Mobile for Good: Connecting People to Information About Jobs and Health
From Shareideas
Through Mobile for Good, a social franchise, people in Kenya, and soon other African nations, subscribe to receive job listings and valuable health information.
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Residents of low-income communities in Cameroon, Nigeria, Uganda, and Nepal will soon be following Kenya in using mobile phones to find out about job opportunities and gain access to vital health information through Mobile for Good (M4G), a social franchise.
In Kenya, for example, subscribers to Kazi560, a job referral service, need only enter the job type they’re looking for (e.g., “Secretary”) on their telephone keypad, followed by “On” to receive SMS announcements of openings. The cost is 7 Kenyan Shillings (the equivalent of US$0.09) per SMS received. Since the service was commercially launched in 2006, over 60,000 people have secured jobs, and over 197,000 people have benefited from one or more of the Mobile for Good services. Subscribers may also access community news postings and health information related to HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, diabetes, diet, and fitness at a cost of 5 Kenyan Shillings.
Established by OneWorld UK, an international organization dedicated to alleviating poverty through the creative use of ICTs since 1995, Mobile for Good capitalizes on the widespread use of mobile phones to improve the lives of people in the developing world.
Mobile for Good is expanding the use of mobiles to e-governance by deploying services at Transport Ministry, Office of the President, and others. Other applications being rolled out are advisory service to owners of small and medium enterprises.
How it was done
The project was first piloted, with support from the Vodafone Group Foundation, in Kibera, a sprawling informal settlement located on the outskirts of Nairobi. Research demonstrated that while mobile phone ownership was limited, up to 85 percent of local residents had access to mobiles through friends and family members. Demand for the service among local citizens proved high, with 30,000 subscribers signed up within 4 months. Employers like “Budget - Rent a Car”, too, gave the tool high marks, reporting that they now rely on Kazi560 to meet all their employee recruitment needs.
The services were marketed using both traditional methods like radio and television ads as well as more direct methods like puppet shows in Kibera. Franchisees need a PC to connect to the M4G platform which allows them to add new services, manage existing subscribers, generate reports and maintain a database of information received and sent out. The M4G platform connects to mobile operators over HTTP using the traditional SNMP protocol used in Mobile technology.
Building on the success from Kenya, OneWorld UK, with support from Accenture Corporate Citizenship Council, is working on scaling this up through a social franchise model. This offers social entrepreneurs across Africa and other developing countries a great franchise opportunity of running their own business with a tried concept and support from a franchise package.
Technology used
Administration:
The franchisee is given a secure browser-based interface to manage the application. It is a user-friendly interface and can be learned within a week of training.
Accounts management:
The franchisee is able to create multiple reseller accounts for other organization to operate with different bands of services and they can configure the accounts using a web interface. The franchisee can also create web interface for various content providers to manage the content entry seamless to the platform.
Sending and Receiving SMS messages:
M4G platform automates the processing of information request and sending back the relevant content back to the user. The platform also handles the broadcasting of thousands of messages to many numbers, as bulk messaging for generic services like community news.
Simple web forms can be used to enter the text to send to one or many mobile numbers. This can be done by simply typing or uploading the numbers as a text file. Sending to predefined (or subscribed) numbers is possible.
Bulk sending:
The system allows the sending of bulk push messages on particular subject areas. It can be combined with the subscription system. In the case of campaigns, the numbers may be collected by various means other than direct subscription.
Subscription:
Users are able to subscribe to particular content, such as jobs and news, by simply sending a request via an SMS. The system acknowledges the subscription and keeps sending messages until the user is subscribed.
The users can unsubscribe from the service by sending an unsubscribe command via sms to the platform.
Subscriptions are mostly associated with short code - i.e. sending the subscription request to a short code (3 to 6 digit simple to remember numbers) instead of to a full mobile number. Franchisee secures these short codes from the mobile operators in their respective countries.
Pulling messages:
Users are able to get SMS messages by the pull method. i.e. sending a request to a short code or navigating through menu-like messages
Sending alerts by SMS:
Sending SMS messages at a scheduled time can be done by setting a time to a type of message or at the required time of the user.
SMS2Email:
SMS sent to a short code (or mobile number) can send the content as an email to a predefined email address. Concatenation or merging of multiple messages as a single email is also possible.
Reports:
Reports are in the form of transaction reports and Management Information System reports. These can be accessed through the same web interface or generated in a form readable by Microsoft Excel or other text editors.
External links
View a video of the service at:
Contacts:
Tel: +44 207 239 1400
Email: m4g@oneworld.net
