Many of the children in this village had lost one if not both of their parents but despite the extreme poverty were taken in by other members of the village who could not even feed themselves. One elderly woman was found simply lying on the floor of her shelter, blind and too ill to fend for herself and looked after by her daughter with club hands who was also deaf and could not speak.

Another woman had recently given birth and was found looking after her many young children which is a very demanding job for any parent. However after almost 20 minutes of discussion it was discovered that a few days earlier the baby had died through a very treatable condition. There was no help or support available to this mother who then had to just carry on surviving.

After this village was discovered, another volunteer I had met from America donated $1,000 to buy the village food and medical supplies. This will not last forever and although they now have the support of an amazing project already in place, they can not afford to support both themselves and the village.

Upon arriving back in the UK I have decided to make it my mission to get back out there and help these people be able to feed themselves and give them every opportunity to live and not just survive.

I wish to:

• provide them with food and water until they can sustain themselves
•  learn about and then teach some simple farming methods which could make a massive difference to their lives.
• get their children in to education.
• help them learn new skills.
• open as many opportunities as possible.

I know this is a major task to take on and will not happen over night but I truly beleive that it is possible. Cambodia is a wonderful place full of wonderful people who just need a helping hand to get them in the right direction.

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.

What:
This project will build a modular flood early warning application, which will push SMS messages to people downstream of a flood event in real time. Using inputs from stream gauges (if available), satellite remote sensing of river discharge and flooding, and the local topography and hydrology, we propose to create a GIS-based application that will interpret these inputs and automatically blanket an area with a high probability of flooding with early warning SMS messages. This application could give poor rural villages in large parts of the world up to 24 hours of advance notice that a flood event is coming, and will be flexible enough to work with basic inputs and be independent of cell phone providers. As a pilot project, we intend on working with our colleagues at ekgaon technologies (http://www.ekgaon.com/) in the Terai region straddling the Nepal-India border focusing on the Rohini and Bagmati river basins.

Why:
One sixth of the global population lives in the potential path of a 100-year flood, many in developing countries with increasing mobile phone penetration. Many developing nations have seen cell phone usage quadruple in the last decade, and large numbers of poor rural villagers have access to a cell phone through a reseller nearby. A flood early warning SMS application could reach most people in the path of a flood with access to a mobile phone, and give them time to get their possessions, their livestock, and their families out of the way of catastrophic flood. This application could be applied globally, and with simple inputs, it could be used anywhere where SMS messages can be received.

Why:
NiJeL – Community Impact Through Mapping: NiJeL helps people around the globe tell their stories through maps and mobile technology. Leading this project, NiJeL will build the flood early warning SMS application for global application wherever satellite data and a mobile phone network are available.
ekgaon technologies – One Village One World: ekgaon strives to provide farmers, villagers and local tradespeople with access to the information and communication services and tools they need to be able to contribute their knowledge to the modern world. As a part of this project, ekgaon will help facilitate connections to local groups in our pilot project area, the Terai region of Nepal-India.

Light Up The World (LUTW) has completed an initial prototype of a specialized LED based lighting system powered by renewable energy designed for use in medical and dental situations in the developing world. Medical and dental professionals in the developing world typically rely on fuel-based lighting systems when they are providing health care services at night. The light produced from these traditional systems is dim and diffuse, making it difficult for these professionals to provide quality care after sundown. We have designed and developed a specialized lighting system that is particularly useful for such situations when vision is critical to the success of a medical or dental procedure.

This project will act as:

• an alternative to fuel-based systems in health care situations in the third world;
• the solution for medical light in emergency aid locations in the case of an earthquake or other natural disasters where power is unavailable or unsafe;
• provide bright light;
• reduce the health risk posed by fuel-based lighting systems.

The availability of bright light from our lighting systems will enable medical and dental professionals to provide quality health care services after sundown. For example, the use of our systems in medical clinics will ensure that nighttime emergencies can occur in a bright, safe environment. Additionally, the availability of bright light from our systems will facilitate non-emergency medical care in the evenings, like community-based vaccination programs. Lastly, these lighting systems will be portable, which means that they can be moved during disaster situations ensuring that medical/dental care can be provided 24 hours a day when it is needed the most.

This project's aim is to provide refugees the possibility of giving information of their position through easy web mechanisms, using webforms in html, chtml, xhtml-mp and wml. This will cover all the used markups for accessing the mobile web. Also, in order to help the ones without the chance of browsing the mobile Internet, a SMS system might be useful to be developed.

But the core of this idea is to provide the relatives of those refugees ways of retrieving that position data in a easy way. This will mitigate their stress, because you suffer a lot when a relative is lost in the middle of a crisis. So because of this problem, this idea wants to provide efficient ways of at least knowing that they're alive and safe.

Also, I want to provide tools to coordinate and manage the donations given by the donors. That way, they will know that on a certain spot are needed certain type of things, so they might distribute goods according to the actual necessities.

Another interesting point of this idea is that this software will contribute to track and trace the path of the donations, so if it “vanish” at any point of the chain (or if there are delays in the delivery times), that place will be properly identified. The idea is that people knows that the donations are being traced, it will reduce robberies to precious material that refugees absolutely need.

And in order to do that track & trace in an efficient and easy way, mobiles will be employed. So beyond simple webforms that gave possibility to gather information, the possibilities of employing qr codes and datamatrix codes will be developed. In theory, this will be helpful, because only with a photo shot of a mobile, the data contained in those bidimensional codes will be inputed in a fast and easy way, which results in a more efficient time management. The only downsize of this idea is that only the most moder devices count with a camera, so this might be a problem if we do not provide other ways of inputing the information.

Why CoordinAid

  The complexity and urgency of humanitarian crises creates serious challenges in locating and delivering the appropriate supplies and materials to the intended beneficiaries in time and at the right price.  Delays, overpayments, corruption, and missed opportunities to work with local businesses are all examples of obstacles that hamper immediate relief efforts while short-changing the cause of longer-term development.  The use of information technology including web and mobile methods of providing real-time information and matching supply and demand can provide immediate benefits to the humanitarian relief community.

  CoordinAid aims to address these short term and long term challenges.  By leveraging existing web- and mobile-based technologies, CoordinAid will augment disparate efforts by humanitarian aid organizations in such a way that improves responsiveness, reduces costs, and increases the empowerment of local communities to enable longer term solutions that prevent future crises and reduce international dependencies. 

What is CoordinAid?

  CoordinAid is a web application that aggregates aid shipment requests from humanitarian relief organizations, creating bulk shipments which maximize transport capacities, lowering overall costs.  This automated software solution will enable the visualization of aggregated shipment contents in real-time, revealing supply shortages before they occur. 

  CoordinAid will enlist or partner with on-the-ground relief coordinating actors (UN, NGO’s, local government, individuals) who can interact with the system via mobile-based SMS text messaging.  These agents will be able to send specific information about material needs, as well as see what shipments are coming in order to coordinate effective distribution.  Organizations will track their shipments' progress from real-time agent updates via SMS, and will be immediately alerted about specific needs, drastically reducing shipment turnaround times. 

  CoordinAid's long term goal is to empower these local agents to proactively coordinate future aid efforts within local government, business and civil society ecosystems without furthering dependence on international aid.

When and Where?

  CoordinAid will initially target pilot testing in countries already receiving significant humanitarian assistance, such as Uganda, Chad, or Haiti.  This will allow proper testing of the concept.  Once the model is proven, CoordinAid can be expanded into targeted regions as appropriate.

Connecting Refugees harnesses online social networking and mobile technology tools to aid refugees in resettlement. Our goal is to connect and impact the world's most disenfranchised people to others outside their refugee community and those who serve them. Our project is global in scope as refugees are all over the world along with the people who serve them. Often refugees struggle with learning about their new country, adding undue stress to an already stressful situation. Our project connects these refugees with others who share stories, video, photos, and their experiences about settling in the new country and enables refugees to connect with one another. Through these connections we will help ease fears and anxieties about resettlement and foster global connections. Our project will also connect humanitarian aid workers with resettlement resources and others going similar work. Both refugees and aid workers will be able to upload their own content to our project Ning site (http://connectingrefugees.ning.com) making it a continuously updated resource that is open 24 hours a day/7 days a week, and available in one place. The Ning web site can be accessed through an Internet browser (i.e., Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera Mobile, etc.) and via a web site designed for mobile phones (http://connectingrefugees.ning.com/m). In addition to the online social network, our project will purchase Internet-ready mobile phones to distribute to refugee camp workers to spread access to the network and enhance connections.

VOTE is a mobile enabling the needs of blind and 'deaf and dumb' too. Developing a voice-activated mobile which would convert their speech into messages that may be read by other users including 'deaf and dumb' enables mobile usage to everyone. This voice activated message would convert the person’s voice (predominantly blind) into text messages which may be sent through a click.
WHO is benefited?
This project mainly aims at the needs of blind and 'deaf and dumb'. This can be used in any mobile and can be developed as software in all these devices. A unique system of  "message into voice " enabling the 'deaf and dumb' to communicate with the blind thereby developing a complete system for both .
WHO is working?
 The squad consists of 3 students working on the project VOTE.
WHAT is done?
BLIND to DEAF AND DUMB
The blind speaks out the message he wants to communicate. This is now translated into text message that can be read by the ‘deaf and dumb’ .This is done using a voice-activated system.
DEAF AND DUMB to BLIND
The ‘deaf and dumb’ messages as a normal person do on a mobile. This message is converted to a voice using a software app that the blind can hear. Here we have an added advantage where the ‘deaf and dumb’ not only communicates with the blind but even with the normal human.
This facilitates the ‘deaf and dumb’ to communicate with any person in the world and vice-versa. Here the normal person can even communicate by just conversing rather than typing out the message.
WHEN and WHERE?
Our mission began in September 2008 with the apex of the objective, providing a communiqué for the blind, 'deaf and dumb'.

Our goal is to have almost all of the work done by early 2009 in our workplace.
WHY is it needed?
 Almost 98% in the world use mobiles. To cater the needs of the remaining 2%  predominantly consisting of ‘deaf and dumb’, blind ,this venture has been undertaken Using this platform, we would like to add some more rich enhancements thus making mobile technology wide-reaching
Impact: VOTE will have a great impact on the society of non-mobile users and will urge them to have mobiles too. It breaks the barriers of communication gap developed between the people.

Project Background

The Child Malnutrition Surveillance and Famine Response project is an effort by a team of six students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) to use mobile technology solutions to improve the speed and quality of nutrition surveillance data for children in Malawi. The work will involve a pilot study to replace the paper/mail data collection process currently in use at Malawi’s child growth monitoring clinics with instantaneous data transmission via mobile devices.

The project will enable the Government of Malawi, UNICEF Malawi, and their partners to geographically map and track child malnutrition trends accurately and in real time. This tool will provide a critical means of intervention into rapidly unfolding food and nutrition crises. If successful, the pilot will serve as a model to scale up the use of mobile devices in other nutrition and food security surveillance systems worldwide.

The Problem

The country’s current Integrated Nutritional and Food Security Surveillance System is designed to serve as an early warning system for impending food and nutrition security crises. 70 child participants within each district are randomly selected to be measured at growth monitoring clinics by health workers on a monthly basis. Currently, the data is collected on paper forms and then sent through district health managers to a central office in Lilongwe, where they are entered into separate Excel-based datasets for nutrition and food security. Yet the system faces several challenges:

• Delays in transmission of data: there is currently a two month delay between data collection at health clinics and analysis at the government and NGO level, since data is recorded on paper and sent via mail to a centralized location.

• Poor data quality: since the paper data collection forms are frequently lost or contain illegible handwriting, datasets are often incomplete or contain many nonsensical outliers.

• Participant defaulting: there is little incentive for caregivers to travel long distances with their children to the health clinics to participate in the survey.

Since chronic and widespread child malnutrition remains a serious problem in Malawi, the shortcomings of the system are a serious threat to the country’s ability to anticipate and plan for current and future nutrition and food security crises.

The Solution

Our project will adapt a mobile-based monitoring system based on UNICEF's RapidSMS platform for growth monitoring clinic workers. Nutritional data will be continuously transmitted from the field via SMS to government and UNICEF databases and indicators commuted automatically. Based on these indicators, instant feedback will be SMSed to health clinic workers, who can immediately share with mothers critical information and advice related to their children’s nutritional status. User friendly 'dashboards' will provide UNICEF and government agencies with spatial mapping of the data collection points and basic tools for data analyses. This platform will be piloted in three sites in Malawi between January and April 2009. The pilot will assess the utility fo the new platform and scaled up if appropriate.

The Impact

Mobile technology use at local level growth monitoring clinics will enable:

• Rapid response to child malnutrition trends from government, development, and humanitarian partners

• Improved data quality for better national food and nutrition policy

• A model for other development efforts seeking to use mobile technology solutions

3bn people have little access to life-saving or valuable information. Organizations serving these communities do not have simple, cost-effective tools to enable reliable and meaningful dialog to increase their reach while scaling their impact. Cellphone/SMS technology is complex to program, telecom orgs are inflexible/costly and existing SMS tools are difficult to use.

Resdida is developing a simple to use, turnkey platform for organizations (Govt, NGO, corporate, community) to leverage channel-based mobile content distribution, two-way messaging, and project monitoring and evaluation (M&E). The Platform allows for localized content creation and syndication, creation of content "channels", a wide array of distribution options, group profile management, two-way messaging (e.g. surveys automatically populate responses to a reporting module), and public service announcement capabilities. The Platform will be built for M&E by receiving and collating SMS-based field reporting in real-time, allowing for faster org response time.

Content may consist of program updates, emergency info, weather, health, sanitation, crop prices, news, as well as desired info such as entertainment, sports and culture. This approach will allow orgs to reach rural communities directly (and in larger numbers) with information they need and want. A survey module allows collection of feedback, and user data collection provides information on preferences to refine future development.

Resdida has a working prototype, with V1.0 now in development for release in 2009. Resdida will pilot the platform with 1-3 organizations to fully test its capabilities, make changes and prepare for broader rollout. V1.0 will be flexible enough for multiple org types, yet remains simple to use. A channel takes 5 minutes to setup and send to a group of any size via an extremely user-friendly web interface. NO technical knowledge/programmers, negotiations with telcos, purchase of software, servers/maintenance is required.