Over the last two years we have had endless discussions about how crowd sourced information is going to change the way we do crisis information management. Some people go as far to say as the regular humanitarian information management is dead and that the time of crowd has come. But one thing that we have yet to show is that all this crowd sourced information actually provides the humanitarian response community with actionable information. We have a few anecdotes of individual reports being helpful, but no overall study of the effectiveness.

I have lately been talking to a number of colleagues from the humanitarian community and one of the best hint at how to solve this came from Lars Peter Nissen from ACAPS. He pointed out that when they are planning needs assessments they start by defining what decisions they want to try to affect by the needs assessment. Then they work their way backwards and design an assessment that helps provide the answers needed to make that decisions.

When deciding to do a crowd sourced project for a disaster or crisis response, we must do the same. We must first define what decisions we are trying to affect. Once we know what decisions we want to try to affect, we need to define what information we would use as the basis for making these decisions. Once we know what information we would use as basis, we should look at what is the best way to visualize that information to optimize the decision making. In the age of crowd sourcing we have focused a bit too much on the power of geospatial visualization, but often graphs, trends or tables can help us make a better decision.

Once we know what decisions we want to help facilitate and how we want to visualize them, then we can start thinking of how we can get data from the crowd and through data processing and data analysis turn that data into this information. This may lead us to ask the crowds for more controlled questions or for our media monitoring teams to monitor reports of certain data instead of trying to capture all the available data out there. We can then look at ways of either automatically process the data or use a mechanical turk to utilize a “crowd” to do that processing. Same applies to taking that processed data and analyzing it. This can either be automatic or done via a crowd of people.

So before the next major disaster happens and we activate the digital volunteers lets sit down and define the end product first and then work our way back. This way we can really ensure that all this digital volunteer effort is utilized to the max.

Photo: Jerome Delay/AP

Two different e-learning courses on gender-based violence awareness and policy are now available for humanitarian workers thanks to the WHO, and the UNFPA and World Education Inc.  The course is particularly relevant for areas with strong gender roles, like the Horn of Africa.

The present crisis in the Horn of Africa has shifted the attention of development workers in the region to food security.  Education, healthcare, and even shelter are after-thoughts for now.  Particular cultural distinctions, including gender roles in the region, remain unknown to many humanitarian workers, as they are too busy focusing on in-the-moment food needs.  However, the experience of humanitarian agencies helping with the natural disaster in Haiti was that gender-based violence (GBV) only increased during the crisis, leading the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to issue recommendations to refugee camps regarding privacy, claims of domestic violence, etc.

In the Horn of Africa, particular gender issues are important to take into account, especially during humanitarian crisis.  Genital mutilation and domestic violence are both relevant issues, and so is the overall role of women as primary caretakers of children.

Though humanitarian workers have experience working with people of all sorts of backgrounds since they are deployed to different regions around the globe throughout their career, they often come into a new situation with relatively little knowledge about the local customs and challenges.  Such is the case for many in the Horn of Africa right now.  The best way for them to prepare for these cultural challenges before they even know where they are going to be posted next, is through awareness courses.

In order to educate humanitarian workers worldwide, the UNFPA and World Education Inc partnered to produce a new e-learning course on GBV.  The e-learning nature of the course makes it possible for workers to participate in the course remotely anywhere in the world and at any time.

The WHO has also created their own e-learning course in 2010 entitled “Different Needs—Equal Opportunities: Increasing Effectiveness of Humanitarian Action for Women, Girls, Boys, and Men.”  The course helps humanitarian workers consider how gender factors into their humanitarian programs.  In a sense, it gives the worker a list of checks to evaluate how their program will impact both women and men differently, and how to guard against possible discriminations.  To watch a trailer for the course, click here.

Both of these e-learning courses are quality options for humanitarian workers.  They will be better equipped to handle those tough gender issues after receiving this education via the Internet.  What is pertinent in addition to taking the course, however, is applying the lessons learned and being held accountable.  This is an aspect of education where e-learning lacks, and for now, it will be simply up to senior humanitarian officials to hold their workers responsible for doing this course and applying the principles taught.

U.K. startup Movirtu has announced plans to help 3 million or more people in developing countries gain access to mobile services by giving them personal phone numbers – not phones. Movirtu plans to work with a U.N.-affiliated initiative called Business Call to Action (BCTA) to offer the numbers which will be called “mobile identities”.

The service will be called Cloud Phone and will be offered through commercial carriers in developing countries in Africa and South Asia. The name Cloud Phone should not be confused with cloud computing which operates through the internet.

Movirtu is aiming to get 3 million people to use their mobile service for the pilot phase. Movirtu expects about 75 percent of its users to be women, because women in Africa and South Asia are statistically far less likely than men to have their own phones according to Ramona Liberoff, executive vice president of marketing at Movirtu.

The pilot phase will take place in Madagascar through the carrier Airtel. “Madagascar is a perfect market for Movirtu, because Airtel has built an extensive network but many people in the country can’t afford to buy a phone,” Liberoff said.

Owning a mobile identity as opposed to owning a personal mobile phone can save money for the users. For those living at poverty levels, affording a mobile phone may be impossible. A mobile identity allows users to use mobile services without having to purchase a phone.

Also, according to Liberoff, “the cost of prepaid service from a carrier typically is less than what consumers in those countries pay someone to borrow a phone. The average savings from using regular prepaid service instead is estimated at about $60 per year.”

Users can get a mobile identity by going to one of the mobile carrier’s shops. When the user wishes to borrow a mobile phone, the user enters a shortcode for the Movirtu service and then punches in their individual phone number and a personal identification number.

After that, the temporary user can access all the services available through the phone, as well as a personal carrier home page where they can manage and replenish their prepaid account. The system works on any GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) phone, using USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), a GSM protocol for communicating with a service provider’s computers.

Following the pilot in Madagascar, Movirtu plans to open up the Cloud Phone service in at least 12 markets in Africa and South Asia by early 2013, reaching at least 50 million potential users. “The two regions were chosen because they are home to about 1 billion of the 1.3 billion people in the world who rely on borrowed phones,” Liberoff said.

If successful, these mobile identities will allow mobile services to be physically and financially accessible to the poorest of the poor. This will greatly benefit aid parties since according to Liberoff, “In many cases, there are great NGO programs that can’t reach 80 percent of their base because those people don’t have their own phones.”

The overall goal with Cloud Phone should be to bring the impoverished out of poverty by giving them access to a brand new set of tools.

Giving rural populations and women access to mobile services will empower them, and get them involved economically and socially. It will enable them to enter a mobile world which billions of others have already tapped into, opening up many opportunities for development.

Photo Credit: medatanzania.org

In Tanzania, a new voucher program started in late July that provides discounted insecticide treated bed nets for pregnant women and children. This program also takes advantage of mobile technology as retailers can inform local clinics when their shops are getting low on life saving supplies by text messaging.

The program which is being overseen by MEDA, a Canadian organization, integrates health clinics, wholesalers, retailers and bed net manufacturers. Pregnant women and families with children in rural areas are eligible to receive a voucher from health clinics to get discounted insecticide treated bed nets from health supply retailers at 500 Tanzania shillings (about $0.35).

Once a woman takes a voucher to a retailer and pays a discounted price, she receives a bed net in return. The retailer then uses his or her cell to send a text message back to MEDA, which helps run the program. That SMS provides crucial monitoring data that includes the number of bed nets provided to the community and how many are needed in their next shipment.

The use of mobile technology to monitor bed net stocks and shipments is the feature that set this bed net initiative apart from others.

Each shipment contains a predetermined number of bed nets for a specific region based on their unique needs. Once the bed nets are delivered and the vouchers are collected, the retailers receive monetary compensation.

Long lasting insecticide treated bed nets. Photo Credit: medatanzania.org

In the “fight” against malaria, insecticide treated bed nets are a cost effective and proven weapon, especially for families in rural communities. According to the Global Fund, more than 300 million bed nets have been distributed in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2008. Moreover, Tanzania is a hard hit country as 2 million out of the 44 million people are affected by malaria.

Distributing vouchers for discounted bed nets is not a new method of tackling malaria. However, this approach produces a different sentiment amongst bed net owners than simply passing out bed nets to families for free.

Health workers have found that when a family makes a small investment in the net, it becomes a more valued commodity. Initiatives that pass out bed nets for free sometimes fail because families adopt the mentality that bed nets are valueless and easily replaceable.

This program distributes paper vouchers to the women that visit health clinics. Paper vouchers can easily be lost or ruined altogether. Therefore, keeping track of paper vouchers is often an obstacle. The next step is eliminating paper vouchers and developing text message based vouchers to make the process more efficient.