| Saïd Business School: Using mobile technology to mobilise social change |
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19/03/2011 05:07 (793 Day 23:34 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- The response to last year’s crises in Haiti, Chile and Pakistan revealed an exciting potential. Volunteers from thousands of miles away could play an important role in humanitarian operations by using social networking platforms and free, open source software to create live crisis maps.
‘Crisis mapping is nothing new,’ says Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping at Ushahidi and co-founder of the International Network of Crisis Mappers. ‘What is novel is that the sourcing and analysis is now happening on the fly. Feeds from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, SMS, RSS and others can be collated in real-time to provide detail of how a crisis is evolving and in-the-moment decision-support to users of a given crisis mapping platform enabling users to query the map, and test out different scenarios to identify the best course of action given a changing environment.’
The use of social networking platforms and Web 2.0 technologies can provide scale to responses at speeds previously unseen. In the wake of the Haiti earthquake more than a thousand Creole-speaking volunteers in 49 countries around the world contributed thousands of hours of their own time to translate tens of thousands of text messages coming from the disaster-affected population. Many of these reported people trapped in the rubble and they were added to the Ushahidi platform to launch an effort that connected Haitian citizens in need of aid with the humanitarian responders. The tool quickly became the go-to place for up-to-date crisis information, with a range of military, UN, and NGO actors using the map as part of their needs-assessment process. Preliminary feedback from these responders suggests that the project saved hundreds of lives.
‘The lessons from Haiti are being put into action as we speak,’ says Lucy Bernholz, President of Blueprint Research Design. ‘CrisisCommons, Ushahidi and CrisisMapping are now a relied-upon part of our disaster response infrastructure. There are two important pieces of this - the technology that these organizations deploy and the human networks of volunteers and staff that they are weaving around the world. The result is scalable, flexible and "culturally creative" - as much of the human power comes from within the community being affected, whether that is Libya or Japan.’
The value of people power is echoed by Oxford MBA Claire Diaz Ortiz, who leads social innovation, philanthropy, and causes at Twitter. ‘Twitter provides a powerful platform to respond to humanitarian crises in real time and mobilise people to action. But it extends beyond this as well, giving global reach to real-time information coming from the ground. In Japan right now, as in Haiti, we are able to see clearly that the power of tools like Twitter rests in the hands of the people - the individuals and the organizations - using them.’
Kevin Starr, director of the Mulago Foundation, works to find the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. Mobile and other emerging technologies play a big role in those solutions, but he warns against indiscriminate enthusiasm: ‘For a technology to be part of a real solution, it has to answer to a real need, work well in real-life conditions, reach those who really need it, and be used correctly. The right technology can amplify the impact of a great idea, but a bad idea amplified by technology is just a louder bad idea.’
Starr is in Africa now, visiting a number of Mulago-supported organizations that happen to use mobile technology to increase their impact. ‘Mobile enables high-impact behavior: At Iteach in South Africa, HIV information tacked on to “please call me” SMS messages drives up testing rates. At Bridge International Academies, all financial transactions are electronic, virtually eliminating corruption. Nuru’s agriculture field officers use mobile platforms to transmit real-time data to drive operations. Because most poor farmers now have mobile phones, KickStart is able to sell irrigation pumps to farmers previously out of reach. In each case, mobile drives lasting impact by enabling something people already want to do.’
One organisation using mobile technology to create impact in Zambia is Mobile Transactions. It leverages the flexibility and availability of the mobile phone network enabling it to facilitate a growing number of financial services for those in rural areas or that the banks can’t or won’t service. Mike Quinn, Chief Executive Officer is a Skoll Scholar from the Oxford MBA programme. ‘We have about 14,000 consumer customers per month who send and receive money transfers through a network of retail agents at a reduced cost of the nearest competitor. The agents are able to place orders and pay for stock, disburse or receive microfinance loan repayments, and send or receive money transfers from end users, who can simply use these retail agents like ATM machines. It’s a quick, easy and safe way to extend access to financial services to everyone.’
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