FrontlineSMS + Cell Alert = FrontlineSMS Alerts

With Ken Banks, the Founder of FrontlineSMS, backing and helping push forward this project, our next step is to combine the success of FrontlineSMS with the power of Cell Alert. With Ken's vision for the continent of Africa and his success in use of new innovation for some of the most vulnerable populations in the world, we see great potential in this cooperative to integrate FrontlineSMS with Cell Alert, creating FrontlineSMS Alerts.

Our Tools

We have created a whole new suite of information tracking and delivery modules called Grant Alerts, Regional Conflict Alerts, Genocide and Blockade Alerts, World Food Aid Alerts, Economic Aid Alerts and more!

Our Trials in El Salvador and Pakistan:

These tools are particularly powerful when used with FrontlineSMS. Our recent trials proved our concept in El Salvador and Pakistan. Essential and timely market data that is unavailable in rural El Salvador and rural Pakistan due to a lack of Internet access was made accessible in these trials through the use of FrontlineSMS. Through our trials, we used Cell Alert to locate and deliver essential market data to our beta testers in rural areas with FrontlineSMS.

Our Plans If We Win

Project 1 FrontlineSMS Emergency Alerts (prototype only needs funding)

The FrontlineSMS Emergency Alerts is currently sketched out and ready to build. We currently have a customized prototype of Cell Alert that can monitor Emergency Alerts for non-profits and other organizations that can monitor nearly instant, on-the-ground notification.

We're now partnered with and integrating the Cell Alert keyword-matcher and Cell Alert site-spider into future releases of Ushahidi.

We have also joined the SwiftApp project. SwiftApp is a collaboration between developers at Cell Alert, google.org, mapufacture, younoodle.com, Instedd, and was founded by the developers of Ushahidi and Meedan.net

SwiftApp is a Free and Open Source toolset for crowdsourced situational awareness. It collects weighted and vetted crowd sourced crisis data through the emergent folksonomy of self-interested teams of "citizen editors" who curate publicly available information about a crisis on numerous social networking and micro-blogging sites like twitter.com

Now that we're about to merge our code with Ushahidi and begin expanding the capabilities of SwiftApp, it is time to merge Cell Alert with FrontlineSMS so that it can scour the web for humanitarian-and health- related emergencies feed them into our FrontlineSMS text-messaging blasts-- sending them right to the ground where the data alerts are needed most.

Project 2 FrontlineSMS Agriculture Alerts (needs to be integrated needs funding)

Cell Alert has also successfully used FrontlineSMS to send text alerts with critical market information to farmers with cell phones in the developing world. This tool has already served in some existing cellular clouds in El Salvador, Rwanda, Uganda and Bangladesh. We believe this technology also has tremendous potential for use with the Grameen Foundation's Village Phone program in those countries.

Project 3 FrontlineSMS Marketplace Alerts (needs to be merged needs funding)

CellAlert using FrontlineSMS currently has (in private alpha testing) a module that is delivering essential commodity information between buyers and sellers of agricultural products by utilizing FrontlineSMS's two-way text-response features. It is essentially our collaborative Agro-Product Text-based Trading Marketplace.

We believe this project could extend even into the dissemination of farming micro-loan opportunities through the FrontlineSMS Alerts Loan Clearinghouse.

Project 4 Fair Trade Alerts (prototype only needs funding)

Another goal we have is to expand this tool into Fair Trade Alerts by expanding on "The Fair Tracing Project", and creating a fair trade accountability and alert system for international businesses that are entering into ventures with farmers in developing countries worldwide. To see an applicable but basic view of how this technology can work with cell phones, please view the Google My Location video by clicking here.

Fair Trade Alerts could be especially important with oil-based crops in Africa that are quickly becoming an answer to American and International energy demands for biodiesel oil. This market is quickly expanding in Africa. For more information, please see the rapid expansion of African Biodiesel Crops: here and here

Fair Trade Alerts will create a connection directly between the vegetable oil sellers in formerly inaccessible regions and socially responsible companies outside the farmers' home countries.

For example, the Safeway Corporation, switched their entire trucking fleet to biodiesel (http://www.biodiesel.org/news/bulletin/2007/090407.htm#6).

Socially Responsible Corporations (SRCs) would benefit from the community acceptance that Fair Trade Alerts offers them. Biodiesel feed stock farmers and merchants in Africa and other developing nations would benefit from the equal footing and negotiating power that corporate accountability that Fair Trade Alerts creates in the worldwide emerging biodiesel markets.

Project  5 FrontlineSMS Alerts Widget (prototype only needs funding)

The FrontlineSMS Alerts Widget is currently sketched out and ready to build. We hope for it to become a multi-lingual viral widget for distribution of FrontlineSMS Alerts for non-profits that can use it for nearly instant, on-the-ground notification of the following:

Grant Alerts, Regional Conflict Alerts, Genocide and Blockade Alerts, Travel Alerts, Transportation Alerts, UN World Food Programme Alerts, etc. FrontlineSMS Alerts would scour the web for non-profit keyword and phrases and feed them into our FrontlineSMS text-messaging blasts-- sending them right to the ground where the data alerts are needed most.

Additional Team Participants

MIT Scientist Nathan Eagle, Founder of the Mobile outsourcing tool Txt Eagle, is partnering with Cell Alert on this project to match SMS-based employment opportunities to East Africans  with our Economic Aid Alerts prototype.

Mark Frazier, Founder of  Openworld.com  and author of "Awakening Assets for the Next Four Billion" has also joined the team.

Please Help FrontlineSMS Alert the Disadvantaged, Worldwide

You can determine whether FrontlineSMS Alerts can go forward as a partnership. If you think these ideas will help some of the world's must suffering communities to survive and eventually even thrive in developing countries worldwide, please vote for us so that we can go forward!

A vote for us will also help us expand into these additional FrontlineSMS Alerts:

Economic Aid Alerts, Medical Supply Alerts, Free Item Alerts, Loan Alerts, Local Innovation Alerts, Social Entrepreneur Network Alerts, Regional News Alerts, Volunteer Alerts and more!

Please see our expanded version of this proposal at http://cellalert.org/FrontlineSMS