Comments on: nGOmobile: Win Your Own Text Messaging Service

By: mopocket » Blog Archive » NGO’s Start Your Mobile Engines!

mopocket » Blog Archive » NGO’s Start Your Mobile Engines! — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:42:42 +0000

[…] A month ago my friend Ken Banks of Kiwanja launched a competition that encourages grassroots NGOs in developing countries to submit ideas on ways they could use text messaging in their work. This can be in health, human rights, the environment, activism, education or whatever. The best four entries will win laptop computers, Nokia phones, GSM modems and $1,000 in cash, courtesy of a range of sponsors which include Hewlett Packard, Nokia and Wieden+Kennedy. I think its a worth wile cause on many fronts. Visit http://www.ngomobile.org for more info via http://www.saidia.org/2007/09/18/ngos-going-mobile/ http://whiteafrican.com/?p=748 […]

By: Ken Banks

Ken Banks — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 19:25:56 +0000

Thanks for your support and enthusiasm for this, Tobias.

Support from networks like yours will be crucial if nGOmobile is to have any chance of success. By their very nature, many grassroots non-profits may struggle to hear about this, so getting news of this opportunity out to them is paramount to nGOmobile’s – and their – success.

In the spirit in which we all work, I will gladly share lessons learnt from this, and help promote the work of all of the entrants, not just the winners.

I’m glad to have made your morning! ;o)

By: Tobias Eigen

Tobias Eigen — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 17:15:58 +0000

Hi Erik and Ken –

I also blogged about this today at saidia.org. Waking up to news of this competition was sweet and energizing! This is exactly the sort of thing we need to draw out the good stories and ideas, and to help spread them throughout the African civil society sector.

We will spread the word of this in the Kabissa community, and hopefully we’ll get some good stories.

Ken, I like your approach regarding training, and the importance that grassroots groups take ownership over their own projects, realize that they best understand their local communities, and that they have to plan their projects accordingly.

Cheers,

Tobias

By: Ken Banks

Ken Banks — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 09:37:54 +0000

Hi Erik

Thanks for picking up and reporting on this. Clearly it’s vital that news of this competition gets down to the grassroots NGO community, and your blog has the kind of readership which will help do just that.

Right now, nGOmobile is in test-mode, if you like. I don’t think this kind of thing has been tried before (I’d be happy to be put right on that, if anyone knows otherwise). If interest is sufficient and this hits the spot within the grassroots NGO community, then I hope to scale up next time round and offer more prizes, enabling more organisations to embrace mobile in their work. Better still, nGOmobile would become a yearly event. I’ll be the first to admit that giving away four laptops and a bunch of phones isn’t going to change the world, but the process might help people think about it!

You make a valid comment on training. Firstly, as I do with all FrontlineSMS users, technical support and advice will be offered for free. Beyond that, information on how to best run a messaging campaign is already available through a number of good guides out there (such as the ones produced by MobileActive recently). Winning entries by their very nature will need to have been thought out and will be advanced to a certain degree, so I’m hoping that NGOs who enter the competition will already have thought about some of the cultural and technical issues surrounding the application of SMS in their work. After all, it is THEIR project and they, above anyone else, have a good understanding of the communities they work with and the lay of the land.

I’ll happily keep you posted on how this goes, Erik.

Cheers.