Photo credit: Dimagi

With funding from USAID, World Vision and Dimagi will conduct operations research to test if the use of CommCare will increase the uptake of healthy actions, improve knowledge of important information points, and improve communications and coordination between community health workers (CHWs) and higher trained workers.

CommCare is a phone-based application to strengthen community health programs. CHWs use software running on a phone during each client visit to improve quality of care and data reporting. When the CHW is within range of a cellular network, data is automatically submitted to a central server for use in program management, monitoring and health surveillance.

World Vision’s study will focus on improving the uptake of a list of identified “Healthy Actions” and knowledge of key “Important Information” points. It will also study the improvement that the phone make between the CHWs for coordination with midwives and other health experts. World Vision expects the following:

1. Utilization – increased percentage of healthy actions taken by pregnant women
2. Knowledge Access – increased knowledge by pregnant women of the important information points
3. Access- increased use of midwives and expert services via phone calls

The primary CommCare module the study will focus on promotes essential care during and immediately after pregnancy. The module reinforces the training the CHWs will have received based on the American College of Nurse-Midwives Home Based Life Saving Skills. The module is designed to quickly bring a CHW through key points of identifying and responding to emergency signs including difficulty breathing, low birth weight, and hypothermia. The module then helps the CHW promote simple but effective hygiene and preventive care to reduce infections such as infected cord stumps, pneumonia, and tetanus.

A key challenge World Vision encountered was that the CHWs in the Herat region are low-literate. CommCare was, therefore, adapted for low-literate users by including audio prompts and images. These multimedia prompts have been found to also help engage the client more, as the CHWs play the audio clips and show images to their clients.

The following video demonstrates how the CommCare application works:

CommCare-Sense House Visit 1 from Derek Treatman on Vimeo.

Click here to learn more about this project.

Photo Credit: AED

Within the context of USAID, most often rural connectivity initiatives are undertaken within the context of a sector-specific program/project.  This was the case case with Macedonia Connects, or what is more frequently referred to as MK Connects.  This project may well be one of the more successful Last Mile Initiative (LMI) project undertaken by USAID.

In fact MK Connects is much, much more.  The LMI project was undertaken as but one component of a unique national commitment to improve education, as well as a unique partnering of a significant number of both public and private sector partners.

The foundation for the success of MK Connects was the government of Macedonia’s commitment to a program for delivering a computer for every child.  The result was a nationwide broadband network providing broadband into every primary and secondary school—many of which were in remote rural locations.  Further, the project incorporated native language education content being delivered over this network to over 460 primary and secondary schools nationwide.

The journey started in 2002 when China donated 5,000 personal computers to support what soon became the e-Schools Project of the Ministry of Education and Science–a project that ran between 2003-2008.  The MK Connects project was a piece of this larger initiative, which in 2006 was augmented by the Primary Education Project (PEP).  Both MC Connects and PEP were USAID supported initiatives executed through the Academy for Educational Development (AED).

While focused on supporting Macedonia’s commitment to improve and modernize their education system top to bottom, MK Connects went well beyond connecting the 460 primary and secondary schools along with university campuses.

Photo Credit: AED

As the project got started in 2003, it was estimated that only 4 percent of the Macedonia’s population had access to the Internet.  As the project concluded in 2007, Macedonia was the first country on the planet to achieve universal nation-wide wireless broadband coverage.  Not only were all the nation’s schools connected, but the project design also provided coverage for access by private sector businesses, the government, individuals, etc.

This connectivity was undertaken through a competitive process where a local Internet Service Provider (ISP) was able to build this nation wide network in just 4 years.  Motorola provided the wireless technology solution set, Canopy, a pre-WiMAX solution.

MK Connects, along with a number of important partners, was a unique experience with regards to modernizing Macedonia’s entire education system.  However, the fundamental approach taken in Macedonia holds promise for  application to countries around the world. The MK Connects model has been applied in neighboring Montenegro to bring more than seventy percent of the country on-line.  A similar project has been constructed in Georgia.  And  Senegal is the first African country seeking to replicate this model.

For more information, refer to the information on Macedonia contained in the GBI project database and MK Connects case study in the document library.

The NetHope Academy‘s ICT Skills Capacity Building Intern Program will give Haitian university students and recent graduates the opportunity to gain significant IT skills that will allow them to directly participate in the reconstruction of their communities and increase their economic opportunities.

During the course of this internship, candidates will work in the IT departments for participating humanitarian organizations and private sector companies. Program highlights include:

• Six month internship program for Haitian computer science and engineering students/graduates that provides real world “on the job” training along with focused classroom and self-study learning opportunities
• Internships will be geared towards desktop support, network administration, and telecommunications jobs
• Participating organizations will increase capacity of their IT departments and contribute to the development of IT labor pool in Haiti

For the past several years there has been a virtual explosion of mobile networks across both developed and developing countries.  According to a recent ITU Report, Measuring the Information Society – 2010, at the end of 2009, globally 67 out of every 100 people were mobile subscribers.  For developing countries the numbers are 57 out of every 100—and growing.  The following graphic extracted from this ITU report shows the growth since 1998.

Within these numbers lies another somewhat hidden dynamic;

1. Worldwide there are already more mobile Internet subscribers than fixed Internet subscribers, and
2. This is supported by the market moving towards “smart phones.”  For developed countries the computer has been the dominant Internet access device.  For developing economies it is rapidly becoming the smart phone.

And with these dynamics come a number of rich opportunities for USAID as well as the larger international development community—opportunities for the most part that are just now starting to be explored.  These include:

Micro-Small Business Entrepreneurship—this mobile-smart phone-Internet ecosystem provides a rich opportunity for USAID to support the launch or strengthening of a local mobile application development industry.  This is replicable across countries, has low entry costs for entrepreneurs, is quick to market, and has near-instant countrywide market scale.  By its nature, it favors local development and content, with strong employment opportunity for youth.

Local Content Development—typically mobile applications are not only localized with regards to native languages, but also local with regards to content.  This creates an even a broader opportunity for local entrepreneurs and job creation—for both applications and content.

Public-Private Partnerships—the rich mobile-smart phone-Internet ecosystem is made up of handset manufacturers, mobile carriers, development toolset companies, hosting firms, etc.—all with local and international engagements.  Adding USAID and local government participation simply expands this ecosystem faster, further, and places a targeted focus socioeconomic development.

Sector-Specific Applications—for USAID’s various sectors, be it health, education, government, agriculture, etc., this ecosystem provides a rich low-cost platform for developing highly targeted solutions with rapid nationwide scale and with this, expanding USAID’s impact.

These, along with other dynamics reflect an expanding opportunity currently being explored by USAID where the Agency can provide a critical catalytic role to accelerate adoption.  A growing number of related blogs and documents posted on the GBI Portal provide additional information and examples of this exciting dynamic and its potential within the Agency’s development portfolio.