Tag: M4D
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Can We Text Our Way to Behavior Change?
Read moreJason Hahn is Business Development Manager ICT Innovation, at Grameen Foundation Seattle.
Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) that show the evidence of mobile phone based development interventions do not come out every day. At Grameen Foundation we look forward to them as they can help us shape our interventions with fact-based evidence of other interventions that worked – especially when they show an almost 25% change in behavior.
It was with great interest to read about one that did just that in a recent Lancent article on "the effect of mobile phone...
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Simple mobile tools to combat fake agricultural inputs
Read moreWhitney Gantt is Partnerships Manager, CKW program, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Poor farmers in Uganda routinely struggle with access to agricultural inputs, such as fertilizer and improved seed varieties, that would boost their crop yields. Access to improved inputs is one of the highest impact scenarios for improving farmer productivity. In the right context, the application of fertilizer can significantly increase yields, by up to 300% – which means the potential to triple income.
Two of the chief constraints for a smallholder farmer to buy these...
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You still need to work in groups – even if you have a mobile phone!
Read moreWe have found that our Community Knowledge Workers (CKWs), much like the farmers they work with, often enjoy learning and sharing in a group setting. While our model of information dissemination depends on mobile phones they don’t replace the help and support a good group can give to its members.
In the photo at left, taken on March 9th in Kapting parish, Binyiny subcounty, Uganda the discusion revolved around creating a model farmer network, following up and getting feedback from farmers on CKW services, managing CKW challenges while at work and timely...
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How can mobile phones be used to reduce poverty?
Read moreHeather Thorne is Director ICT Innovation, at the Grameen Foundation Technology Center. This is the second in a series of three blog posts on the M4D space.
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...
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A few tweaks in the CKW intervention can deliver more impact to farmers
Read moreLydia Namubiru is Partnership Analyst, Community Knowledge Worker program, at Grameen Foundation Uganda.
Samuel Olara’s chickens were getting weak and sleepy. He feared they had caught something that would kill them and he didn’t know how to save them. Fortunately, he knew someone who might know. He walked 2 kms to the local CKWs’ home to consult on chicken diseases and their treatments. The CKW in turn consulted his phone and advise Olara to treat his chicken with soda ash. They quickly recovered and were doing well three weeks later when a Grameen...
