Report available! Collaborative Honeynet Threat Sharing Platform

With the continuous rise of cyber security threats, monitoring security potential threats and attacks become essential to plan for cyber defense. Honeypot, a decoy system designed to lure attackers, has been used to track and learn attacker’s behavior. Collecting attacker’s interactions with honeypot at different locations inside different organization’s premises provide useful and more complete picture of the landscape of current cyber security threats. The log of the attacks to the honeypots become an essential cyber security threat information that could be shared to many of the security incident analysts at different organizations to provide relevant and contextual threat intelligence. The goal of this project is to develop and implement a collaborative honeynet threat sharing platform that could collect, store, add contextual information pertaining to the threat and share these threat information to the relevant organization. This project continues on the previous year project with additional type of honeypots are being added to the collection of honeypot sensors. In addition, new type of threat categories, threat purpose and threat phases are added to define more fine-grained secure shell (ssh) attacks seen in our honeypots. With the new public dashboard is now ready for public view, our hope is more organizations in Indonesia as well as organizations in ASEAN countries would be interested to participate in the project in a collaborative effort to share and exchange threat information, which potentially could be used as a cyber defense platform for each of the participating organizations.

The project achieved the following objectives:

  1. Develop a collaborative repository platform for storing honeynet-based threat information. The project allows anyone or organization to participate in a community-based threat information sharing based on the honeynet system.  There are 4 honeypots currently implemented, i.e., cowrie, Dionaea, Elastichoney, and conpot.
  2. Redesign and develop a more robust repository and visualization platform that allows security analysts to add and enrich existing security threat information with the results of the analysis of the security events or objects related to the events. The robust repository platform utilized the cluster database of MongoDB while the visualization platform also uses cluster setup to distribute search tasks over cluster servers, improving overall user experience of using the platform.
  3. An enhanced platform that allows organizations to share and exchange security threat information with other organizations. The platform enables the threat information to be exchanged with the cyber security community through TAXII services in a standardized format or through open-source threat intelligence Malware Information Sharing Platform (MISP).

The project was lead by the Charles Lim, from Swiss German University (SGU) and builds on years of collaboration to support the Honeynet project Indonesia Chapter (IHP), in partnership with the Ministry of Communication and Informatics (KOMINFO) and Badan Siber & Sandi Negara (BSSN). It is also an expansion of a previous ISIF Asia grant allocated in 2019.

The final report is available here.

Report available! Telemetering the telltale signs of power issues of wireless internet relays

The TellTale project was conceived with aim of addressing the problem of measurement and projection of the power uptime duration of wireless internet relays. In rural areas and in areas where such projections are not available, operators often fail to address downtimes in a timely manner, thereby increasing the number and duration of downtimes and/or fail to project the power needs of a relay properly. These issues have direct adverse economic consequences for both providers and users

In line with this, the project objectives were to:
1. Identify an affordable and replicable sensor+SBC + internet uplink power charge and discharge module
2. Create a cloud-based, machine-learning supported, data ingestion, storage, data prep, analysis and reporting system.
3. Develop an easy-to0use reporting and alert system with PC and mobile applications (Android)
4. Measure and report on the cost-saving and improved uptime impact of the project
5. Disseminate the project findings and share the systems design
6. Create a paid support system for interested parties.

The project has achieved most of its objectives. An AirJaldi “TellTale” system, capable of measuring battery voltage and generating indicators and alerts based on the its change over time, has been built, demonstrated and is ready for distribution and sharing. At a device cost of around US $20 (hardware components) the system is affordable, as are the software packages and cloud hosting services required.

AirJaldi will offer TellTale using a Freemium model. Interested users can either download the source codes and manuals at no cost from Github (accessed directly or via our website and those of other partners), or choose one of various models of paid support offered by AirJaldi.

TellTale’s User Interface (UI) was designed to be clear and easy to use and update and is available in both computer and mobile version. An Android APK, offering a stripped-down version of the web UI with a focus on alerts, was also created and made available for users.

We plan to continue working on improving and enriching TellTale in the coming months and will share information and resources.

The final report is available here.

Report available! Connecting the Unserved – Bhutan’s First Trial with TV White Spaces

This project, led by Tshering Norbu from NANO, conducted Bhutan’s first trial with emerging TV White Space (TVWS) technology to deliver broadband Internet access to the unserved areas and determine its appropriateness or not in Bhutan where the terrains are mountainous, thickly forested and rugged, and where building wired network infrastructures is technically and commercially challenging.

NANO is one of the only three fully-fledged (Tier-1 category by Bhutan’s standard) ISPs in Bhutan licensed to establish international connectivity and cover nationwide. They own an independent international gateway, international connectivity and domestic networks built on the backbone of latest DWDM and fiber technologies including access networks which are completely on fiber. A young entrepreneurial startup founded by the top-notch management and technical team that brought Internet and telecommunications (specifically FTTx services) development in Bhutan. As of today, they operate only in three major cities in Bhutan with a focus on providing services to the selected segment of the corporate and enterprise customers.

The project implementation timeline was initially scheduled for 8 months – set to start from around 3rd week of October 2018 and complete by June 2019. TVWS was completely new to us being in its early stage of an emerging technology. We researched and studied including case studies of its deployments, and identified potential Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) who were also limited in number. We shortlisted and evaluated three TVWS manufacturers: Carlson Wireless Technologies (US), Runcom Communications (Israel) and Saankhya labs (India). We chose Carlson Wireless. When we were finalizing Bill of Materials after a long design discussion and negotiation with them, we learnt they had long lead time, delay and some cases of even failing to manufacture/supply. That put huge dent to our implementation time. We did not risk and had to switched to another OEM, Redline Communications (Canada) – who carried good recommendation on their company’s credibility and technology performance. Then playing order to Redline who manufactured and supplied/delivered based only on the order consumed several months. We could complete installation of the final site of the total five deployments in March 2020. The entirely in all activities extended our project implementation timeline to 16 months.

Major activities included: field survey of two base stations and selecting only one, seven client sites survey and selecting only five; study, evaluation and selection of TVWS OEM; ordering and supply/delivery of equipment; making sites readiness; actual installation, implementation and commissioning of networks – for provisioning Internet; providing support assistance and monitoring of network performances for evaluation.

The final report is available to review here.

Report available! NextGen Girls – Internet Security Ambassadors Project

The NextGen Girls initiative included creating an IoT and Security Curriculum including Internet governance, Privacy, IPV6, IoT, Networking, Information Security and open web technologies and training 40 female University students to become Internet Security Educators. They in turn, trained 160 of their peers, and make awareness to 800 high school girls in IoT safety. The training was delivered through 8 workshops at 4 universities, 24 live online training sessions, 2 meetups and an IoT hackathon among girls.

The main outcome of the NextGen Girls project is the development of a sustainable network of women specializing in IoT and security, advocating IoT safety and enable support for victims while increasing women participation in IoT and Security field. In the long term, the NextGen Girls community will support women to show leadership in the emerging IoT industry, increase safety and advancement of women.

Shilpa Sayura partners, AlgoHack community, Google education, Computer Society and ISOC Sri Lanka worked together to implement NextGen Girls initiative.

NextGen Girls aims to scale up the project “Respect Girls on Internet” which was awarded the ISOC 25 Under 25 Award and received an ISOC Beyond The Net Community Grant. The project developed a network of university and high school girls studying ICT. The goal of the project is to support young women professional development to pursue emerging IoT security careers, that in turn will help build safer and secure IoT environment at homes, workplaces and communities.


The emergence of pocket-sized computing devices, capable of electronic switching, sensing, controlling equipment, video, and audio has created a new paradigm shift in home automation, business, agriculture, transport, environmental technologies. IoT systems use internet to interconnect. Unsecure home uses of IoT can endanger safety and breach privacy of individuals and families. Women are particularly vulnerable as IoT misuse has facilitated revenge porn incidents, harassment, data breach, as well as scams. Online safety activitists recommend that women seek suppor from other women in the event of IoT breach, as seeking support from a male technician can pose additional risks. The project proposed approach is to develop IoT and security skills among women to safeguard their homes, workplaces, and community from IoT breaches. Women becoming IoT security experts immensely contributes to gender equality, diversity, and growth in female participation in the IoT economy.

The report is publicly available.

Community LTE in Papua project by Yanobama published Final Report

The project “Community LTE in Papua”, delivered a LTE (CoLTE) network -a lightweight, Internet only LTE core network (EPC)- designed to facilitate the deployment and operation of small-scale, community owned and operated LTE networks, with a particular eye towards expanding Internet access into rural areas with limited and unreliable backhaul.

The CoLTE network comes paired with a basic, IP based network manager as well as basic web services. The key differentiator of CoLTE, when compared to existing LTE solutions, is that in CoLTE the EPC is designed to be located in the field and deployed alongside a small number of cellular radios (eNodeBs), as opposed to the centralized model seen in large-scale telecom networks.

The project also provided performance results and lessons learned from a real world CoLTE network deployed in rural Indonesia. This network has been sustainably operating for over six months, currently serves over 40 active users, and provides measured backhaul reductions of up to 45% when compared to cloud core solutions.

Read their Final Technical Report for all the details about their work in Indonesia.

Tech Age Girls Myanmar at 13th Internet Governance Forum

This is my first visit to IGF and I was excited looking at the diverse agenda of IGF even before arriving to Paris. I have attended several workshops and panels which are relevant to our works in Myanmar.

I attended “Connecting and Enabling the Next Billion (s)” which is under the theme of digital inclusion and accessibility. Moderator is from University of Pennsylvania Law. Discussion were made around UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and very interesting to learn one SDG can be linked to one another. This high level discussion are useful for me especially when we write proposals for government and UN affiliated organizations. I was able to discuss about our Beyond Access Myanmar project in Myanmar where community partnership is very strong for sustainable development. Many participants agree the importance of community libraries in playing training of digital literacy. University of Pennsylvania Law is conducting a project called “One World, One Internet” and they interviewed me after the panel. I was able to explain about the reason of my visit and our current gender innovation project in Myanmar and the award that ISIF gave to our foundation.


Interview by One World, One Internet

I am also very interested to learn that motorbikes are used as hotspot providers in India. In Philippine, Unilever partners with Telco to create an innovative way of providing connectivity by allowing 20 minutes free unlimited data for every purchase of their product. These creative way or “thinking outside the box” models really interest me. At the same time, challenges are still present. For example, in Nigeria, some health workers think internet disrupt their works and they are worried about losing their jobs.


Connecting Next Billion Panel”

I joined the “Gender Issues and Democratic Participation: reclaiming ICT for a Humane World” panel. Panellists are from India, Pakistan, France CSO and companies like Facebook. I was able to learn quite a diverse group of discussion. However, challenges are quite similar to what we have been facing in Myanmar as well. For example, women are given less priority in access to mobile phones and parents restrict the learning of digital and online tools for their daughters in India. These happens mainly in most vulnerable remote area of the country. Other challenges like cyberbullying, lack of digital literacy among young women give vulnerability for them in the online environment. Internet is full of challenges and also opportunities are present. Therefore, many agree that digital literacy is very important to give to young women and peer to peer learning works in many country. This is exactly what our Tech Age Girls Myanmar project is doing.


Gender Panel

I also joined “Has it become Luxury to Disconnect?” discussion. I was a bit sceptical about the title initially but when I attended it, I fully understand the topic. The main topic is about how privacy risk are present in this 21st century. In this modern world, it is hard for people to stay away from internet. All our data are collected by Telco. What do they do about these data? Are they safe or not? According to one Indian panellist, the safest way is to keep data in their respective country. It is especially for sensitive government data. At the same time, many agree that education and training on privacy in online environment has to be given to students. Many bad experiences happened as people put a lot of their private lives on social media. They can backslash one day when they get old. I was able to discuss that we have developed a curriculum called Mobile Information Literacy which is mobile based digital literacy training and one module is on privacy, security and netiquette in online environment. Many agree that mobile based training are very much productive as devices like laptops are expensive for rural communities.

I also joined “EU Delegation to IGF and Youth IGF Movement” and it is very interesting as EU delegation are mostly old politicians and many discussants are young tech savvy people. In other words, EU delegation agrees that many of older generation think internet is a very special thing and would like to handle very carefully and slowly. However, technology is changing very fast and legal sector is hard to cope with the momentum of the technology changes. Cyberlaw and other legal policy relating to ICT is always behind. It is quite similar to country like Myanmar too. For example, cookies, cache shall be cleansed (like washing clothes) every 5 days and browser shall be updated often. Lacking to do so will give vulnerability for your device to be attached by virus and malwares. These things have to be taught in schools. I noticed that a lot of discussion always come back to education of digital literacy at schools. This is something which we are trying hard to teach to teachers at schools in Myanmar how to stay safely online. In this digital age, students shall be taught not only basic ICT skills such as Microsoft Office but also they need to learn how to become a good digital citizen (netizen). Important point is random teaching of digital literacy will have little effect as things are growing very fast and need to tech like school on daily basis. At the same time, media literacy trainings are also very important as there are so many misinformation and disinformation present on daily basis.

During the opening ceremony of IGF, speech from UN Secretary General is very powerful. He wanted to see more stakeholders in IGF such as including philosophers and anthropologists in the development of AI. He also emphasizes on promoting missing voices especially marginalized people such as women, elders and disabled persons. Finally, he encouraged this forum shall produce actionable plans which need to turn risk into opportunities. French President Macron speech was also very inspirational on how regulators and privacy enthusiasts are playing hard games in the online environment. But, France and EU would like to do midway (not like California style nor Chinese style). These are valuable messages for country like Myanmar too.

On Day 2, I attended “Internet and Jobs” which is organized by Internet Society and it was very insightful. Panellists are from ILO, Brazil University and University of Portugal. Nowadays, people are worrying about losing their jobs due to development in AI. However, many jobs which we have never expected before are opening doors for youths. For example, data analyst jobs sector alone will create 80,000 more jobs. Therefore, I recalled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that people will be doing different kind of jobs. Types of jobs will vary from developed countries and developing countries. Due to presence of more percentage of younger generation in job force in developing countries (like our country), youths will work new forms of jobs. However, developed nations will be having survival mode as they have more percentage of old aged people in the future.
However, at present, youths are suffering from retrench in case of crisis. Therefore, youths need to get digital literacy in order to prepare for 21st century job force. In the future, many of us will be working online from home. Therefore, most of us will loss our cultural norms like loosing family time. We all have to prepare them for the future. Youth involvement in Singapore is inspirational. Youths launched Singapore Youth Council which volunteers to help digital literacy to elderly people. This movement give not only skill for elders but also give social bonding between youths and elders. Myanmar shall be adopting this campaign as many elders are facing problems with digital tools nowadays.


Internet and Jobs for Youths Panel

I am able to visit most of the booths at the IGF Village and met with may interesting companies, universities and civil society organizations. I met with one organization called AccessNow which has developed game for youth to understand security measures of their own devices. Moreover, I met with Relex Life company which has interest to invest in Myanmar. I also visited UNESCO digital preservation unit at the basement of IGF and I was very impressed with digitalization efforts made by UNESCO on thousands of documents and files. Since our foundation is active in digital preservation of old palm leaves and paper manuscripts, I was able to learn a lot from UNESCO technical expert there.


Digital preservation room at UNESCO

I was so excited to accept the award for “Gender Empowerment and Innovation Award” from ISIF. I now understand SeedAlliance clearly and its affiliates to give numerous awards around the world to organizations like us. It was such a honour to accept this prestigious award for Asia.


Gender Empowerment and Innovation Award to Dr. Thant Thaw Kaung from Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation


Awards Recipients around the World

On the last day, I was able to attend “Investment strategies to scale community networks” panel which was organized by APNIC. It is very interesting to learn that how funders would like to support. Carolina said that any innovation both hardware, software, strong business model and enabling local content are key areas of support. All the panellists agree to have strong community network is key in success. Jane Coffin from Internet Society said that
“In community networks, much of the work is human engineering. Installing the equipment is the easy work “. I fully supported her and gave our Myanmar experience of having strong community library networks and main reason is human factor. We need to have dedicated, committed librarians who are willing to work for their own community. We also need to give ownership to them. Many discussants agree this model. Jane Coffin kindly told me after the panel that she would connect me to her colleagues in Southeast Asia. I was also able to greet Carolina who has vision for strong community network.


Investment strategies to scale community network

I also attended “Public Access in libraries: a policy toolkit for public access” panel which was organized by IFLA. All the panellists are eager to discuss how to be sustainable for public libraries. A panellist from Georgia said that 10 years ago, people think that libraries are no longer needed as everything will go online. However, access to internet alone is not enough as people need to learn how to go online and search for information and libraries become the best place for training these things. In other words, a lot of digital literacy training are taking place in public libraries. I was able to discuss about our experience in Myanmar. In order to be sustainable libraries, one of the key elements to create ownership. We have to create ownership to community libraries. I gave one example of one of the community libraries that we supported in Myanmar. We supported free internet, 4 tablets and training to the librarian. The cost for the tablets was only about USD 500. Librarian invited students from nearby school and many kids always come to their library. Then, community people found out and they invested for a separate room for ICT training and they were able to fund by themselves for computers as well. After the panel, IFLA panellist asked me to contribute an article about how to get sustainable model for public libraries based on our Myanmar experience. I had agreed to write one article for IFLA newsletter.

I was able to attend “Accessibility and Disability” discussion. Even though there are limited number of participants, this is very insightful how much challenges disabled people faced even in this modern world. They even discussed how difficult to attend the IGF. The reason of attending the session was to learn how our Myanmar library network can help disabled people by mean of technology. I was fortunate to meet with Professor Derrick Cogburn who is chairing the Disability Initiatives and he is willing to collaborate with our foundation.

In summary, IGF has given me a great deal of exposure about our works, new contacts and a lot of learning experience for me. The followings are my “Take Home” messages.

  1. IGF has enlightened me in many new topics such as blockchain technology and this gives me a new perspective of technology in this digital world. I have to say this is educational and inspirational trip for me.
  2. I am glad to learn that there are many common challenges in even the developed world on gender inequality and happy to learn how we can overcome them. Gender inequality is one of the hot topics at IGF and hence I have more energy to strengthen our Tech Age Girls Myanmar initiative.
  3. IGF has given me getting new contacts who are interested to collaborate with us.
  4. Role of community libraries and community centres approach is on the right track and this is exactly what we are doing. We have to plan ahead how we can expand sustainably beyond our current 150 library networks. Moreover, we are able to get access to IFLA’s toolkit for public libraries which they are going to launch soon.
  5. There are many lessons learned as I am able to apply and disseminate in our current mobile information literacy curriculum.
  6. I am more prepared by learning the current trends of sponsoring from donor communities.

Therefore, I would like to thank ISIF and APNIC to give a chance of offering the award and have a chance to visit IGF. This is a real honour for us and this recognition is meant to our foundation a lot. We really appreciate your support and efforts to make our works visible to the world. Thank you very much.

Tribute to ISIF Asia remarkable women innovators

International Women's Day
International Women’s Day

In the last 10 years, ISIF Asia has supported women led teams to research and develop Internet-based solutions to improve social and economic outcomes, as well as funding projects focusing on women’s access to services and economic empowerment.

As the celebrations for International Women’s Day continue across the world, we salute these remarkable women for their amazing contributions and their endurance to improve the lives of other people. Some of them have moved on from the projects and organizations that intersected with ISIF Asia, but we follow their success.

Award winners

Nashin Mahtani is the Project Co-Manager and Lead Designer ​of PetaBencana.id, an Indonesian disaster mapping foundation, where she creates data visualization strategies and new representational forms to explain information and communication technologies and systems. With a background in architecture, her research and design work investigates the relational complexities of urban infrastructure, computation, and neuroscience.

Swati Ramanathan is co-founder of Jana Group, a clutch of social enterprises aimed at urban transformation in India. These include the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy where she leads Janaagraha’s innovations in the use of social media and mobile and internet technology for civic participation.

Shamila Keyani, co-founder of Jaroka mobile-based Tele-healthcare in Pakistan, integrating engineering, health provision and community care (*).

Nancy Margried CEO of Batik Fractal, is dedicated to transform traditional art with technology in Indonesia. Her products are internationally recognized and support thousand of artisans to improve their livelihood as the quality of their products increases.

Dr Sara Saeed Khurram, is the founder and CEO of Sehat Kahani in Pakistan, she is a health innovator, working to improve basic health care in communities through a spectrum of services focused on primary health care consultation, health awareness and health counselling.

 

Mary Rose Ofianga-Rontal, Philippines. From project manager of a pilot project focusing on health data management to feminist entrepreneur, co-founder of DreamSpace.ph and founder of WomenPowered (*).

Sadequa Sejuti, is an architect from Bangladesh, committed to support women entrepreneurs by developing e-commerce solutions fitted for the developing world. As Managing Director of Future Solution for Business.

Chong Sheiu Ching. Malaysia. eHomemakers. Women’s empowerment champion and entrepreneur (*).

Dr. Meenakshi Gautham health researcher focused on rural health services, maternal and child health, equity and quality of healthcare and how mobile health applications for low resource settings can support health services delivery (*).

Chak Sopheap, was appointed Executive Director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights when she was just 29 years old. She is a human rights activist, globally recognized for her work to defend human rights and support community development in Cambodia.

(*) Also a grant recipient.

Grant recipients

Alexis Chun – Legalese. A lawyer turned entrepreneur, working to solve the problem of contract / corporate lifecycle automation for start-ups.

Maureen Hilyard – Cook Islands Internet Action Group. An educator turned Internet-Governance champion, supporting development projects across the Pacific.

Diana Klein – CoralWatch. A scientific Illustrator/designer turned Citizen Science Project Manager at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Kanchana Kanchanasut – a pioneer for Internet access in Thailand, innovating on access provision with design of devices, networks and access solutions for community benefit. Internet Hall of Fame inductee.

Jayshree Satpute, Sukthi Dhital and Francesca Feruglio – co-founders of NAZDEEK. Human rights professionals and activists fighting for women’s rights among the poorest of the poor in India.

Jacqueline Chen, Singapore. She used to be country director of OperationASHA in Cambodia and is now working at EMpower. An engineer with a public policy master, working to improve health and economic outcomes for women.

Bishakha Datta, is an Indian film maker, activist and a former journalist. She is the co-founder and executive director of Point of View, based in Mumbai, a non-profit working in the area of gender, sexuality and women’s rights.

Lisa Garcia is the Executive Director of the Foundation for Media Alternatives in The Philippines. A human rights expert working at the intersection with ICTs. She and Nica Dumlao led one of the earliest ISIF-funded projects around women’s rights on the Internet. Nica is a feminist activist who has been involved in the social justice movement, on the intersection between human rights and ICTs in The Philippines with regional projection. She works as Digital Rights Coordinator at EngageMedia.

Organizations that received ISIF Asia support around projects focusing on women’s access to services and economic empowerment

Reports and videos about their work can be found from the full list of awards winners as well as the full list of grants recipientss and reports sections of our website.

  • DoctHers, Pakistan
  • Batik Fraktal, Indonesia
  • UM Healthcare Trust, Pakistan
  • ACCESS Health International, Philippines
  • Future Solution For Business, Bangladesh
  • Corpcom Services Sdn Bhd., Malaysia
  • Movale Development Foundation Inc., The Philippines
  • Garhwal Community Development and Welfare Society – GCDWS, India
  • Cambodian Center for Human Rights, Cambodia
  • Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation, Myanmar
  • Khushi Baby, India
  • Nazdeek, in collaboration with PAJHRA and ICAAD, India
  • Operation ASHA (Cambodia),
  • Amakomaya, Nepal
  • Point of View, India
  • Foundation for Media Alternatives, The Philippines)
  • School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the National University of Science and Technology, Pakistan

Khushi Baby: babies health data collection for improved decision making

The ISIF Asia 2016 Technical Innovation Scale-up Grant supported Khushi Baby, which offers a revolutionary patient-centric platform in India, designed to streamline comprehensive data collection and improve decision-making on the front lines of care.

The data collection methods in Indian rural areas are outdated, cumbersome, and lack patient specificity. Without reliable health records, clinical decision making on the part of community health workers is erroneous and inefficient at the point of care where connectivity is rarely available. Health officials are missing real-time, actionable maternal and child health data, preventing community-level monitoring of which babies are missing their vaccines and which mothers are at risk of birth complications.

Child wearing Khushi Baby health tracking necklace

In order to bridge the gap of maternal and child health, the project team invented a necklace, in which health workers can update patient history by tapping it to their mobile app. They have also designed a dashboard that provides health officials with specific, actionable, and timely analytics. More importantly, the system automatically calls mothers in the local language, reminding them to bring their children to the next vaccination camp and educating them on the importance of immunizations.

Khushi Baby finished its first deployment and randomised controlled trial in over 70 villages. They are now set to expand further in the Udaipur district to over 300 villages serviced by government ANMs in 2018. On 17th January 2018, Khushi Baby team were named as GenH Challenge Winners and received a USD 250,000 to support the continuation of the project. They hope to increase their footprint throughout Rajasthan by building a model consistent with National Health Mission standards for ANMs throughout India. Also, they look forward to translating the insights and engaging with collaborators in Africa and the Middle East where a reporting and engagement gap may be similarly failing maternal and child health care services.

The work done by Khushi Baby contributed to improve general health outcomes in rural Udaipur, especially beneficial to maternal and child health tracking. Read their published technical report to know how did they make it https://application.isif.asia/theme/default/files/ISIFAsia_2016_Grants_Final_Report_KhushiBaby_vFinal.pdf

Let’s Read! app: language preservation in Thailand

Library view from web application
Library view of the Android reader app

Due to the absence of mother tongue reading resources, ethnic minority children in Thailand normally are learning to read in languages which have no connection to their home and community. This situation has been decreasing children’s interests and motivation of learning in rural Thailand, especially in the S’gaw Karen community, northern and western Thailand, with an estimated population of around 200,000.

Supported by ISIF Asia 2016 Grant, The Asia Foundation created a scalable model of technology and local community interventions that can be adapted to the local context of any number of other minority language groups throughout the region. Their web app, available at letsreadasia.org, and the Android reader app both went live to the public at the beginning of 2017, which allows individuals to both read the content and participate in the translation of stories. These tools have successfully increased the comfort of S’gaw Karen-speaking community with reading in their native language.

The project team has been working closely with local partners during the whole process, in order to fit the real needs of minority language communities. These experience enables The Asia Foundation to expand the project into other minority language context in the Asia-Pacific.

Read their technical report to learn more about their project https://application.isif.asia/theme/default/files/ISIFAsia_2016_ScaleupGrants_TechReport_TheAsiaFoundation.pdf

UAV-Aided Resilient Communications for Post Disaster Applications

The ISIF Asia Technical Innovation grant for 2016, assisted Ateneo Innovation Center (AIC) in  The Philippines to develop a resilient communication system, using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to aggregate data from ground zero and relay it to a central command center where it can be further processed or acted upon by decision makers.

Ateneo

Data delivered by this system can contain situation reports, weather information, transport requests, and other vital information such as survivor profiles, medical history, and images of victims’ faces to support identification and reunification efforts from the humanitarian and relief organizations providing support after the disaster.

Through this architecture, the project team encouraged the development and further adoption of a new approach in utilizing UAV platforms for assisted search, rescue and reporting efforts.

The team has demonstrated during a flood drill at the town of Isabela during July last year that a system comprised of a combination of mobile phones, RF modules, and push-to-talk radio can significantly improve and augment communications capabilities. In contrast, traditional cellular network facilities would have failed in these disaster situations.

The project team’s activity has led them to believe that continued work in this field is sustainable, because they have recently met new partners that are interested in continued effort in this area.

The Final Technical Report is available for download https://application.isif.asia/theme/default/files/ISIFAsia_2016_Grants_TechReport_AteneodeManilaUniversity_vFinal.pdf