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.

VillageSuite is a concept for a multi-user suite of applications focused on empowering people in developing countries whether urban or rural.  The applications focus on allowing users to utilize banking institutions, receive fairer prices for goods and crops, and increase literacy. 

 Applications include:

Mobile Banking- an application allowing users to utilize payments and transfer funds remotely since many Africans do not have access to bank institutions and are unaware of current mobile banking operations.

Market Prices - Ensures growers can get fair prices for their crops when many are unaware of current market prices by offering daily updated prices from local,  national, and regional markets.  

Store - A simple app utilizing (if available) a phone's camera  and simple interface for villagers to list items for sale from singular to bulk local or internationally. Included would be a payment system linked with the banking app to ensure villagers receive cash and has it protected.  Farmers could also use this app to inform buyers of harvests, overstock, and other sales items as well.

Reading - An application devoted to increasing literacy by teaching users how to read with audio and quick tests.

Math - Allows children to learn basic math concepts from adding and multiplication to more concept business related subjects.

Logistics - Bring drivers, pilots, and producers together with updated pickup, shipping, and delivery times as well as alerting each other of new orders and changed schedules to enhance efficiency and cut down  on cost.

The suite would have a multi-user interface to allow people to share the same device while not giving up privacy or security.  In case some users are illiterate, the icons will be user-friendly and clear of purpose as well as an audio byte in the native language the app's basic function when pressed.  This last feature can be turned off however would be the default. The software would be open-sourced so other developers could personalize and improve upon it as well as increase the availability via cost.

For too long, we have conducted development without good information about our “customers” – the people whose lives we want to improve through our money and effort. We believe this is because developing countries often lack good statistical information on which policy-makers, donors, and private companies can base sound decisions. To date, our knowledge has mostly been limited to expensive door-to-door surveying techniques or difficult phone interviews. The proliferation of mobile phones in developing countries opens the exciting possibility of surveys reaching far fewer people for far less money and providing income for the beneficiaries themselves.

In this system, text messages would be sent to mobile phone users with one or two question surveys, perhaps about health care, education, or even consumer preferences. To provide an incentive to reply, mobile phone credits or mobile banking payments will be issued in exchange for complete surveys. Backend analysis will be used to improve credibility of the results, a task which will be made easier by the large number of people reachable using this system.

Those data can then be used by local, regional or national governments to improve service delivery, by donors and multilaterals for analysis and reporting and even by private companies interested in serving the bottom of the pyramid.

The data platform itself could also have the added benefit of spurring on the spread of cell phones and mobile banking to underserved populations. Instead of being a service they have to pay for, they can be paid to have access to these technologies and financial products.

We have conducted over one year of research to advance this concept and have determined that many of the tools already exist but have never been aligned in quite the right way. We are looking for seed capital and partners to help us launch this exciting venture.

Dana Worth and John Stephenson, the project directors, have extensive experience in both the private and public sectors. We both started our careers at private sector strategy consulting firms and now work at Dalberg Global Development Advisors, a firm that applies business approaches to the challenges of development. Through our involvement with healthcare and humanitarian response works, we have been struck by how little data district, province, national and international decision-makers have at their disposal, and consequently, how many critical decisions were made based on old numbers of just plain gut-feeling.

Making Cents International’s recently developed Value Chain Analysis and Market Opportunities curriculum brings the world of value chains into perspective for young entrepreneurs, helping them to discover market opportunities and business relationships that are critical to sustainable business growth.  This curriculum provides students with the knowledge and experience they need to take their learning beyond the classroom and into their communities.  As a result of this course young people are able to conduct market surveys on their own, know what a value chain is and why it matters for the growth and management of their business, as well as understand how to respond to changes in the market.  The curriculum has been piloted in Senegal, Niger, and Sierra- Leone.    Leveraging the power of cell phone technology, Making Cents International seeks to further engage newly trained youth by presenting them the opportunity to join a mobile business network of entrepreneurs and market opportunity seekers.  With an estimated 4.123 million cell phone subscribers in Senegal, and 776,000 in Sierra Leone, information can be shared and disseminated with relative ease.  Furthermore, youth have a strong proclivity to join networks and to effectively utilize new technology.  As members of the “Youth-Cell” network youth will exchange local market information with other members spread across the entire region to help broker new transactions, share innovative ideas, and create business partnerships that will lead to greater market penetration.        The type of information found on the network might include real-time prices of sector related goods and services, a marketplace, ideas forum, and tips and trades “from youth like you!”  As the network and demand for services grows, other features will be added organically to meet the specific needs of the member users.  The Youth-Cell Market Opportunities project would be piloted in Senegal and Sierra-Leone with the vision of going global.

Cell phone usage has become a key part of Egyptian society, with an estimated 45 million mobile phone subscribers in Egypt and almost one million new subscribers added every month.  World Education, Inc. (WEI), an international leader in the design and use of non-formal education with eight years of experience in adult literacy, launched a small mobile phone pilot program that targets adult literacy in Cairo.  This 2007 pilot has shown that the use of mobile phones is a strong motivator for  women who sign up, continue attending classes, and remain in class long enough to pass the final literacy exam.  By mastering simple mobile phone skills such as using contact lists, text messaging, and calculations, learners do not need to rely on spouses, relatives, or friends to phone for them.  Building upon this successful pilot, WEI proposes the “Message Sent” project to use mobile phones to accelerate adult literacy learning.  This project will both develop tested mobile phone curricula for active learning of Arabic language and arithmetic in literacy classes and train adult literacy teachers in its use.  The project is designed with four main components: 1) learning how to use a cell phone; 2) learning the Arabic alphabet; 3) gaining a functional 300 word vocabulary; and 4) acquiring numeracy skills.   In the classroom, students will first learn how to use and read a cell phone, with respect to saving numbers, placing calls and accessing text messages.  They will then be introduced to the Arabic alphabet and numbers through the use of the keypad and tested curricula.  This learning will be built upon with the introduction of 300 vocabulary words relevant to cell phones, including text messaging, saving numbers and using mobile applications, like the calculator.  Finally, dialing numbers and calculator usage will be incorporated as important numeracy learning tools. The repetitive nature of cell phone use and very functional application of cell phone features can increase and ensure literacy retention.  Moreover, the high desire for cell phones as a cultural status symbol increases the drive for students to enroll in courses and retain literacy skills.  The “Message Sent” project is designed both to provide basic cell phone literacy and act as a launching pad for larger literacy efforts in Egypt, particularly among the illiterate female populations. 

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.

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.

This project is about a new paradigm in promoting educational development in third and fourth world countries.  Our organizations have been working in the realms of education in Haiti for nearly a decade.  We have been instrumental in providing the conduit for many children to attend and succeed in school, who otherwise would have not had the opportunity. 

 This project starts in the local communites with select project schools.  We intend to provide each student one of these laptops (see website) for their take home use.  This is their personal tool vital to completing homework, research, web browsing, etc...  This program is slated to begin immediately and in select communities in the South Department of Haiti. 

The Digital StudyHall (DSH) is an NGO that works on improving education for poor children in rural and slum schools in India. We film the best grassroots teachers teaching real classrooms and share the resulting DVDs with poor schools, which are given players and electrical equipment and trained to interact with their students during pauses of the films. (http://dsh.cs.washington.edu)

In this proposal, we discuss a complementary system aimed at "capturing" our students outside school hours. The submitted accompanying figure illustrates a "hybrid network" integrating cell phones and community radios. An example application that can be built on this network is a voice chat system that allows students and teachers from multiple "DSH villages" to "chat" across a long distance: participants can send "input" by simply placing cell phone calls to a "hub server," and receive "output" as they hear the entire community chatting on their regular FM radio receivers, which receive their signal from a local village FM transmitter, which is in turn driven by a local computer, acting as a village "base station," which in turn communicates with the "hub." The "hub" may be run by and embedded inside grassroots leadership organizations such as the schools. The hub runs an open-source PBX system.

Kids and trainee teachers from various villages, teachers and staff from the hubs, and even volunteers from the US may participate in such a "chat room," conducting a wide variety of educational activities, such as science questions and answers, story and book reading, math quiz and game shows, complementing in-class curricula. These chat sessions can also be digitally stored in a database, spliced, and re-used in the future. If properly tagged and organized, the saved content could evolve into something like an "audio-Wiki," benefiting other places at other times.

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