The WTS (Wireless Trading System) aims to assist in alleviating financial exclusion and help poverty reduction using text message on the mobile phone to access stock market facilities and other financial services.Access to financial services has been recognised as a key factor for economic growth and development especially in developing countries and emerging markets.In these locations, financial services are only used by a section of the population with access being a prohibiting factor for people in rural regions.The system leverages on the global success of money transfer remittances engaging migrant communities, internationally to purchase stocks and other financial products on behalf of the recipient in the developing country. The stocks are managed by the recipient in the developing country, through the use of the mobile phone receiving news alerts, information, stockbroker advice, services and making enquiries via text messaging.Sending funds through remittance assists the recipient with immediate financial challenges, this solution not only aids the recipient financially, also enables the recipient to be educated about the benefits of investment for long term financial sustainability.

This innovative concept takes remittances to the next level and has the following key advantages and benefits.

It is designed as a promising solution to help increase access to financial services using low-cost mobile technology, convenience and accessibility to serve customers in remote locations worldwide.

It provides financial institutions with a platform to introduce new products, cost effectively to the financially excluded which in turn lowers the access cost, which has hitherto served as a deterrent for the disadvantaged groups.

Through mobile technology it assists with poverty reduction through the empowerment of the local community with financial services from banking to insurance and financial investments.

It educates the local community on the use of financial products through text message, helps bridge the digital divide through the use of mobile technology and aims to provide self sufficiency. The challenges and opportunities of this project are indeed vast.

 The project is led by a team of three professionals with over ten years of experience in financial services and mobile telecommunications..

There is a big need for more and better education, to find ways out of poverty and to give all the children of our country, a chance to a good life.

E-learning or web based learning and education has big potential. The ICT opens great possibility in this regard, but to become efficient and stimulating and at the same time to guarantee good quality education you will need a strategy about how to do? eduBangla is building a platform to facilitate and collect the educational contents, use and re-use it further.

eduBangla’s mission is to ensure a social platform based on wiki model for development of contributory knowledge base, encompassing all facets of educational and learning requirements – formal and informal. Our special emphasis is to reach the general people, specially the rural community.

The whole idea is the most limitless vision of learning –to be able to reach anyone, anywhere, anytime, and incorporate anything that will advance the learning goal. That e-learning process can be implemented through the Web Portal, Networked Learning Environment. A united platform required for a true Networked Learning Environment, such platform could enable learning communities to bring the course material/content online and access it anywhere and from any device — the Internet, wireless PDAs, mobile handset through the GPRS/EDGE or SMS and more. Interactive Flash movie/animation based e-learning system, Graphics, Text/Contents, Audio/Video can be distributed through CD, web or through some Resource Center with our own facility or with partnership basis. We do not want to reinvent the wheel.

eduBangla.com will be One Single Platform for every educational institute, researcher, research institute, student, scholars and who ever wants to learn. in Bangla as well as in English. With such idea an Unlimited Educational/Learning Possibilities can be ensured.

  . International local language software solution for multi platform  like  Desktop, Laptop  Specially Mobile based solution  for Simbian, Android T-Mobile ,iphone ,Flashlight for Mac Window Linux users It can be online websites and offline Interactive software/ Games which will be platform independent, like computer, Laptop, mobile etc. as well as Operating system independent, Window, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Mobile.

WHAT, WHERE, WHY: PROJECT OVERVIEW
Mobile Voices is an academic-community partnership to research and design a digital networking platform for low wage immigrants in LA to publish stories about their lives and their communities directly from their mobile phones. This low-cost, open source, customizable, and easy to deploy multimedia mobile storytelling platform is being designed in collaboration with its users, to help recent immigrants who lack computer access gain greater participation in the digital public sphere. In parallel, our research team is studying and documenting participatory approaches to building and deploying low-cost new media, explore how storytelling helps community building and organizing, and investigate how emerging media tools can best be leveraged to promote digital inclusion and assist marginalized groups.

Our project outputs will include a mobile-customized version of the popular free and open source content management system Drupal; a free and open source application for low-cost mobile handsets; and a popular communication toolkit for grassroots mobile organizing. In addition, the documentation and research we are doing to inform similar or future projects will include a case study on participatory technology design; pre- and post- evaluations of communication skills and practices among the partner community; a systematic review of existing mobile services for organizing and advocacy efforts; and a participatory evaluation of the project's impact.

Mobile Voices is also a hands-on workshop where curriculum design is a participatory, iterative process: the initial team of day laborers develops teaching materials, including short clips that can be shared via mobile phones, and later trains other teams around the city at day labor centers managed by the community partner.

WHO:

1) PROJECT PARTNERS:Mobile Voices is a collaboration between the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California (ARNIC - http://arnic.info), and the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California (IDEPSCA - http://idepsca.org), a nonprofit serving low-income Latino immigrants in Los Angeles. IDEPSCA organizes six day laborer centers and corners throughout the city of Los Angeles, has a health program which seeks to increase awareness of the workers health rights, health access, health and safety, advocacy, and alternative medicine, an environmentally friendly women’s cooperative, an alternative K-3 school using popular education methodology, a teen group in Pasadena who are involved in changing the school system, and a parents group fighting for equitable education. Research team members have experience with technology-based and open source media projects (including Indymedia, FilmAid International, and the Chiapas Media Project), and we are drawing on USC colleagues for specialty programming talent. In addition, we are receiving expert advice from the creators of Zexe.net (a network of collectives reporting from cell phones), Mologogo.com (a location aware social application), and technical experts at UC San Diego.
All core team members are bilingual, and several have experience with open source and other community media projects. We work with Bay Area Drupal developer Mark Burdett and Canadian web collective Koumbit.net. Together, our team draws on an extensive international network of coders, designers, researchers, and community organizers for support.

2) TARGET PARTICIPANTS & AUDIENCE: The primary target participants and audience are low-wage immigrant workers and the community-based organizations that work with them, beginning with IDEPSCA and day laborers in LA. At a later stage, the project will expand to additional community-based organizations in LA. We have begun building relationships with community-based organizations that work with other immigrant communities in LA, in anticipation of future project rollout beyond IDEPSCA. This includes organizations that work with LA’s Korean, Pilipino, and South Asian communities. Beyond that, the target is any community where the mobile phone is the primary means of two-way communication. These groups of people will gain access to a free, open source, mobile storytelling platform, as well as training materials on how to use it. Researchers, ICT4D projects, and technology designers are a secondary target, and will be able to learn from our experience in participatory technology design, deployment, and evaluation. Our project's tools will be distributed via our ties to progressive funders that support community-based organizations around the country, such as Funding Exchange partners. Our research findings will be disseminated via academic publications, conference presentations, and via the ARNIC network. Both our toolkit and research reports will be circulated among the ICT4D community, for example through the ARNIC website as well as through our ties to the Association for Progressive Communications, the Global Knowledge Partnership, LIRNE Asia, and DIRSI. We will also contribute regularly to the popular mobile activism blog http://mobileactive.org. Finally, our ties to the Journalism department at the Annenberg School of Communication will help us amplify project stories and visibility in the mass media (print and broadcast).

WHEN:
By the start of 2010, some 60 day laborers will be part of a network for community and public discourse, sharing skills and local narratives through audiovisual material captured on cell phones. In Spring 2010, Mobile Voices will expand to other immigrant communities in Los Angeles. By Summer 2010, a Mobile Voices toolkit that bundles all software and curriculum, designed for easy localization, customization, and scaling, will be made freely available for wide distribution.

FOR MORE INFO:
Read Alex Steed's interview at http://www.netsquared.org/blog/alexsteed/interview-fran%C3%A7ois-bar-mob...

PROJECT URLS:
http://blog.vozmob.net -  research blog
http://wiki.vozmob.net -  project wiki
http://class.vozmob.net -  USC class wiki
http://tags.vozmob.net -   del.icio.us tags for ‘vozmob’
http://list.vozmob.net -  project mailing list
http://devlist.vozmob.net – development mailing list archive
http://dev.vozmob.net/ -   project management: bugs, features requests, tasks
http://code.vozmob.net -  github code repository

Citizen guardianship over public-interest information channels is essential to democratic debate and socially responsible media policy change. Independent, noncommercial and community media are struggling to survive while multi-billion dollar industries grow more powerful from the cables they run under the public roads and the licenses they use to broadcast on public airwaves, fighting off public obligations at every step. How can we create an environment where diverse media thrive? This is about how and what we communicate. Today's emerging information technologies have the potential to connect the world as never before. New media tools enable us to share solutions, strengthen cultures, and create new levels of accountability and transparency in governments and corporations, as well as, among social change organizations. THIS PROJECT could make local, regional national, and international media advocacy activities accessible to anyone interested in holding information gatekeepers in check. It would provide concerned citizens with 1) tools to feedback to broadcast, cable, satellite, radio and internet content decision-makers, 2) tools for messaging policy makers, and 3) motivation to transform individual viewers/receivers/"consumers" into participating media rights advocates by provide opportunities to get involved. THE PROJECT would also address a pressing need among media advocacy players in the U.S. Accessing information about partnerships, collaborations, new initiatives, etc. is klunky and time-consuming. Bridge-building between and among advocates across regions and issues is timely, if not urgent in today's media landscape. The widest gulf exists between grassroots and local media justice organizations and Washington D.C. Policy change efforts. The connection between scholarly research and community advocacy is developing, yet improving knowledge of and access to organizations would expedite productivity (and therefore, positive policy change). THIS PROJECT could minimally, be the gateway to more efficient networking, alliance and partnership initiatives and collaboration. Funders and/or investors would use the service to gain pertinent information about media issues or potential grantees. This mashup would help strengthen media movements, and ultimately be the e-support of efforts that preserve the free expression of diverse perspectives.

With this mashup, we will close the digital divide. However, though this is a lofty and important goal, this project takes the important step of connecting the digital divide to the larger issue of poverty. It's easy to talk about Internet access; politicians of all stripes agree that people should have access to the Internet, even if they disagree on what to do about it. In cities all across the country and at all levels of government, people or committees are discussing how to expand access to the Internet. This tool leverages the widespread comfort with that one issue to open much more challenging discussions about poverty, racism, community health, and financial justice.