What Could Creative Commons Mean For You

by mPowering and TechChange

mPowering Frontline Health Workers is delighted to introduce a new video, developed with TechChange, that explains how publishing content under a Creative Commons license can maximize the reach and impact of health training materials.

Frontline health workers play a vital role in delivering health services to their communities. Yet these health workers often lack the training and information they need to feel confident and to do their jobs effectively. NGOs, academics, and governments are all developing materials to improve training, but often the content is not widely shared and does not reach the people who need it the most.

To address the shortage of high-quality health training content, and to ensure this is available for sharing widely between health workers, their trainers, NGOs, Ministries and others, mPowering launched ORB.

ORB is an open source content platform that connects health workers and training organizations with mobile optimized training content and job aids. With a focus on quality, ORB brings together multimedia content (videos, audio and text files) that can be used to deliver educational programs, refresher training, or counseling tools for health workers.

All of the content on ORB is released under one of the six Creative Commons licenses. Publishing under a Creative Commons license means that authors can retain their intellectual property while allowing others to re-use and share their materials. In many cases, users can also adapt and translate the content for use in a wide range of contexts.

mPowering believes that health content is a public good. Training resources, health information and job aids for health workers contain life-saving information and should be shared as widely as possible. Creative Commons or other open licensing allows more people to access this information. It also saves time and costs so that training can happen faster; and content can be remixed, translated, and compiled into courses.

This video gives more information on what Creative Commons licenses are, how they work, and why they matter. TechChange developed the animation to represent diversity and access to information; and to communicate the significance of a Creative Commons license in public health training. Through the short and compelling animation, TechChange delivers this core mPowering message – make health content freely available – in a simple and powerful way.

To learn more about how you can apply Creative Commons licensing to your work, we invite you to watch the short video and read the FAQ on ORB, or to contact mPowering at info@mpoweringhealth.org

This post also appeared on mPowering Frontline Health Workers blog