Photo by: Irita Kirsbluma    
Technology has changed the way the world works. We have seen what its impact can be in the developed world, but what about the developing world. From mobile apps to crisis mapping, technology has been reborn in the developing world. This sets the stage for a massive shift in how aid workers, doctors, rural farmers get information. It sets the stage for theses individuals to coexist to create an eco-system that begins to bridge the digital divide. Here is a list of some of the technologies that are transforming international development while bridging the digital divide.    
 

Ushahidi

Ushahidi builds tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories. "Ushahidi", which means "testimony" in Swahili, was a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Since then, the name "Ushahidi" has come to represent the people behind the "Ushahidi Platform". Our roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The original website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phones. This website had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be used by others around the world. Since early 2008 we have grown from an ad hoc group of volunteers to a focused organization. Our current team is comprised of individuals with a wide span of experience ranging from human rights work to software development. We have also built a strong team of volunteer developers primarily in Africa, but also Europe, South America and the U.S. Ushahidi has three main platforms that make it one of the most advanced and useful tools of its kind. The Ushahidi Platform The SwiftRiver Platform Crowdmap You can find a detail overview of Ushahidi and its history here
     

M-Pesa

M-Pesa is a mobile-phone money transfer and micro financing service. It allows users with a national ID card or passport to deposit, withdraw, and transfer money easily with a mobile device. The service enables its users to:
  • Deposit and withdraw money
  • Transfer money to other users and non-users
  • Pay bills
  • Purchase airtime
  • Transfer money between the service and a bank account (in some markets)
M-PESA now Contributes 18% of Safaricom’s (one the largest mobile network operators in Kenya and Tanzania) total revenue. M-PESA now has 10.5 million active users and revenue grew by 29.5% to 21.84 billion in 2012. There is currently 65,547 M-PESA agents around the world.
source: wikipedia and http://www.thinkm-pesa.com
         

GSMA - Agriculture

The GSMA’s mAgri programme aims to improve the productivity and incomes of smallholder farmers in emerging markets through commercial mobile services. The GSMA mAgri Programme launched the mFarmer Initiative in June 2011 to support mobile network operators and service providers in launching agricultural value added services (Agri VAS) for smallholder farmers in emerging markets. The mFarmer Initiative is a partnership between the GSMA, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID. The aim of the mFarmer Initiative is to provide two million smallholder farmers with access to actionable, high quality, relevant and timely information and advice delivered via mobile. The purpose of these mobile services is to bridge the information gap faced by smallholder farmers and to improve poor farming households’ resilience and decision-making as a result of better access to relevant agricultural information. mFarmer Initiative Objectives:• To drive scalable, replicable and commercially successful Agri VAS • To build services that increase poor farmers’ income and productivity • To reduce the barriers for mobile operators to launch or improve existing Agri VAS • To test and prove models for delivering Agri VAS • To share best practice and catalyse the growth of the Agri VAS industry • To promote a culture of knowledge sharing in the wider Agri VAS ecosystem
source: http://www.gsma.com/      

TechChange

TechChange offers live online courses for international development for those who want to learn skills and technologies for social change. TechChange currently has 9 coursed in its catalog concentrating on everything from crisis mapping to mobile health. List of the 9 courses: TC104: Digital Organizing and Open Government TC105: Mobiles for International Development TC108a: Introduction to Intrapreneurship - Innovating from TC108b: Applied Intrapreneurship - Accelerating Innovation within Institutions TC108: Technology, Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship Within TC109: Technology for Conflict Management and Peacebuilding TC110: Social Media for Social Change TC141: Mapping for International Development TC309: mHealth - Mobile Phones for Public Health   Technology is advancing fast: Over 90% of the world is now covered by a cellular network, 30% of the world has access to the internet, and number of tools and have been developed to foster learning and collaboration, transform conflicts, fight diseases, monitor elections, distribute food, and more. But traditional learning methods haven’t kept pace and people around the world need training in how to effectively manage these technologies more than ever before. Our custom online social learning platform facilitates best practice sharing, builds professional networks, and integrates a number of dynamic features for both real-time and self-paced interaction. Read more about our model. source: http://techchange.org/              

TEST2TEACH

The Nokia Education Delivery (NED) uses mobile technology to deliver educational videos to remote, hard-to-reach areas. Using a mobile phone, teachers and trainers can access and download videos from a constantly updated catalog over Globe’s mobile network and store them in the phone for future use. The phone is then connected to a TV for group viewing.
BridgeIT is conceptualized in 2003 by Nokia, Pearson, the International Youth Foundation (IYF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was pilot-tested in the Philippines because of the country's robust mobile technology infrastructure and the Filipinos extensive use of mobile phones. The Philippine pilot came to be known as text2teach. As of April 2012, text2teach Phase 3 reached 352 new schools in Luzon, bringing the total number of schools using the technology to 557 in the country since its inception in 2003. More than 1,600 teachers were trained on the technology and almost 57,000 Grades 5 and 6 students are benefiting from the program. Text2teach Phase 4 was launched in June 2011, and covers the following components: 1) review and enhance existing text2teach education materials; 2) develop and produce new videos and teachers guides; 3) train trainers and teachers; 4) expand text2teach to 850 new schools; 5) upgrade the satellite and media master schools to NED and 6) program evaluation.
 
source: www.text2teach.org     slide-1-638  

Sokotext

Sokotext is a smart solution with a big idea: to make food affordable for everyone. In developing countries, supply chains are notoriously inefficient and prices are pushed up by a series of middlemen. As a result families often have to go hungry. Sokotext is a tech startup with a social mission that aims to disrupt existing distribution systems and transform supply chains to become fairer and more efficient. We aim to leverage the high penetration of mobile technologies in emerging markets by using the power of text messaging to group local demand and get wholesale food prices for people living in the slums. The team combines extensive field work experience with skills in technology, finance, social enterprise and development. Sokotext Hult Prize Submission

 
 
 
   

Frontline SMS

FrontlineSMS is a desktop software created to lower barriers to positive social change using mobile technology. By leveraging basic tools already available to most organizations, including those in ‘last-mile’ settings — computers and low-cost modems — FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication to any mobile handset. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free; you only pay for the messages you send. Since 2005, Frontline SMS has been downloaded 100,000 times. From this success, Frontline SMS has since branched out to create other technologies including FrontlineCloud. FrontlineCloud lets you easily send, receive, and manage SMS messages and data from anywhere in the world. FrontlineCloud makes life simpler with a quick set-up process, more ways to connect to mobile networks, and all of the sophisticated data management available through the cloud. There is also three beta products that Frontline SMS is currently working on. These technologies include: FrontlineSMS:Credit : PaymentView, is a software application that allows users to send, receive, and manage mobile money transactions using a laptop and a GSM modem. Our goal is to make it easier for organizations to get started using mobile money in their work, decreasing operational expenses and increasing efficiency. FrontlineSMS:Learn : is a version of the FrontlineSMS platform that uses SMS to provide learning and evaluation support to educators and development programs all over the world. FrontlineSMS:Radio : is a desktop application designed to support community radio stations in their efforts to interact dynamically with audiences by harnessing the power of SMS. Radio is the dominant media source for many communities worldwide, and SMS is increasingly being used by radio stations to facilitate two-way communication with listeners. :Radio is free and open source, built on the core technology of FrontlineSMS Version 2.

   

GSMA - Health

The GSMA’s Mobile for Development mHealth programme brings together the mobile industry and health stakeholders to improve health outcomes in emerging markets, with initial focus on Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6 across Africa. In order to unlock the latent potential of mHealth, the GSMA has identified four key barriers that need to be addressed. The main barriers are fragmentation of service delivery, lack of scale across the full reach of mobile networks, limited replication, and misalignment of the value proposition between mobile and health stakeholders. To address these barriers the GSMA is bringing together its mobile industry members and health stakeholders to collaborate to enable scaled integration of mobile and ICT into health systems. The initial focus is on Africa where mobile and ICT can play a big role in helping to fast track Millennium Development Goals 4, 5 and 6. In June 2012, the GSMA’sPan-African mHealth Initiative was launched with the aim of creating a sustainable public-private partnership to deliver a reference implementation for scaled mHealth services that can be replicated across disease portfolios and countries. source: http://www.gsma.com/         GeoPoll
GeoPoll is a global network of people sharing their voice to shape their local community. By asking people questions on their mobile phones, GeoPoll is able to help customers understand trends, preferences, and conditions in every part of the world, from dense urban areas to remote villages. The GeoPoll network connects directly to billions of users, making it faster, more accurate, and more cost effective than any other method of data collection. GeoPoll is a division of Mobile Accord, a mobile platform company powering communication for social good GeoPoll currently offers two services :
GeoPoll - Send Surveys through SMS, Voice and Mobile App Surveys never cost participants anything for their responses. Give participants incentives for completion.
GeoPoll Plus - Send Surveys through SMS, Voice and Mobile App Surveys never cost participants anything for their responses. Give participants incentives for completion. Target participants by location.
Check out GeoPoll case studies here
source: http://research.geopoll.com/#index          

Freedom Fone

Freedom Fone allows you to create two-way phone-based communication services to interact with any audience, in any language, at any time and without recourse to internet or other media. There are no geographical limitations to Freedom Fone - it can be used in any country with mobile network coverage. Freedom Fone is free software that creates interactive, voice-based communication services for organisations or bodies seeking to engage with communities across mobile networks. How Freedom Fone is being leveraged: Radio - Use voice mail to include community voices in broadcasts, interact with studio guests; use voice menus to share news & event information. Crisis - Provide breaking news updates via voice menus; receive field reports and queries using voice messages; use polls for focused feedback. Elections - Receive field reports from election monitors or citizens by voice mail; provide news updates to field staff via voice menus. Health - Share health information using voice menus; receive questions, reports and feedback via voice messages; use polls to measure opinion. Journalism - Enable journalists and citizen reporters to discreetly and promptly file audio reports on events as they happen, using ordinary phones. Business - Answer FAQs and provide status updates using voice menus; gather feedback on services and products using incoming SMS and voice messages. Agriculture- Create voice menus to share agri-extension services, such as pest control tips or market prices, with offline small scale farmers.
source : http://www.dialupradio.net/          

Sana Mobile 

Sana is a volunteer organization hosted at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. Sana’s team consists of students and alumni of Boston-area and partner universities from all over the world. Each team member contributes much diversity of skill to fulfill the organization’s mission: to improve quality of care in resource-poor settings. Each member also brings to the organization unique experiences and expertise from a gamut of fields including medicine, engineering, informatics, public health, social sciences, business, and entrepreneurship. At the heart of the organization is an open-source, cellphone-based platform that captures, transmits, and stores complex medical data (e.g. images, videos, physiologic signals such as ECG, EEG and otoacoustic emission responses, etc.) as well as other pertinent demographic and clinical information. Sana’s ultimate mission is to end a mentality of paternalism in health system interventions that feeds and sustains a culture of dependency. The goal therefore is to encourage and guide partners on how to design and implement information systems to improve quality of care, while learning from these partners and establishing best practices in capacity building. Sana’s partners are active participants in the co-creation of health systems design at the highest level.
source: http://sana.mit.edu/          

Medic Mobile

Medic Mobile began when a few students at Stanford and Lewis & Clark started using a free software application called FrontlineSMS to coordinate community health workers at St Gabriel’s Hospital. We weren’t software developers or medical doctors—just passionate, thoughtful people who enjoyed tinkering and realized that we could use technology to improve health care in very challenging settings. Building on early successes in Malawi, we’ve since helped more than fifty organizations use technology to improve health services in more than twenty countries. Our broader toolkit now includes software we’ve developed as well as open source software created by other organizations. We’ve stayed true to the idea that the greatest health impact per dollar invested comes from making use of tools that are already available, rather than developing something new for each project. As a tech company that’s constantly fired up about health impact, we’re proud to have supported some outstanding health care providers. One hundred percent of our impact comes from helping our partners access mobile technology that can improve the services they provide.  
       

CauseVox

CauseVox provides you with your own full-featured fundraising site, powerful administrative tools, as well as personal and team fundraising pages. CauseVox integrates with leading transaction processors to help you take donations on your fundraising site. Donors can use Visa, MasterCard, AMEX, and other credit cards as well as donate through PayPal. CauseVox has no monthly fees until you reach $5,ooo in donations. There is three pay as you go options that CauseVox offers, which includes the Starter package, Impact package, and Pro package, ranging in price for free to $129 per month pricing.  CauseVox powers some of the most successful online fundraising campaigns. Take a look at our featured ones here
source : http://www.causevox.com/         164904_10151326997866534_1302278508_n

Worldreader

Worldreader is a global non-profit, headquartered in San Francisco and with offices in Europe and Africa, whose mission is to make digital books available to children, families and communities so millions of people can improve their lives. As of June 2013, we’ve put over 662,008 e-books – and the life-changing, power-creating ideas contained within them – into the hands of 4,300 children in sub-Saharan Africa. Those children now read more, read better, and are improving their communities. In addition, through Worldreader Mobile more than half a million people are reading a wide variety of books including educational material, health tips, love stories, prize winning short stories, children’s books, classics, and more– all on a device they already own: their mobile phone. Check out more about Worldreader Mobile here
source: http://www.worldreader.org/
     

Next Drop

Globally, more than half a billion people have access to treated piped water, but there’s a catch.  That water is available for only a few hours at a time once or twice a week, and residents have no way of knowing when that will be. NextDrop solves this problem by using basic mobile phones to collect real time water delivery information from water operators in the field.  We distribute this information to the people who need it: city residents and engineers in the water utility.  Our services help urban residents save time and reduce the daily stress of uncertain water, while enabling utilities to become more efficient and more transparent.

Case Study

Building a Water Smart Grid Lite for the Hubli-Dharwad Municipal Corporation In Hubli-Dharwad, in the south Indian state of Karnataka, over 1 million residents have access to treated municipal water once every 2-8 days. There is considerable variability in the schedule, making it difficult for residents to plan ahead and know when to be at home to collect water. In September 2011 we launched our Smart Water Supply Message Service. Residents are now provided the convenience of water alerts by SMS or phone call, intimating them in advance of water arrival so they can plan their day accordingly. To date, over 25,000 households have signed up for the service.
source: http://nextdrop.org/index.html
 
 

Rang De

Our vision is to make poverty history in India by reaching out to underserved communities through microcredit. We are striving to do this through a network of committed field partners and social investors, by offering microcredit that has a positive impact on business, education, health and environment of the communities we work with.How Rang De Works
1) Choose borrowers to fund small businesses or education. Your Social Investment can be as little as Rs.100. 2) Rang De's Field Partners receive and disburse the loans to our borrowers.
3) Our borrowers repay the loan according to a repayment schedule. As and when they repay, you receive your investment with a nominal return on it. source: http://www.rangde.org/    
 
 
Source:www.plussocialgood.org