#frontlinesms

[ythais14-blog]

[caravanstudios]

I started using Hapsoro's mobile phone to send SMS every Friday to the friends of KPC Bogor. When I was using the phone, I realized how patient Hapsoro must have been in sending the SMS alerts about river cleaning over his three years of organizing the activities. One by one, each of the numbers had to be selected from the address book, and I could only enter 10 numbers at once. It made getting though more than 200 numbers exhausting, and it took me more than two hours! Not to mention when I forgot which numbers I'd already sent the message to. I'm sure there are a few people who got the message twice. Because of the limited time I could dedicate to sending SMS every Friday, some friends and I decided to try using FrontlineSMS. A friend who lives in Jakarta went looking for a compatible Huawei E-series modem to send and receive messages with the software. When we were finally able to buy one, we installed it on my laptop and KPC Bogor's laptop. Now every Friday, we load up FrontlineSMS to send alerts about KPC Bogor activities due to take place the following Saturday. It's great because I can carry on working while FrontlineSMS is sending the messages. I can easily manage contacts and send alerts to the community in a few simple steps. KPC Bogor's work with volunteers is now so successful that we started a "Garbage Scavengers Race" which has now become an official annual agenda event in the city of Bogor. Last year, 1,500 people came to the river to help and we collected 1,300 bags of garbage in just 3 hours. We are now preparing for this year's scavenge due to take place in June 2013. In recognition of the need to tackle root causes of the waste issue rather than just the clean up, we've also started to do more than collecting garbage. KPC Bogor now provides environmental education for elementary school children, conducts research on water quality and plants trees around the Ciliwung River. We are also able to regularly assess the river water biota, where we analyze diversity of micro-organisms, plants and animals in the ecosystem. Recently, we even made a film about the waste problems in the Ciliwung River.

MediaShift Idea Lab . How FrontlineSMS Helped an Indonesian Community Clean Up a River | PBS

[jpagirys-blog]

FrontlineSMS:Medic

PopTech 2009 Social Innovation Fellow Josh Nesbit from PopTech on Vimeo.

FrontlineSMS:Medic [another meaningful solution employing cell phones]

[thefeastvideos]

Ken Banks, FrontlineSMS The Feast Conference 2009

[nexmo-blog]

Why NGOs are struggling with SMS?

 Why SMS is important in the work of NGOs?

We have seen in recent years the proliferation of NGO backed mobile projects mostly in emerging markets. 

For instance, in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, SMS was used to deliver first-response emergency aid to people trapped in the rubble or with critical medical conditions. Furthermore, it was used to share information about shelter, food supplies and sanitation advice.

Projects like FrontlineSMS, that enables two-way SMS communication at large scale, or Ushahidi, an non-profit open source platform that also accepts SMS, are famous examples these platforms. Many more exist.

The Egyptian project Harrasmap, which enables people to report sexual harassment by SMS, is an example of a mashup between these two platforms.

SMS is very important for NGOs in emerging market because it is 1) massively wide spread unlike internet, 2) simple to adopt even by illiterate and 3) cheap!

What are the challenges that NGOs face when dealing with SMS?

However, many obstacles still face these technology platforms and NGOs to roll out SMS applications. Some of these are:

Well, as easy as it seems, SMS is still currently a complex technology when you want to integrated it into applications. You need to have servers, master protocols such as SMPP and contract with providers that have unclear conditions or expensive pricing. Let alone the quality control on delivery.

Outbound SMS is useful in awareness campaigns and alerts, but one of the most needed service is to get inbound SMS from people on the ground into applications. Example of useful applications are many: report a danger, share crop prices or simply provide an opinion from the ground. 

Finding Outbound SMS in emerging markets is not an easy task. Most mobile operators and existing SMS providers don't see the business opportunity in providing such service. An NGO can not built its own local infrastructure due to lack of ressource but more importantly of unstable IT infrastructure. So putting a modem GSM into a SIM card is just not reliable. 

Is Nexmo part of the solution?

We are thinking creatively how to address these hurdles. Easy access to Nexmo via a Restful API and simple/wholesale pricing model is a small part of the solution.

The biggest challenge is to set-up reliable inbound SMS numbers in most of these countries in need. More on that soon!

Tony