TechChange is excited to announce a new partnership with Transitions (TOL), a Prague-based journalism and media training organization with a focus on the post-communist countries of Europe and the former Soviet Union. Running a variety of programs – from the publication of one of the first online magazines to cover political, social, economic and cultural issues in the region since 1999, to providing young reporters with intensive training on best journalistic practices  – TOL has been a regional leader on media and democracy building efforts.

Bringing their expertise on media and journalism development to their target region through our eLearning environment, TOL will be running their course: “Reporting on Education,”  adapting a course that the Guardian Foundation originally created for TOL and the BBC’s iLearn platform. And though journalist training is a broad endeavor, even when focusing on a particular region, we’re hoping that this course will help to not only train journalists, but also to elevate national and regional policy dialogue on the issues of educational reform, open governance and democratic accountability.

Counting gets underway at a polling station in Moscow following Russia’s Presidential election, 4 March 2012.*

This new institutional relationship and course topic comes at a time when the role of the media in promoting such topics is an ever salient issue, particularly in Eastern Europe. Over the past few months, the Kremlin has tightened control over various aspects of civil society and acted to counter what it views as foreign interference in Russia’s sovereign affairs, moves that included booting USAID, a key funder of media training and other efforts, out of the country.

TechChange has helped organizations address these challenges and co-authored a piece in the Huffington Post (USAID’s Eviction From Russia: An Opportunity for Online Learning as E-Development) expressing that:

“there is reason to believe that using widely-available technology, democracy promotion organizations have the potential to greatly influence dialogue by amplifying local practitioner voices, and giving domestic organizations a channel for collaboration with international experts.”

This is where we are hoping that our partnership with TOL will further distribute valuable content – including across closed or semi-closed borders – and build up the capacity of a core group of journalists to report in an informative and engaging way on the sometimes complicated field of education. After all, the task of training journalists in this case isn’t geared just toward building a better media, but also a better, more equitable education system and more modern and democratic societies. We’re hoping that this first course will be yet another worthwhile addition to this process.

*Photo Credit: Credit: OSCE/Jens Eschenbaecher

Interested in digital activism and citizen journalism? Check out our 104 course on digital organizing, which will be run January 7 – February 1!

Interested in learning with us? Check out our next course on Technology Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship, starting Oct. 1. Apply now!

 

What does it mean in a country transitioning from a long and bloody civil conflict if almost every citizen owns a mobile phone? Can the ubiquity of mobile communication play a role in breaking-down perception barriers and promoting reconciliation between communities?

I workshopped this question last week with Sri Lanka’s largest youth movement, Sri Lanka Unites, at their 2012 Future Leaders Conference in Jaffna. The conference brought together more than 350 youth from all of Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious communities for four days of workshops focused on building relationships and empowering students to take action to support reconciliation nationally and within their local communities.

Few countries have higher mobile penetration than Sri Lanka- where 95 percent of the island nation’s population has a sim card and access to a mobile phone according to GSMA’s Mobile and Development Intelligence Unit.

Leveraging that connectivity asset for peacebuilding could be immensely valuable, particularly for country-wide civil society groups such as Sri Lanka Unites which seek to re-build relations between previously warring ethnic and religious communities through youth conferences such as FLC as well as grass-roots development initiatives.

To explore the ways in which mobile and social tools could be deployed in Sri Lanka for peacebuilding and development, I spoke briefly about the evolving deployment of mobile-based tech tools such as FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi by civil society groups to assist in everything from mapping electoral violence in Kenya to supporting earthquake reconstruction in Haiti and coordinating flood relief and fundraising in Pakistan.

 


Myself and Chandika Jayasundara (the co-founder of a fantastic company called Creately) then split the 350 delegates into groups and asked them to workshop the potential role of geo-social tools and crowdsourcing approaches in addressing one of Sri Lanka’s major health crises: the recent upsurge of dengue fever infections throughout the country.

The responses of the delegates to the dengue fever epidemic provides a few key lessons and questions for NGOs and donor agencies looking to leverage mobile and social networks to support reconciliation efforts and development initiatives in countries transitioning from civil conflict.

 

Coalition building and feedback loops are key
Experiences from crowdsourcing operations in Kenya, Haiti and more recently Libya have shown that it’s not enough to simply collect information about the situation on the ground. If technology tools are to enhance development and humanitarian interventions in the slightest, this data needs to be properly analyzed, its meaning widely disseminated through effective public campaigns and resources mobilized by relevant actors to redress the issue or problem.

The need for a firm feedback loop between information collection and change agents, especially in post-conflict settings, was hammered home in the dengue fever workshop. The participants focused not only on collecting and mapping info on the spread of the disease, but also on the need to address much broader challenges of social norms around water maintenance through public campaigns and institutional change.

With these objectives in mind, a two-stage strategy of coalition building and campaigning emerged, each part of which was enhanced by deployment of mobile-based and social mobilisation tools. The first stage would be to accurately determine the extent of dengue fever within Sri Lanka. Some delegates proposed partnering with one of Sri Lanka’s major mobile network operators (eg, Dialog or Mobitel) to conduct a mobile survey using tools such as GeoPoll to determine prevalence of dengue fever and access to treatment centers. Others saw a SMS short-code service such as the 4646 service, which was used after the Haiti earthquake in 2010 to report needs, as the best means of collecting info.

 


Participants generally agreed that regardless of data collection method, the purpose of aggregating this data would ultimately be to visualise it spatially using mapping tools such as Ushahidi. Being able to physically see collected info on where dengue fever is prevalent, determine the specific location of stagnant ponds and identify districts where misconceptions about symptoms and treatment of the tropical disease are common was seen as vital to targeting of SLU efforts.

The second phase would thus be a large-scale and targeted public information and dengue fever eradication campaign, in collaboration with various NGOs, private sector operators and relevant government departments and Ministries, using this mapped, crowdsourced data.

Hugely creative ideas for the awareness-raising phase of the campaign were proposed, with suggestions ranging from YouTube clips and cross-country walks to online courses and mobile games educating users about the causes and preventative measures associated with dengue fever.

Deploying SLUs high-school chapters to run educational workshops in local communities and partner with medical NGOs, the private sector and relevant government departments to eradicate stagnant ponds in their local neighbourhood was also proposed.

Rather than simply creating a shopping list of ‘cool’ technologies and apps that could help SLU outreach, the participants therefore conceived of the avenues of information collection and popular participation offered by mobile technologies in an institutional context in which change agents (eg. civil society actors, the private sector and government agencies) must partner to create feedback loops capable of taking substantive action.

 

Common issues cultivate common identities
Creating new mechanisms of accountability should be central for all social change initiatives or interventions deploying technology tools. But underpinning this integrated thinking in Sri Lanka is a larger observation about the nature of reconciliation in post-conflict societies.

In many ethnically, religiously and linguistically diverse countries recovering from bloody and divisive civil conflict, distrust between communal groups often continues to pervade inter-group relations for years after the end of formal hostilities.

These perceptions and ties can come to permeate and intermediate the social and economic interactions of everyday life, in many cases being manipulated by political candidates in close contests to catalyse voters- often violently- at local, state and national elections. The repeated paroxysms of Hindu-Muslim violence in India are just some disturbing examples.

Electoral and party regulations that incentivise (or require) inclusion of all regional and communal groups into political campaigns and agendas are vital, as is sharing of power through inclusion of minority groups in cabinets and various forms of decentralisation. However, research on civil society and peacebuilding by Ashutosh Varshney has also shown that it is the relationships and trust developed between individuals of ethno-communal groups which are vital to preventing minor scuffles or even false rumours about other ethnic groups from taking on a communal nature and escalating into all-out ethno-religious warfare.

Sri Lanka Unites’ recent ‘S.H.O.W You Care: Stop Harassment Against Women’ campaign is a fantastic example of the kind of local campaign that can help build trust between communities and be enhanced by tech tools. Across the country, more than 300 young men involved in SLUs high-school chapters boarded over 1250 buses in Colombo district to inform women of their avenues of redress and encourage passengers to intervene when they see incidences of violence.

The campaign received widespread media attention. But the merits of ‘S.H.O.W,’ and even the potential dengue fever project developed in our workshop cannot be assessed solely on how they change attitudes and behavior towards gender-based violence or eradicate dengue fever.

Just as important is how large-scale campaigns such as these can foster new relational ties and trust between individuals and organizations of diverse ethnic and religious groups, creating popular consciousness of issues which cut across various individual identities and require action on an equitable basis- regardless of ethnic or religious backgrounds.

 

Put tech in its rightful place
So what role can mobile phones play in reconciliation? TechChange’s own Greg Maly recently observed that 90 percent of the social impact created by technology-enhanced development initiatives are the result of feedback loops created by people (or ‘the crowd’) partnering with various organizations and institutional actors to improve service delivery and solve collective problems through public campaigns or grass-roots action.

The workshops on dengue fever in Sri Lanka demonstrated how true that observation is in divided societies transitioning from conflict. Ultimately, even when campaigns such as SHOW or the proposed dengue fever eradication campaign prove only partly effective in achieving their immediate objectives, it’s vital to remember the importance of large-scale, public-interest campaigns and other regular avenues of cross-communal collaboration in reframing notions of identity and slowly re-building trust between deeply divided communities.

Mobile and social tools provide new avenues for information collection, political participation and communication that can assist in establishing ties and building trust. But their utility for reconciliation is dependent in the end on the values and expertise of coalition partners and the technology-enhanced feedback loops of institutional change they help to form.

This past week I had the privilege of meeting and working with fifteen fellows from across the African continent who came to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for a two-week training organized by the UPEACE Africa Program with a supporting grant from IDRC Canada.

The training covered a variety of areas related to strengthening research capacity for governance and security in Sub-Saharan Africa and was designed to provide these fellows with critical support for carrying out their PhD work at various institutions of higher education across the continent.

Dissertation topics included:
– The Life of exiled Zimbabwean Soldiers in South Africa: Coping with the Repressed Memories of War and Political Violence
– The North & South Sudan Conflict on Abyei since 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement: Challenges & Prospects
– ‘Go back to your Ancestral Land’ Autochthony, Citizenship and the Quest for Return Among Internally Displaced Persons in the Rift Valley Province, Kenya

 

Session Overview: Mobiles, Maps, and Presentations

My sessions provided the fellows with a practical reflection on the role of technology in governance, peace and security as well as hands-on exposure to a variety tools and platforms that are being used to collect, visualize and analyze data.

On the first day, we explored FrontlineSMS, EpiSurveyor, GeoPoll, and OpenDataKit and their applications for supporting research via mobile data gathering. Activities from our online course TC105 Mobile Phones for International Development were used as a basis for this session.

On the second day, we looked at ArcGIS Online, Ushahidi and MapBox – all mapping platforms for data visualization and analysis. As part of this session, fellows had to create their own maps, analyze advantages and disadvantages of using different platforms, and reflect on applications for their own research.

We also spent time each day working with Prezi, the web-based zooming presentation tool. Prezi was probably the most popular platform of all the ones we explored, given what seemed to be a formidable and far-reaching frustration with PowerPoint. It sounds like almost all the fellows will be transitioning to Prezi for their classroom teaching and presentations in the near future.

 

Technology Capacity Building: Regional Implications

In the fields of international development and peacebuilding, attention is often focused on solutions and programs that meet basic needs and deliver urgent care (disaster response, food, water, shelter, health etc). For those efforts to have effective and sustainable impacts over time, countries must also have their own robust higher education and research sectors that provide critical analysis, develop comprehensive strategies, and train future generations of leaders. That is why programs like the UPEACE Africa Program that are focused strengthening the capacity of universities to carry out this work are so important. Special thanks to Tony, Jean-Bosco, Tsion and Tewodros and all the fellows for making this a memorable experience.

While the primary focus of TechChange has been and always will be online learning,
we believe it’s important to be connected to the communities like this and support this type of in-person learning. As an organization, we look forward to participating in similar projects, trainings, and initiatives in the near future.

 

Thanks to TechChange resident conflict analysis and data guru Charles Martin-Shields for cross-posting this from his site Espresso Politics.  We’re really excited for this to be presented at Tech4Dev
Hey everybody, I’m pretty excited to have had a paper accepted to the Tech4Dev conference hosted by the UNESCO Chair at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.  I’ll be focusing on the impact that distance learning technology can have on knowledge co-creation across geographic boundaries, with a particular focus on technology applications for development and peacebuilding.  If you’re curious, I’ve got a draft of the paper stored here.  As usual, feedback is welcome, and I have to give a big shout out to my co-author Jordan Hosmer-Henner (@jordanhh) who is the resident open-source tool guru at TechChange and soon-to-be master of arts at the Elliott School of International Affairs.  If anyone has knowledge of fun things to do in Lausanne, leave a comment with your recommendation!

This past Fall, I was fortunate enough to participate in an online course offered by TechChange; Mobiles for International Development – TC105. If you’re unfamiliar with TechChange, their mission is as follows: “TechChange trains leaders to leverage relevant technologies for social change.” There are several resources I look to through my contacts, social media, and research in the field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D), and TechChange is one on which I strongly rely.

How important is formal education in this rapidly changing and growing field of tech for social change? Due to the fluid nature of technology and the necessity to apply sustainable tech solutions, where they also make sense. It’s important to have educational “institutions” where academics, but more importantly practitioners, can learn, interact and communicate on relevant topics. This serves not just as an educational forum, but a way of sharing best practices, use cases, project successes and failures. We as human beings, learn from these multifaceted approaches, both academic and experiential. Traditional education institutions have been rather slow to integrate the ICT4D discipline into formal graduate level degree programs, with a couple of exceptions at the University of Manchester and the University of Colorado – Boulder. So TechChange and their curriculum is serving to bridge the gap in education with their certificate courses. Other offerings in the TechChange catalog are listed here.

So this brings me to the title of this post, Planting Seeds. Through the TechChange blended learning environment, Twitter chats, Skype calls, etc…I was able to meet “like minded souls” already working in the social change space in Haiti. Once I found I’d be traveling to Haiti to conduct some work and assessments for our Notre Dame Haiti Program and two additional TechChange TC105 students were already working in the country, we discussed getting together for an informal lunch meeting to discuss mobile tech and more specifically, the application of FrontlineSMS in our respective programs. The seeds were planted!

 Our TC105 moderator for Team Deserts, Flo Scialom (Community  Manager extraordinaire of FrontlineSMS in the UK), offered her  expertise in community building to help pull us, and others together.  Each day, as we criss-crossed Port-au-Prince and Leogane with  meetings at various ISP’s and Mobile Network Operators, I’d get an  email from Flo, “Tom, do you have room for one more?”, “Do you  have space for another?”…etc…The seeds were watered and nurtured!

So what started with three or four for an informal lunch, turned into  17 individuals, representing five continents and eight countries – and  a full blown FrontlineSMS meet-up luncheon at the Babako  Restaurant in Port-au-Prince. The organizations at the table  represented many sectors in the aid and development community: microfinance, sexual violence, IDP camp resettlements, human rights abuses, education, and public health. It really was inspiring to look around that table and realize how many Haitians were benefiting from the dedication of these individuals and their organizations. A true force multiplier! The seeds sprout!

The talk revolved around FrontlineSMS setup, configuration and use cases, as well as other mobile and open-source tools in the social change arena, such as RapidSMS, Ushahidi, OpenMRS, openrosa, and more. So this group was not so much about a single software application, but more about affecting change with any technology – fostering a community of practice around ICT4D/M4D, and educating ourselves about opportunities for change using technology. The flower blooms!

The big win was looking around the table, as diverse as our needs and applications are; we all shared a common purpose, enthusiasm and a collective knowledge, to affect positive change with technology. It’s my hope this group will continue to grow – to blossom to include others and be self sustaining, which will amplify the positive impact for our Notre Dame Haiti Program, the other organizations at the meet-up and ultimately the Haitian people.