3 Mobile Trends Empowering Social Entrepreneurs

At last year’s NetSquared N2Y3 Mash-up Challenge, the trends centered around the transparency of data, especially in regard to government and corporate information; and opportunities to display data through mapping applications.  The big winners were Ushahidi and Social Actions.  Both continue to make great strides and advances, check them out.

This year’s Net Squared N2Y4 Challenge focused on mobile technology and, building on last year’s accomplishments, this year’s finalists found ways to go beyond transparency of data to actually facilitating action based on that new knowledge.  I've grouped this year’s finalists into three social good trends:

1. those using mobile technology to expedite reporting and response to human rights violations;
2. those providing access to essential data to level the playing field in terms of access to opportunities and knowledge; and
3. those giving communities new ways of addressing issues and contributing to the health of the community.

Below are some more specifics on the finalists, and I encourage you to read their summary on NetSquared (which is linked from their name), and to see their site as well (linked from the url). My personal favorites were FrontlineSMS Medic and the AMIS Project, but they are all quite interesting and you can see who won the various prizes here.

N2Y4 Social Change Mobile Trends #1:
Expediting reporting and response to human rights violations

Reporting human rights violations real-time and improving documentation, awareness, and response time.

• Digital Democracy (dtwo.org) in Burma reduces barriers to reporting of human rights violations through their “Handheld Human Rights” mobile technology efforts.  They are enabling human rights groups and the diaspora to communicate and collaborate, and are striving to improve velocity and timeliness of abuses reports.
• iPeace (infogrouponline.org) is using mobile to expose war crimes in Africa

Leveraging the public’s awareness and influence to pressure governments and corporations into taking timely action to protect human rights.

• IJCentral (ijcentral.org): Leveraging alerts regarding regional conflict, genocide, food aid, and so forth, IJ Central has created a mobile tech campaign platform that encourages and enables citizens to pressure their political leaders at key moments in time and to support the International Criminal Courts efforts to prosecute perpetrators of atrocities.
• SlaveFree (slavefree.info) is enabling the public to pressure manufacturers to ensure they have a just and clean supply/manufacturing chain.

N2Y4 Social Change Mobile Trends #2:
Providing economic and social equity through access to essential knowledge.

Sharing market data to economically empower small-scale farmers.

• AMIS Project (amisproject.pbwiki.com) in Cameroon 
• Datagro (datadyne.org) in Chile
• Equobility (equobility.com) in Kenya 

Providing access to the global employment marketplace for skilled workers at the BoP.

• Cell Alert (cellalert.org) in Pakistan
• SMSOne (smsone.in) in India

Facilitating two-way access to centralized data to improve delivery of rural health services.

• FrontlineSMS Medic (medic.frontlinesms.com) strengthens rural healthcare delivery by connecting community healthcare workers in the field to hospitals, resources, and medical records which speeds diagnosis and treatment in remote areas.

N2Y4 Social Change Mobile Trends #3:
Giving communities new ways to address issues more efficiently.

Connecting communities and local authorities to improve response to concerns.

• PublicStuff (publicstuff.org) connects people with their local governments, involving both sides to better track and resolve service requests
• SeeClickFix (seeclickfix.org) facilitates public documentation of non-emergency community issues and notifies those accountable for public space

Giving a voice to vulnerable populations to enable participation in policy debates.

• FaceTheChange (facethechange.org) engages poor and vulnerable communities in developing countries and empower them to participate in national debates and policy development on climate change
• VozMob (vozmob.net) gives a voice to the disenfranchised and the low-income, immigrant workers whose interests are under-reported in mainstream news media

Turning caring into contributing by providing “easy” volunteer opportunities.

• The Extraordinaries (theextraordinaries.org) delivers micro-volunteer opportunities to mobile phones, thereby enabling people to use otherwise idle micro units of time to do good.

Bonus trends:

From a technical perspective, I saw two interesting developments in mobile: One was the increasingly innovative use cases for texting and specifically the popularity of Frontline SMS to provide access to critical data in emerging economies.  An appropriate technology, it probably has the best chance of fast adoption because the learning curve is small, the technical requirements are most affordable and the reach will likely continue to be far greater in many parts of the world than smart phones for some time.  The other thing on the horizon appears to be the concept of “virtual phones” where multiple people share one device but have separate profiles (so they can have their own messages and possible separate billing?)- we’ll have to watch and see how this develops.