are granted to initiatives on the last stages of implementation or that have finalized activities already that are aligned with the funding categories and eligibility criteria.

Financial support for up to AUD 3,000 is allocated via a competitive process, plus a travel grant to attend the awards ceremony at a regional or global event chosen by the ISIF Asia secretariat. Innovation and a development focus should be an integral part of all award nominations.

Nominations for the 2015 ISIF Asia awards close 30 June 2015
Nominate your project now!The funding categories are:

Innovation on access provision: Access to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) is a prevalent issue in the Asia Pacific region, especially for services that require broadband connectivity. Innovative solutions offering low cost deployment, low power consumption and low maintenance that expanded fixed and mobile access to the internet through new forms of technical and organizational arrangements as well as improved the quality of access based on issues of accessibility, disability and linguistic diversity.
Innovation on learning and localization: Capacity building and localization efforts have been key to develop the skills needed to design, maintain, and manage ICT infrastructure and services in local languages, supporting local talent and creating job opportunities in rural or urban marginalized areas. Innovative, open, inclusive and sustainable approaches to learning and localization are key elements to guarantee the quality of access to knowledge needed to offer reliable services and applications.
Code for the common good: High mobile penetration in the AP region has been a catalyst in the development of mobile-based services, applications and software solutions. These solutions have been used to support timely and relevant information dissemination on a large scale using a range of network infrastructures through a variety of devices, even where literacy rates are lower. Mobile technologies have enabled communities to increase participation in political processes, coordinate efforts during emergency situations, receive extreme weather alerts, communicate with remote health services, and receive specialized patient referrals, among many other applications.
Rights: Strategic use of Internet tools and services to promote freedom of expression, freedom of association, privacy, security, consumers’ rights, gender equality, new forms of intellectual property in the digital environment, and a wider range of issues related to the Internet and human rights.

In addition to selecting a winner per category, a Community Choice Award will be granted to the best social media campaign (the project with the highest number of votes from the community).

What are you waiting for? Apply today!

Fighting Hepatitis in Rural Pakistan with Tele-Healthcare

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Viral hepatitis is the main cause of liver infection worldwide. In Pakistan outbreaks are frequent, and 7.4 percent of the population is infected with Hepatitis A and E. Many live in rural regions where there is no clean water and sanitation. In 2014, the Umrana Mumtaz Healthcare Trust decided it was time to tackle the issue, and this is a good news for the most disadvantaged!

A woman’s dream

One night in 2003, Mrs Umrana Mumtaz had a dream. She was dying from cancer, and yet, she dreamed of opening a small healthcare facility in rural Pakistan. She told her dream to her husband Ali. And since they had some money left despite her medical treatment, he swore to have her dream come true.

At the time, Mumtaz was working for the Ministry of Commerce and he had no experience in healthcare. But he is a man of action and he had been doing some social work for a long time. He decided to build a two-story hospital in the rural outskirts of Mardan in Northwest Pakistan. In the region, there were only two public hospitals, and they were located in the urban district. Most patients had to walk several hours to get treatment, whose quality was very poor. As a result, the local maternal mortality rate was high.

Telemedicine

Soon the UM Healthcare Hospital would welcome a hundred patients a day. For the doctors, it was overwhelming, as they had to treat an incredible variety of diseases. However well qualified they were, they did not have the required knowledge to treat them all.

Mumtaz thought ICTs could solve this issue. So he turned to his son Atif, who at the time had already started a few high-tech companies. With Stanford University, Atif developed Jaroka Tele-healthcare, the first telemedicine solution in Pakistan. Whenever the doctors faced a complex case, they could seek for advice from qualified specialists all around the world. They would email them the patient’s electronic medical record as well as the relevant photos and videos. This would allow the specialist to assess the situation and advise on the best procedures. For the patients, it meant they would get the best possible care, and the cost was minimal.

Sociocultural barriers

Jaroka also allowed the doctors to circumvent the local conservative culture. In the region of Madran it is considered shameful for a woman to see a male doctor. Well aware of the situation, Ali Mumtaz had hired a female physician, but she had to step down, leaving the job to the two male medical practitioners. So women became reluctant to come; they would also refuse to undress. Of course, this made examinations quite difficult.

This conservative culture is widespread in Pakistan. This is why in 1994 Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto launched the Lady Health Workers (LHWs) program. The goal was to ensure women have access to primary healthcare services. Today there are 110,000 LHWs across Pakistan, and over 70 percent of Pakistani rely on them for their medical needs.

Ali Mumtaz decided to use the Jaroka platform to connect the local LHWs with the doctors at the UM Healthcare Hospital. They distributed mobile phones to those operating in the region of Madran. When they had a doubt or did not know how to treat a patient, they would easily contact the doctors, so they could give them advice. Today 53 percent of the UM Healthcare Hospital’s patients are treated by Lady Health Workers using Jaroka.

The dream has gone beyond expectations

In only one decade, the dream of Mrs Umrana Mumtaz has come true, probably beyond her own expectations. Overall the UM Healthcare Hospital has provided medical treatment to over 200,000 patients, 90 percent of whom live beyond the poverty line. More recently, it has been tackling another critical public health issue: the prevalence of viral hepatitis in the region of Madran. For instance, at the UM Healthcare Hospital more than 20 percent of the patients suffer from Hepatitis A or E.

To try to eradicate the virus, Mumtaz and his team have been leveraging on the Jaroka setup. The Lady Health Workers raise awareness in the villages; they are also responsible for recording all the hepatitis cases they encounter. The data are then agglomerated in real time, allowing the UM Healthcare doctors to identify and prevent imminent outbreaks.

And since early detection is the key to complete recovery, it means that they are saving a lot of lives!

Google for Nonprofits Expands to 10 Asia-Pacific Economies

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Congratulations to non-governmental organizations in the Asia-Pacific region. In partnership withTechSoup, Google is now expanding its Google for Nonprofits program to ten new economies: Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Nonprofits can now apply to join the program to access a suite of free Google products and tools, including:

Google Ad Grants: Free AdWords advertising to promote their website on Google through keyword targeting.
Google Apps for Nonprofit: A free version of the Google Apps business productivity suite, including Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and more.
YouTube Nonprofit Program: Build their online presence with YouTube and overlay cards on their videos that link directly to their website.

Personally, I’ve used the Google for Nonprofits platform at two different organizations and it was a game-changer at both, specifically Google Apps.

The service can power enterprise-grade email services with a few clicks, giving organizations a legitimate [email protected] email address (ie. not Gmail.com or Yahoo.com) and powerful email support systems that are actually easy to use. Google Apps also comes with their Drive, Sheets, Docs, and Forms tools, which can totally replace the Microsoft Office software suite and I find far superior to Microsoft’s online software products.

Nonprofits organizations can also leverage One Today, Google’s fundraising platform for Android devices. The app highlights cool projects from different organizations each day, and users can donate if they want to support the cause.

So if you have an NGO in the 10 new economies, get Google for Nonprofits today. You’ll be so glad you did!

ECHO: Improving Organizational Communications in Indonesia with Automated SMS and Email

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eHomemakers (eH), a Malaysian social enterprise with a vision to empower disadvantaged women, innovated and developed ECHO from the grassroot perspective. Necessity being the mother of invention, eHomemakers created the ECHO concept for non-profit organizations to save staff time and telecommunication resources as a means to overcome a lack of funding to market disadvantaged women’s ecobaskets.

From an integrated tool for middle class volunteers to use email to coordinate activities at the least cost possible to a message recipient platform for the poor, ECHO has developed into a cloud-based organizational management system using internet-mobile. ECHO enables organization to reach out to large groups of people in diverse locations through email and SMS via a centralized database. Its latest technical feature enhancement provides user friendliness to the visually impaired persons in full compliance with international guidelines.

With the help of a few national and international funders, 35 non-government organizations (NGOs) in Malaysia are now able to utilize ECHO and make substantial cost savings on their communications resources. Recent ECHO developments include deployment in Indonesia through HomeNet Indonesia (HI) for the purpose of increasing homeworkers’ fair wages. In alignment with Fair Trade concepts, HI uses its business center to bring homeworker members’ products directly to the market without recourse to middlemen.

ECHO Technology

ECHO technology involves 3 components –

An application server (Web server)
Mobile app causing phones to act as SMS gateways
Target recipient’s mobile phones to receive and reply SMS.

The mobile app was developed to allow android phones to act as SMS modems and thereby overcome the expense of renting SMS gateways from national telecoms providers. It represents a minimal cost solution to NGOs.

ECHO Functionality

The ability of this powerful planning and organizing tool to send either email or SMS in bulk, as well as auto-summarizing replies with reports, provides a proven means for increased productivity (instant replies) and substantial savings on total admin staff costs. ECHO can be utilized for activities such as, but not limited to:

Invitation and confirmations from members for upcoming events, meetings, trainings, seminars, volunteer activity placements
Conducting surveys on groups and target segments
Group sourcing of raw materials
Organizing production chains
Consolidation of sales items from marketing networks
Bulk marketing of goods and services produced by beneficiaries and members

ECHO and HI Indonesia

HomeNet Indonesia (HI), also known as Mitra Wanita Pekerja Rumahan Indonesia (MWPRI), is a national network of NGOs that addresses concerns regarding the welfare and socio-economic well being of home-based working members. These workers generally are poor women with low education or literacy levels, live in rural and urban areas, and struggle to earn a livelihood through jobs issued from sub-contractors, middlemen or brokers. HI, in collaboration with eH, is currently paving the way for poverty alleviation through Fair Trade with the use of ECHO.

In order for HI to pay a Fair Trade wage to its members, there must be cost reductions in administration, marketing, and procurement of raw materials. The use of ECHO allows for savings of up to 98% in costs associated with organizing. As an example situation, an HI business center staff member receives an Internet order of a product. This staff member then distributes a single ECHO message to 100 makers, whereby they are requested to each provide their own production number for this product. These makers revert to confirm their production amount, and the staff member next checks the cumulative total of quoted units against the number required in the order. The staff member can subsequently revert to the customer with a very fast turnaround to accept or decline his/her order, and initiate production activities. Admin costs without ECHO are much higher due to the necessity of phone calls, one-to-one SMS, or face-to-face meeting.

The business center method provides efficiency gains that effectively enable Fair Wage (under Fair Trade principles), which allows the poor to receive better remuneration and lessen the trappings of poverty.

Hurdles

Hurdles in deploying ECHO in HI can be categorized into either 1) technological, or 2) human aspects.

Technological hurdles within Indonesia include unstable mobile signal coverage, latency in sending and receiving SMS (5 mins to 12 hours), and unstable Internet that delays SMS response. These drawbacks will be increasingly diminished in coming years, as Indonesia’s high economic growth spurs greater investment in telco infrastructure and a consequent better technology performance.

Resistance to change is commonly found during organizational development phases. The ease of acceptance of ICT is far higher for younger home workers than for the older generation. Women home workers who have limited education often feel that they are too old to learn new technology, and some of them cite difficulty as the reason behind their reluctance to use SMS (send and reply). Calling from a phone kiosk is much faster for them, albeit at a far higher cost.

An entrenched manual-based organizational work culture presents a barrier in implementing ICT, wherein a considerable amount of time is typically required for workers to internalize training session information and apply new ICT basic skills. This gap of understanding was found to exist among office workers above 40 years of age who were familiar with a paper-laden office culture, wherein decision-making was centralized and dictated by the top management. In such environments, lower level staff would print emails for senior staff to read, and transcript electronic replies on behalf of these senior staff.

Changing from an NGO management style into one more suited to a social enterprise resulted in HI coming under considerable pressure to deliver: HI needed to get the business center moving as soon as possible and adequately organize homeworkers to produce quality products for sale. The staff of HI found themselves pushing to improve the prevalent mentality towards work and communication efficiency.

Engagement and future

Many ICT-based social development projects are experimental, and therefore new to the providers as well as the end-users. At this point, 300 out of 10000 HI members were selected to participate in the ECHO training course. Deploying ECHO in HI has led to change momentum being initiated, whereby participants recognized the inherent advantages and loosened their embrace of the old style.

The use of ECHO for HI enabled the organization to realize the extent of their learning curve in order to cope with office ICT. A few key personnel have learnt additional IT-based project management skills and awareness of hitherto unknown tools such as online photo storage for products.

HI members are becoming more aware of utilizing ICT and SMS, and are thus able to achieve greater reach with less cost and more effectiveness. Campaigns on issues related to women homeworkers are distributed through social media, and so become a source of information for cases, problems, and the needs of women homeworkers in Indonesia.

It is acknowledged that HI requires more time to increase the capacity and spread the habit of using ICT, since HI staff and its members are not familiar with technology in their daily lives. Nevertheless, positive signs have emerged since the key phase of change momentum has been initiated. As such, the next step of reaching out to the remaining 9700 HI members is anticipated with a sense of optimism to match the altruistic vision of the founders.

By Yeo Lee Chin, Usability Coordinator (ECHO), eHomemakers

How NextDrop is Mixing Water, Data and ICT in India

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In many homes with piped in the developing world, piped water is only available a few hours at a time, and in some cases, they can go up to ten days without it. If they miss the water supply window, then the opportunity to collect and store the water has passed for the next 2-10 days. To ensure receiving water for their families, many low-income families must have someone waiting at home at all times. So a lack of water also becomes a lack of freedom for many women and children.

As a solution, social business NextDrop was founded , and it began by sending messages to about 15,000 households in the southern Indian twin cities of Hubli-Dharwad. The service informs subscribers via SMS about 60 minutes in advance of when the water service will be switched on, switched off, and whether it is contaminated or affected by low pressure. The information is gathered the same way: Through the use of mobile phones, the service workers who manually open and close valves provide them with real time information on the water delivery.

NextDrop’s young staff do not know whether to call themselves a social enterprise, or a tech start up, since they have received funding for both types of ventures. The startup built upon a novel team project that won University of California Berkeley’s Big Ideas competition. They work in conjunction with the local government, while at the same time gathering data that shows the structural problems with water delivery. It is an exercise in openness on behalf of a public delivery service. NextDrop has now expanded to Bangalore, where they have partnered with the Water Supply and Sewerage Board to supply city-wide services.

To sign up, customers have to give NextDrop a missed call on a dedicated phone number. The system allows them to track the customer’s location via GPS, narrowing it down to three valve areas. They will register the user to the first one, send them their first delivery message, and ask for feedback to whether they received the water or not. That way they have them correctly allocated within three text messages. A simpler solution may have seemed to ask new customers for their address, but in many suburbs and settlements in India post codes are rarely used, so, NextDrop says, GPS is the best option.

Is it a solution or just a plug in the leak?

There are two types of payments that the poor must make to obtain their water supply. First there is the actual cash payment in exchange for an ideally reliable water supply. The second ones are called “coping costs”, which are “payments that are outside the system and that ought not to be required,” but that the poor must pay in order to gain access to water.

The first coping costs is what are known as “informal payments,” which can vary from burdensome hospitality to outright bribes. The second coping cost is the time lost waiting for water since it has “the same impact of reducing poor peoples’ incomes, since time spent collecting water, or lying ill in bed cannot be spent earning money elsewhere” (UNDP, World Bank). NextDrop eliminates many of the coping costs that come with having to stay at home to wait for the water; the time and energy that could be spent in a wage-earning job.

Yet the third type of coping cost is the one created by coping mechanisms such as NextDrop itself. The service creates a newer, albeit much smaller, cost. As the UNDP study suggests, theses emerging new costs are “cash payments that are not contemplated in the original design of the water scheme, but which pay for real services that are made necessary by the scheme’s inadequacies” NextDrop would not be needed if there were a 100% reliability of water delivery to the different areas of the city.

Improving services through direct feedback

NextDrop allows citizens to report whether the information the government provided is correct. So, after the initial SMS saying that water will arrive in an hour, they send you a follow-up message to see if that was indeed the case. If a lot of people in the same area report not receiving water, then the government knows there is a problem.

Anu Sridharan, co-founder and CEO told Forbes that they are “seeing feedback work firsthand within the water utility company… People lower in the organization finally have the data to back up the fact that their job is hard, and that they are being put in an impossible situation. And now they are coming together at meetings, and they are able to tell their superiors, hey, there are all these issues, let’s work on fixing them… the utility companies themselves are asking us for citizen feedback, so they can keep track of their direct reports.”

When Hubli-Dharwad’s water utility used NextDrop’s monitoring tools across a three-month period, over 17,500 families got water when they otherwise would not. These families were at the end of their area’s supply cycle and wouldn’t receive sufficient water if the system lacked proper pressure. By engaging valvemen to report water pressure when they turned water on, and relaying this to utility engineers responsible for decision-making about those areas, NextDrop enables real-time adjustments to ensure equitable supply.

A water data bank

NextDrop wishes to collect as much data as possible in order to develop a predictive system, which could potentially have a big impact on quality of service. A lot of this data is gained from field visits by the team, who map new areas to inform these models. Much of the data is already within the knowledge of the utility companies, but is not yet aggregated. As this system is fed with more information by customer and engineer feedback, and by previous lessons and historical trends, it will become increasingly effective and will enable the network to surpass its current efficiency levels of 60-80 per cent.

Andrea Alarcón Sojet is a journalist and online media consultant in Bogota, Colombia.

Pakistani Farmers Need Better Agriculture Content to Increase Productivity with ICTs

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Pakistan’s agriculture sector employs over 40% of the population and contributes to 21% of the GDP. Other sectors are directly dependent, with the textile industry including raw cotton, contributing 11% of the GDP. Despite this importance, the sector has been struggling due to underdevelopment. Land rights and irrigation issues are clear policy and community issues. However, proper soil maintenance and low crop yields can be solved through working with farmers.

What are the main challenges that farmers face?

Crop yields have been low with stagnant growth since 1999. Pakistan’s production is 40% behind its neighboring countries. The harvest often goes to waste due to weak storage and transportation methods. Farmers are competing with large-scale agribusinesses that have access to resources, education and information. While extension programs send workers to educate farmers, most farmers view the programs as ineffective in disseminating information. The extension workers are often poorly trained and it is expensive for the workers to access many villages.

What current solutions are available?

USAID has partnered with Telenor, a telecom service provider, to provide mobile banking, information on weather and market prices to 1,700 farmers. mAgricorner is one of the first mobile apps focused on Pakistani farmers. It provides market prices, farm advisory and trading. 4 out of 5 telecom providers in Punjab have agriculture services using interactive voice response (IVR). Also the government began using satellite imagery to predict crop yields in the upcoming seasons.

What are the attitudes toward technology solutions?

A research study by CABI surveyed farmers in Punjab Province, one of the most fertile and populated regions in Pakistan. The farmers proved most interested in receiving voice calls and text messaging. Despite the stereotypes of most farmers, they are eager for more experimentation with ICT and agriculture.

What are the concerns moving forward?

A main issue is quality of content. Many farmers haven’t used the existing tools because the content quality is low. They often find the information too general and not relevant to their region and type of farm. Also, there is low market penetration of such tools even in Punjab. Although the government is launching satellite data initiative, the focus is to prevent food shortage through better import estimates not increasing crop yields. While there is significant research being done by the government and NGOs, there needs to be stronger focus on ensuring that research is utilized to increase agricultural productivity.

Angelina Nonye-John is a researcher and writer with Mansa Colabs

Facebook Safety Check for the Nepal Earthquake

Like many of you, I started to receive Facebook notices on Saturday telling me my friends in Nepal were “marked safe” on Facebook’s Nepal Earthquake Safety Check feature. Launched on the 3rd anniversary of the Japanese Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, the feature is designed to help Facebook users know who of their friends is accounted for in a natural disaster.

Safety Check looks to be a great feature. By alerting others to someone’s post-disaster status, Facebook users can speed up the process of response and recovery. While we often focus on the physical disruption in a disaster, there is an equal or larger emotional disruption.

In the 2014 sinking of the Korean MV Sewol ferry, the entire nation of Korea was traumatized, partly because parents didn’t know which children died and which survived. A Facebook Safety Check could have helped reduced the immediate impact of the capsizing.

For the Nepal earthquake, knowing who is safe, and alleviating worry, is a great benefit for everyone. Thank you Facebook.

Can a Mobile App Foster a New Green Revolution in India?

india-farmer

For the past decades, the share of agriculture in the Indian economy has kept shrinking. Even though the sector now accounts for 17.4 percent of the country’s GDP, it still employs 263 million people. That is, 22 percent of the Indian workforce.

Low productivity

Since the Green Revolution in the 1960s, India’s production of food grain has increased fivefold. The country is now self-sufficient, but it is facing a major productivity issue. It is still far below that of China, Brazil, or the United States.

This situation is the result of several factors:

India’s agricultural sector is fragmented. 78 percent of Indian farmers own less than 2 hectares of farmland. These small farms are often over-manned and quite unproductive.
Irrigation facilities are inadequate. Only half of the land is irrigated, and many farmers are dependent on rainfall to grow their crops. This makes them vulnerable to climate-related risks.
Modern agricultural practices have not yet been adopted by a majority of farmers. This is due to a low level of awareness, high implementation costs, and impracticality in small farms. The government’s large agricultural subsidies also tend to hamper productivity-enhancing investments.
Finally, many small farmers are uneducated and therefore risk-adverse. Even when they are exposed to the latest agricultural approaches and techniques, the majority won’t adopt them. Too often, they find them too risky and they would rather rely on traditions than try new farming practices. That way, they won’t maximize gains, but they believe they will minimize loss.

Mobile revolution in India

Anand Babu C. and Shita Lotivakari are well-aware of the situation: their own parents were farmers. But after working for ten years for international companies, they also understand the potential of ICTs to improve the life of small farmers in the long run.

In India mobile phone penetration is up to 90 percent. More than 900 million people have a mobile phone, and an increasing number is switching to smartphones. In the countryside in particular, the mobile revolution has already had a great impact. Rural Indians can more easily communicate with their relatives living in the cities, and they have an increased access to the outer world.

For Anand and Shita, they can also play a major role in boosting agricultural productivity. In fact their dream is to leverage mobile technology to fill the information gap, which they think prevents farmers from improving their practices. That’s why the two entrepreneurs started Jayalaxmi Agro Tech in September 2014.

Breaking the farmers’ illiteracy barrier

Anand and Shita’s idea was to build on existing services. In India, several companies already provide weather forecasts and market prices to farmers. The problem is that they do it using text messages in English. Since most small farmers are illiterate, these services are not so much of a help.

The two entrepreneurs thought through this illiteracy issue over and over, and they reached two conclusions. They agreed that using mobile phones to provide appropriate and timely crop-specific information is a great idea. But it is critical to develop easy-to-understand content; otherwise farmers will not use it.

Anand and Shita boldly decided to go for a mobile application. This is, indeed, the most appropriate solution for farmers. With an app, they can offer them both audio and visual content in English and several regional languages. And everything is available offline.

30 crop-specific apps

banana-app

So far, Anand and Shita have developed 30 applications for agriculture, horticulture, and animal husbandry. Today Jayalaxmi Agro Tech’s applications provide information about specific crops (e.g., banana, pomegranate, potato, onion, etc.) as well as dairy farming and sheep rearing. Each of these apps aims at helping farmers to better manage their farm and boost their productivity.

So what does happen when a farmer downloads the banana app on his smartphone? First, he gets information about the existing varieties. He learns where bananas should grow and how he should irrigate them. He also receives reminders on when to apply fertilizers. He is even taught how to control the diseases through a decision support system. The whole content is illustrated with pictures and descriptions in his mother tongue. So it is easy for him to understand and apply even complex notions.

In only eight months, more than 50,000 farmers have uploaded Jayalaxmi Agro Tech’s apps onto their smartphones. And since all these applications promote sustainable practices, they may pave the way for a new agricultural revolution in India!

Category: Code for the common good