Archive for the ‘Community Knowledge Worker’ Category

How can mobile phones be used to reduce poverty?

Monday, February 28th, 2011

This is the second in a series of three blog posts on the M4D space by Heather Thorne, Director of ICT Innovation at the Grameen Foundation’s Technology Center.

Grameen Foundation approaches all of its work from a “Theory of Change” perspective, using this as a starting point to ensure activities and outputs are logically linked to the desired outcomes of each program.  AppLab’s Theory of Change is based on research showing that gaps in access to information and services (e.g., health, financial services, agriculture, markets, job opportunities, etc.) contribute to lack of economic opportunity and reduced welfare, therefore leading to or perpetuating poverty.  This is worsened by inability to act on information.  By leveraging mobile phones as a means to eliminate or reduce those gaps, and to reduce friction in systems, we believe it is possible to directly and indirectly reduce poverty. 

Given the potential for M4D efforts to benefit a broad audience but possibly miss the specific needs of the poor, we do a number of things to ensure a focus on the poor and poorest in AppLab efforts, such as:

  • selecting vertical areas known to have a statistical link to poverty (or lever for escaping it):  agriculture, health, livelihoods, or access to targeted financial services
  • incorporation of M&E frameworks and measurement approaches into each implementation
  • geographical targeting focused on regions known to have larger populations of poor and very poor
  • choosing mobile operators with the largest market share among poor populations we serve and choosing other NGO partners who share a poverty-focused mission
  • pricing models, such as cross-subsidization, making services available to those unable to pay

AppLab’s Theory of Change has evolved over the 8 years we have been working in the M4D space, starting first with the Village Phone replication program in Uganda, which extended to Rwanda, Cameroon and several other sub-Saharan African countries, as well as to Indonesia.  Building on this foundation, GF began exploring the potential for providing additional services through the phone nearly four years ago, leveraging the fact that low-end phones were beginning to penetrate even the most remote villages.  We launched AppLab Uganda in 2007 in partnership with MTN Uganda and Google, and spent the next two years developing partnerships with local content providers in agriculture and health, conducting ethnographic research, rapid prototyping and concept testing, developing and testing products, and launching a nationwide suite of applications called Google SMS (GSMS) in 2009.  In Indonesia, GF incubated an Indonesian-owned social enterprise called Ruma, which began to operate the Village Phone business in partnership with a large mobile operator focusing on the low-end market segment.   The model began to evolve as we learned that voice services no longer presented a viable business opportunity due to mobile phone penetration—and the Ruma entrepreneurs began to sell airtime, a similarly low-cost item that people buy frequently, in small denominations, which can be delivered through the phone by people with minimal skill and working capital– increasing and smoothing their cash flow. 

We recently completed what we believe to be the first ever randomized control trial designed to assess the impact of a mobile-phone based service aimed at improving the lives of the poor.  The service we sought to measure was Google SMS (GSMS) Health Tips, and our social impact measurement partner, Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), performed the study. 

The learnings from the study were substantial, supporting some of our initial hypotheses and refuting others.  They indicated that when people are made aware of such services, there is indeed demand and usage of them, and that ongoing awareness efforts in general are critical to usage and thus impact.

We also learned, however, that the fundamental drivers of behavior change are not altered simply because of the phone, and if the phone is not addressing each of those drivers, behavior change is unlikely.  (You can read more about the study on Eric Cantor’s recent blog post)  Driving sustained adoption of the information and behavior change, or other outcomes that we envision, requires re-thinking aspects of the service—one of which is the often necessary role of a trusted intermediary in creating awareness and reinforcing the desired adoption of information and behavior change. 

You can read more about trusted intermediary’s and Grameen Foundation’s M4D work in Heather’s final blog post which will be posted later this week.

Community Knowledge Worker Pilot Report and Program Launch

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

In early 2009, Grameen Foundation went to Uganda with the idea of creating a fluid and effective two way communication channel between rural farmers

CKWs in training

CKWs in training

and the world of agricultural experts, development agencies, traders and commercial players. Through this loop, rural small holder farmers would be given livelihood saving agricultural information generated by the experts and the big  players would keep informed on conditions on the farm from adoption of best practices to available produce for sale. (more…)

A Day in The Life of a (Female) Community Knowledge Worker

Friday, November 6th, 2009

CKW's in training

Right now we’re in a planning phase—which ultimately means we’re wrestling with the “big” challenges that become even more significant at scale.  We’re building partnerships to begin recruiting Community Knowledge Workers (CKWs) in early 2010 and that has me thinking about one of those challenges: how do we ensure that female farmers have an equal opportunity to participate as CKWs and that they have the same access to services offered through the CKW channel?

In the pilot we learned that women do most of the manual labor in farming in Uganda and will often be the decision makers when it comes to adopting new agronomic techniques.  Our observations also show that they’re less likely to own their own phones and to approach a male CKW.  During the pilot, 33% of CKWs were women, but if we really want to reach female farmers we will need to recruit equal women and men to participate in the program and ensure that both enjoy the same benefits.  So how do we do it? (more…)

What Do Farmers Want To Know?

Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Calling into Question Box

Calling into Question Box

During the test of concept phase of our Community Knowledge Worker initiative, AppLab Question Box (AQB) was one of the services that the CKWs provided to rural communities. Grameen Foundation worked with Appfrica Labs, and US based NGO, Open Mind, to pilot this service.  AQB is a live, local language hotline service that brings the Internet and expert advice to the homes and market stalls of individuals who may never see a computer, visit an agricultural specialist, or read in English.  Between April and September, villagers in Uganda’s Mbale and Bushyeni districts had access to the service to ask agricultural, education, recent events and other questions. (more…)

Agriculture and Mobile Phones Come Together With Our Community Knowledge Worker Project in Uganda

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

CKW Joseph Nashimolo

Last week in Uganda I was fortunate to attend a meeting in Busano subcounty, Mbale district, with some of the Community Knowledge Workers  (CKWs) – local farmer leaders empowered with mobile applications to improve the livelihoods of their communities by distributing and collecting relevant information about agriculture – and their clients, the smallholder farmers we all seek to benefit.  There was a lively discussion of the pros and cons of a variety of information services we have been testing nearby.  One farmer, Elias Mabala, then stood up and spoke about how his income improved more than 100% last harvest by virtue of having greater access to market information through the CKW assigned to serve the information needs arising in his village.  Stories like that explain why we come to work each day. (more…)