DevEx: “Three trends to watch in international development for 2012″
FrontlineSMS was featured in an article from DevEx this week, as part of a piece on the trends to watch in international development for 2012. You can find an extract of the article below, and the full piece can be found here. “As the world adjusts to seven billion people, and begins its creep toward eight billion, doing more with less will become increasingly important. Continuing economic stagnation and budgetary concerns in OECD countries... Read More
Mobile technology: Developing Africa?
Texting in Uganda/ Image: Ken Banks, kiwanja.net By Kike Oyenuga, FrontlineSMS Project Assistant The ICT4D community has often turned its head towards the potential role of mobile in African development. But a challenge posed by the Royal African Society at an event at London’s School of African and Oriental Studies last week was: “Are the claims that mobiles are aiding development as clear as they seem?” FrontlineSMS Founder, Ken Banks, participated... Read More
UN uses FrontlineSMS to help manage aid response in East Africa
By Lisa LaRochelle, FrontlineSMS Project Assistant FrontlineSMS is being used for social change in many different ways across the world. Common use case examples include election monitoring, provision of health information, and agricultural support – these kinds of use cases have direct positive impact on people’s lives. Yet here at FrontlineSMS we have seen increasing numbers using FrontlineSMS for organisational management, which has indirect... Read More
A Crowd-Seeding System in Eastern Congo: Voix des Kivus
With thanks to Ushahidi for letting us re-post the below from their blog. Guest blog post by Peter van der Windt, PhD candidate in Political Science at Columbia University focusing on Africa. Peter has been directly involved in Voix des Kivus from the start in 2009 when he presented the project (see video) at the International Conference on Crisis Mapping (ICCM 2009). More on Peter’s research, teaching and background available here. Voix... Read More
Facilitating Dialogue on Governance in Africa
Amy O'donnell meets Simon Cairns By Hussain Abdullah. Reposted from the FrontlineSMS:Radio blog The increasing penetration of mobile telephony in Africa is widening opportunities for people to take part in discussions about governance. Radio is a widespread medium through which communities can tune-in to listen to debates on topics such as health, the environment and politics. FrontlineSMS:Radio is a software which is being designed to help... Read More
English in Action: Mobile Learning in Bangladesh
This post is the latest in the FrontlineSMS Mobile Message series with National Geographic. To read a summary of the Mobile Message series click here. In her role as the Content Producer for the SOCAP conference series, Amy Benziger has the opportunity to interview innovators from around the world on how they are changing the landscape of social enterprise. For this installment of Mobile Message, she interviews Sara Chamberlain, project director... Read More
What is your Mobile Message? Sharing ideas via National Geographic
Photo credit: Ken Banks, kiwanja.net “Today, with over 500 million mobile subscribers across Africa alone, and more people around the world owning a phone than not, mobile phones seem to be everywhere,” points out FrontlineSMS founder Ken Banks in the opening post of our National Geographic blog series: Mobile Message. There has been a remarkable growth in mobile phone use in recent years, and increasingly mobile phones are being used for... Read More
FrontlineSMS:Legal – Running Justice’s House
By Sean McDonald. Re-posted from FrontlineSMS:Legal blog “Every day, dozens, if not hundreds, of people line up in front of each Justice House, seeking help to resolve life’s challenges. They wait, patiently, for hours, to approach the information desk, where they receive a simple intake form (name, age, gender, address, mobile phone number, cause of complaint, etc.). This form is then handed back to a lone information desk attendant,... Read More
User support remains priority as FrontlineSMS team grows
FrontlineSMS has recently appointed Florence Scialom into the role of Community Support Coordinator, to focus on connecting and supporting the dynamic global community of those using our software. Here, Florence shares what drew her to work at FrontlineSMS, and outlines the plans she has for her new role. FrontlineSMS user map: Add yourself via our community forum http://frontlinesms.ning.com/ “Inevitably, many small and innovative start-ups... Read More
Announcing the “Mobile Message”
Over the past year or so, it’s become increasingly clear to us that we need to take the “mobile message” out of its technology silo and make it more available – and accessible – to a wider audience. This was the thinking behind our regular series on PC World, and is the thinking behind a new series we’re launching today in collaboration with National Geographic. The “Mobile Message” is aimed at a broad... Read More
