To the individual in poverty, the paths out are unknown. In this situation and alone, he/she can only try directions out. If he is repeatedly disappointed in his attempts, he caves in. He cannot get out. In opposition, individuals can develop strategies where they share their findings, coordinate their decisions and explore together their ways out. Our NGO grew out of a mathematical model we developed at the MIT for such coordination games. Since, we’ve been playing them in Brazil to find jobs (bring together our disparate, long searches into joint, quick searches) and to repair homes (our disparate, costly repairs into neighborhood, cheap repairs).

Job Games: A choice of activity (courses, certifications...) is also a probing of a neighborhood for knowledge on what works and what doesn’t. Through coordination, we can escalate what is probed to a degree many times beyond what anyone could try alone in their entire lifetime (the quality of our decisions following). By modeling the past movements of all players, the system predicts and coordinates their best future paths. Trying a recommended activity, the player (and his community) gain a little more information. So that with more people and more time, the community collectively maps (with increasing reliability) its neighborhood possibilities. The ensuing dynamics is akin to a scavenger hunt and very efficient - once players can predict the actions of one another they part in different directions and explore the entirety of the landscape quicker than alone.

Housing Games: The possibilities hide now not in the neighborhood, but in the neighbors. Fixing a faucet, putting a coat of paint in a wall, planting a tree, once again they are within reach if only the individual knew. The system recommends mutually-benefiting plans of joint action and let players send out invitations to act. Upcoming are christmas neighborhood decoration and samba band assembly games.

Instead of being imposed top-down, solutions in these games emerge from conversations between players. Mobile technology not only is the natural channel for these conversations, but also puts in touch both the necessary number of people (almost half of young urban Brazilians live in slums, 65% have cell phones), and the necessary type of people (locals with similar constraints and problems to solve).

Our initial thoughts were: our diverse, small-scale communities need to discover on their own what works on their diverse, small-scale economies. This way, effort will be connected to visible advancement, not disappointment. This way, we won’t have anyone that is willing to work hard living in such demeaning conditions simply because they don’t know something. And today, as our communities set in coordinated motion, it’s observing the unfolding of this unlikely ‘justice’ (the increasing correlation of effort and success) that makes us think they are becoming places of their own, in poverty but not of poverty, a thousand small lands of opportunities.

Policymakers in developing countries promote wide-coverage programs that fight poverty and fight social exclusion. They have to spend money, while doing it wisely to avoid inefficiencies and corruption, resorting to costly bureaucracies to monitor program execution. This project intends to use low-cost mobile technology to improve the efficiency of public programs through better monitoring and evaluation. The technology can also be used to reach the poor for services, such as microfinancing and microinsurance.
The nearly universal coverage in developing countries like Mexico, make cell phones an ideal communication tool. Economies of scale and the advance of technology make today’s cell phones as powerful as computer desktops we had only a few years ago. Inexpensive phones today have internet connectivity, photo, video and voice recording capabilities.
Our software is being used to supervise a public program that allows any citizen to open up a publicly-funded family day-care. Day cares have been created everywhere, from the urban neighborhoods of Mexico City to the indigenous villages of Chiapas. The Ministry of Social Development hired us to develop technology to apply a national satisfaction survey and supervise physical and safety conditions. The project hired 170 “supervisors” of varying skill and education and provided them with a $50 cell phone with the installed software (which is based on open-source and supervisors could download updates themselves) to conduct the study.
Survey results and pictures were delivered and monitored in real time. Researchers were able to relay any information about hazardous conditions, child abuse or neglect. Pictures were sent for full assessment.  The technology allowed for monitoring of the supervisors (i.e. knowing when a very short visit had been conducted). The project was a success: it provided an efficient way to gather information from remote areas whose public programs often go unsupervised and quality is not assured.

MobiChange will be an open-source, multi-lingual mobile social networking platform, accessible by voice and SMS, designed to support local communities and enable social change.

The MobiChange project will have three parts --

1. An open source code base for a multilingual mobile social network designed on the basis of extensive ethnographic research, to be accessed almost exclusively by voice and SMS (MobiChange).

2. A Drupal-based community website to discuss how such a platform may help non-profits engage local communities and mobilize social change (www.mobichange.org).

3. A hosted ad-supported consumer version of the mobile social network, built on the MobiChange platform, designed for mass market adoption ( www.mobitalk.org).

www.mobitalk.org will be our main source of revenue.

MobiChange will work closely with grassroots non-profits working with disadvantaged local communities to build a code base and user interface that is flexible enough to be customized for development-oriented applications in the areas of education, activism, advocacy and micro-enterprise.

It will be the first social networking experience for millions of mobile phone users who have limited ease with English and use a $50 mobile phone as their only computing device. It will allow them to do some of the things we take for granted on social networks — meeting new people with common interests, benefiting from new opportunities for learning and earning, even sharing their own knowledge and skills with others.

A desired outcome will be the effective use of the Mobichange platform at a grassroots level to self-organize, coordinate and mobilize activities relevant to the community.

MobiChange will subsequently release its open source code base and train non-profits in emerging Asia and Africa to use it as a powerful development tool.

The only media currently reaching most remote mountain communities arrives via shortwave radios that offer no opportunity for community output. This media isolation is linked to a lack of political representation, transparency and accountability made worse by the fact that mountain people often do not speak the colonial languages of policymakers. Furthermore, illiteracy impedes communication even among regional communities. These barriers make political participation difficult at all levels of governance.

Given the strong traditions of oral knowledge transmission in mountain communities, video statements with translated subtitles and multilingual web capability are powerful and relevant tools in navigating the linguistic and geographic barriers these communities face to political representation on local, national and international levels. Videophones are practical, economic, and effective tools to record the content of these videos in remote areas. To these ends, Mountain Media will provide the training, equipment, and business strategies necessary to make videophone media production a self-sustaining tool in two indigenous communities in Peru: Pisac, a small town located in the Sacred Valley outside of Cusco; and the Communities of Q’eros, an extremely isolated mountain community in the high Andes.

To accomplish its goals in each community, Mountain Media will arrange tutorials between local film professionals and two members of each community to train them as community media experts. Once trained, the media experts will integrate weekly classes into the local school curriculum at local production studios powered with solar panels and connected via satellite Internet. Mountain Media will produce a clear protocol for replication in other mountain areas, hopefully one day leading to an exchange of self-expressed experiences and ideas among the global community of mountain peoples.

Our project is about family connections – thus the name, FamConex.

We plan to test mobile phone technology to preserve cultural and family ties, support adolescent identity formation, and document changes in culture among children whose families live on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Among the families we are working with, one branch of the family came to the US long ago, invited as part of a program to hire agricultural workers. Members of these branches are legally in this country; many are US citizens.

Still the families have close ties in both countries. Regardless of how established they may be in a US metropolitan area, the soul of family life may be rooted in a small village in Mexico. Families are likely to return to Mexico for significant life events - to be married, to celebrate a daughter’s 15th birthday, to be buried.

Our hope is to provide families with a network of mobile phones capable of running social media applications such as Twitter. Ideally we would then be able to test the efficacy of various social media applications, gathering quantitative data on the ways in which family and cultural ties, along with identity markers, are supported by the media. We would gather qualitative data as well.

As a pilot, we would begin with five sets of iPhones, with five phones on each side of the border. We would then place all users into a Twitter group and ask them to provide us with information on group use. Over the course of the year we would test at least one other social media technology with the iPhone. This pilot project would help us identify any issues that the project might run into, and would tell us whether our idea is feasible.

We are looking for free, off the shelf applications where possible, and find that these are available among the third party applications developed for the iPhone. Twitter is a good example of what we are looking for: members of our participating families can “follow” one another, and can allow us to follow them during the data collection period. Mobile Facebook is another answer.

There may be other applications down the line that may not even have been developed yet. We think that by collecting data on which aspects of mobile communication might support our goals, we and others will be in better shape to identify the most useful technologies for our purposes in the future.

Opening communication in repressive societies is key to empowering today’s citizens to work together for a peaceful and sustainable tomorrow. Giving communities the ability to make decisions for themselves and helping to facilitate dialogue has staggering implications for human rights and for attaining benchmarks such as the Millennium Development Goals. Digital technology can help bridge linguistic, geographic and cultural divides that have traditionally seperated people, allowing them to coordinate work, share resources and ideas, and communicate with local, regional and global audiences.

Our project is the Virtual Community Center (VCC). VCC is an open-source social networking web platform designed for community-based organizations.  Similar in principle to traditional community centers, VCC is a place for groups to come together. As a secure, multi-lingual, open source platform, organizations can connect, communicate and share resources through computers and mobile phones. It features mapping, blogging, data exchange and links to other tech tools. The website will be developed, maintained and edited in collaboration with border-based local partners.

VCC is an electronic hub that also connects other interactive program modules including participatory education programs, etc. It will strengthen social bonds within and among communities, fostering networking and civic participation to improve lives.

VCC’s pilot works with In their homeland, it is illegal for people to assemble in groups of more than 5 at a time. As many as 3.5 million Burmese have been displaced from Burma, according to Refugees International. Those living as refugees in neighboring countries are unable to travel freely to meet and organize. VCC provides a place for communities to work together more efficiently and effectively for a better tomorrow.

Problem: Today, needy individuals in remote communities of the developing world lack affordable means to communicate directly with (potential) benefactors/patrons and vice versa. They have to rely on a limited number of non-profits or local patrons. Access to these local entities is difficult and they in-turn might have resource constraints.

Solution: The smsvani idea will bridge this gap and allow local needs to be broadcast (via sms) to a global audience (via internet). In short, smsvani is an sms2web message board.

Scope: In developing countries, Sms is viable since mobile phone penetration (30%) is more than the Internet penetration (3%). Needs may take the form of goods, services or monetary support. For example our sms-based messageboard platform will enable a contribution of ten dollars to a school 8,000 miles away so that the school can purchase twenty school uniforms or children’s lunches for a whole week.

SMSvani Cycle

1. Need Broadcast: Individuals or communities broadcast their needs to smsvani’s website via an sms. (eg: “local school kids need pencils”)  2. Need Aggregation: Smsvani will automatically classify “needs” by category (health, education etc) and geography (google maps, see video).  (eg “education”)   3.Need Matching (analogous to adwords): Registered benefactors/non-profits visit  smsvani portal and address a need. 4. Execution, Progress tracking: A local non-profit might mediate and address the need with the concurrent support from a wide pool of potential donors (eg: Upon obtaining the pencils or cash to buy pencils patron receives an update) 

One of the greatest problems which is faced during the successful implementation of the Development Schemes is lack of proper awareness about them amongst the target beneficiaries and if they need it would cost them a lot of time and money just to get the information. Our project aims to change the scenario of widespread ignorance about these Schemes by means of a centralized information system. The project aims to bridge this gap and spread awareness so that there is a wider reach of the development programmes and the poor may be able to avail all its benefits. This information dissemination to the public as per the project proposal would involve establishment of around 35 Call Centers across the country having a Toll Free number.

So the idea is to give free of cost information to them and also spread awareness at the same time. This idea would work both on the push and pull theory. The Push theory involves spreading of awareness of Existence of various Schemes via SMS (mobile advertising) to the mobile customers on a regular basis. As per the Pull theory the Call Centre executives of each State specific Call Centre would be trained to cater to the needs of the callers  by providing them any information related to the Schemes which is applicable in that area/region.

The project would involve establishing one call center operating in each State/UT enabling smooth and clear transition of information about the Centre/State/Local government run Schemes in the various sectors such as education, employment, welfare, health, and infrastructure, in their respective regional languages to the Callers. The data comprising all the schemes and their benefits will be collected and stored in one location (Centralized Server) and will be distributed to the various Call Centers (decentralized) operating in different states as and when required by a Caller.

We envisage that the project would be having the following impacts in the long term:

v     Creating knowledge is bliss scenario and hence an increased number of beneficiaries claiming the benefit of the schemes and thus a better life for them in the long term.

v     Also it would help in establishing transparency into the implementation system as ignorance about the schemes and their features is one of the greatest corruption enablers.  It can help in positive modification of the schemes as per the actual needs of the poor.

Large solar panel packages are expensive, require extensive training and maintenance programs, and are almost always provided to local communities free of charge through donor or government funding. Although most solar equipment is extremely reliable and include 20-25 year warranties, the lack of training, community involvement, and sense of community ownership of the equipment have resulted in over 70% of solar packages in Africa failing within five years of installation.* Through One Degree Solar, clean energy will not only be a tool for development, but a catalyst for sustainable and continued growth.

Goals

• To provide affordable, clean technology products to individual consumers, schools, health facilities, small- and medium-size businesses, NGOs, and micro-finance institutions.

• To reduce energy costs for the world’s poorest communities and create opportunities for economic growth through increased access to lighting and other energy-related prerequisites for development.

• To generate income within these communities using clean energy (crank and/or solar) products including, but not limited to, radios, phone chargers, flashlights and general lighting, and battery chargers.

• To address the market need and demand for rechargeable batteries of all sizes and battery recharging services. Using solar energy for such services would virtually eliminate operating costs, thus drastically increasing profits for store owners and lowering costs for consumers.

• To create jobs for small business owners and individuals who sell clean energy products and provide services using these products

Products Tested

• Solar powered universal battery charger; lunchbox size. Charges AAA to D size batteries used in existing radios, flashlights, and headlamps.

• Solar car battery charger; briefcase size. Car batteries are used to power small stores and homes.

• Battery powered headlamp. Cost effective lighting for health professionals, school children, as well as average individuals and families.

• Solar and crank powered radio. Radio is the primary means for government and UN to relay news.

*based on interviews with energy experts from major multilateral donor agencies

Participants take ownership of their "neighborhood". Neighborhoods can overlap and participants can "borrow" freely from other neighborhoods.

Entries ae guided by interpretations of the characters in Fred Roger's Neighborhood. That is one or more "neighborhoods are "seeded".

Input is by web form and text message. As least some input will be in simple entity-attribute-value format amenable to text message input.

Participants are encouraged so share information and assist each other. Some mentors will be seeded to assure that happens.

Participants are regarded by neighborhood "parties". In the process of observing neighborhoods, vendors will be solicited for party supplies. Neighbors can bring dishes to share.