Maternal & Child Health

Agriculture, Family Planning, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Women in Development

mHealth for Women: A Diverse Set of Applications

Photo Credit: Anupam Nath / AP

In an ode to International Women’s Day, we wanted to review a few of the mobile health projects and programs directly focused on women’s health issues. mHealth has a great variance in the type of applications used to promote and assist in women’s health. This ranges from sending health information about pregnancy via basic text messaging to more advanced tools that allow community health workers to collect data, diagnosis diseases, and refer patients. As the need and ability to extend health information to women in developing countries increases, here is a diverse set of examples that have been used or are in current use.

MOTECH

Launched in Ghana, the Grameen Foundation’s Mobile Technology for Community Health (MoTECH) initiative has a duel focus – providing health information to pregnant women and arming community health workers with applications to track the services provide to women and children. This project was funded by the Gates Foundation and has worked in partnership with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Ghana Health Service. The “Mobile Midwife” application provides pregnant women with time-specific information about their pregnancy via text or voice messages. This includes reminders about seeking care, advice on how to deal with specific challenges during pregnancy, and knowledge about best practices and child development. The Nurses’ Application allows community health workers to register and track the care provided to patients in the region. By recording patient data in the MOTECH Java application and sending it to the MOTECH database, the system captures the data and can send automatic reminders to nurses for when and what type of follow up care to provide. For more information about the MOTECH as well as the lessons learned, read the report from March 2011, “Mobile Technology for Community Health in Ghana: What It Is and What Grameen Foundation Has Learned So Far.”

MAMA

Launch in May 2011, MAMA (Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action) is a public-private partnership focused leveraging mobile connectivity to improve information and access to health care for pregnant and new mothers in developing countries. USAID and Johnson & Johnson are the founding partners, and the United Nations Foundation, the mHealth Alliance, and BabyCenter are supporting partners. This initial 3-year, $10 million investment from USAID and J&J is being used to build and expand global capacity of new and current mHelath programs in three countries – Bangladesh, South Africa, and India. The beauty of the MAMA Partnership is the focus on country ownership through these partners. And each country has a separate focus based on the specific needs and problems of the maternal health. In Bangladesh, the focus is to decrease maternal morbidity and mortality through stage-based health messages via mobile phones to low-income and at-risk mothers. The public-private partnership network in Bangladesh has already been established. Lead by D.Net, it includes technology developers (InSTEDD, SSD-Tech), corporate sponsors (BEXIMCO), outreach NGOs (Save the Children, BRAC), mobile operators (Airtel, Grameenphone, Banglalink), content providers (MCC Ltd), media (Unitrend Limited, Brand Forum), researchers (ICDDR, B), and government agencies (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare). In India, MAMA is completing a landscape analysis to understand the complex cultural environment and see in what areas mobile phones can be utilized to improve maternal health throughout the country. Finally, in South Africa, MAMA has partnered with the Praekelt Foundation (lead partner), Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, and Cell-life to provide messages to pregnant and new mothers about receiving earlier antenatal care, prevention mother-to-child HIV transmission, and exclusively breastfeeding.

CycleTel

Developed by the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University, CycleTel is an innovative solution, combining a previously used family planning technique with mobile phones. In 2001, IRH created the Standard Days Method (SDM) as a low-cost alternative to family planning based on a women’s menstrual cycle. By avoiding intercourse on a woman’s most fertile days during her menstrual cycle, days 8 to 19, there is only a 5% chance of becoming pregnant. Having developed the system, IRH saw a natural fit with mobile phones. In the original set up, women would use Cyclebeads (multiple colored beads used to represent specific days of a menstrual cycle) to keep track of when they are more likely to become pregnant. Using the same idea, the CycleTel replaced the beads with a mobile phone. Each month on the first day of menses, a women text messages the system. Utilizing FrontlineSMS, it then responds by sending a message showing which days she could get pregnant. In 2009, IRH conducted a research study in the region of Uttar Pradesh, India. The pilot showed the need to tweak the system to fit the region context including the local languages and women’s past experience using mobile phones. But it also showed the willingness of women and men to pay for the service in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies. This program is being operated under to the Fertility Awareness-Based Methods (FAM) Project which is funded by USAID.

Dunia Wanita

Dunia Wanita, which means World of Women, was launched in February 2010 by Telkomsel, a MNO in Indonesia. It is a part of the MNO’s value-added services applications and is specifically for women to receive information on a number of different topics, including health. The subscription costs $0.12 per day. By dialing *468#, women have access to a “one stop info service.” By selecting “Cantik Sehat” (Health and Beautiful), women can receive health information and advice from famous Indonesian doctors. The voice messages include information about sexual health, pregnancy, and healthy living.

These are just a few examples of mobile health applications that are available to women in the developing world. The applications vary in information provided, media used, and business models utilized. This is a great illustration of how diverse mobile health can be in order to reach a targeted group within a country, based on infrastructure, location, health knowledge, and mobile usage/connectivity.

March 8, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Family Planning, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Women in Development

50 Ideas and Solutions that Deliver for Girls and Women

As you may have heard Women Deliver is celebrating the progress made on behalf of girls and women worldwide. Building on its 2011 competition, which featured inspiring people who have delivered for girls and women, this year they have chosen to spotlight top ideas and solutions in the following five categories:

•   Technologies and Innovations
•   Educational Initiatives
•   Health Modernization
•   Advocacy and Awareness Campaigns
•   Leadership and Empowerment Programs

Out of hundreds of submissions, a selection committee has chosen 25 per category. The top 125 have been posted here, where viewers can choose and vote on ten favorites per category. Several of the chosen innovations and solutions incorporate the use of mobile technologies for health, showing the increasing inclusion of this type of innovation for the advancement of women’s health. Finalists include the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), Comprehensive Community Based Rehabilitation in Tanzania (CCBRT) by M-PESA, and many, many others.

In addition, the mHealth Alliance’s Catalytic Grant Mechanism for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) and mHealth has been chosen as one of the top 25 ideas and solutions in the health intervention category. The Innovation Working Group, part of the Every Woman Every Child initiative, Norad, and the mHealth Alliance have partnered in the creation of a competitive and catalytic grant mechanism with a special focus on growing programs with sustainable financing models and early indications of impact. The projects supported through this grant mechanism harness the reach and popularity of mobile phones to help women, their families, and their health care providers in low-income settings combat inequitable access to quality health services. Funding is awarded through annual competitions managed by the mHealth Alliance and allows winners to take mHealth pilot programs to scale. You can find out information on this year’s grantees here.

Please show your support for mobile innovations and vote. The top 50 winners will be announced on March 8th, International Women’s Day. Vote now!

Initiative:

Maternal Newborn mHealth

February 27, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Don’t Miss Raj Shah on 20/20 Tonight!

BY: Raj Shah, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator

This Post originally appeared on ABCNews.

Raj Shah holds up his hads, with the words 1 million moms written on his palms Ensuring the safety of a mother and her newborn is not only one of the greatest development challenges we face, it is also one of the most heartbreaking.

Earlier this year, I visited South Sudan, where I met school children studying in a classroom—some of them for the very first time. Although I was optimistic about their future, I was also concerned, because I knew that for every girl I met, she was statistically more likely to die in childbirth than complete a secondary education.

This reality is simply unacceptable.

There is an incredible need to ensure the safety of mothers and infants in the critical period of 48 hours surrounding birth. To help spur progress in maternal and child health, we launched our first Grand Challenge for Development – Saving Lives at Birth – in partnership with the Government of Norway, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Grand Challenges Canada and The World Bank.

Saving Lives at Birth calls for groundbreaking prevention and treatment approaches for pregnant women and newborns in rural settings during this perilous time around childbirth. We received more than 600 proposals to our Grand Challenge, more than a quarter of which arrived from the developing world. Last week we announced our three transition-to-scale grant nominees. These nominees have proven that their ideas can deliver real results in local communities and are ready to test them on a much larger scale. While we expect our first round of grants to yield exciting innovations with the potential for significant change, we will encourage our community of innovators to push boundaries and find new ways to shape collective action.

Similarly, the Million Moms Challenge is inspiring American families to help mothers and children around the world. I am proud to accept this Challenge and will continue my commitment to this important cause.

I hope you will too.

December 16, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How to Disseminate Maternal Health Information to Rural Women

There are numerous ICT projects that focus on maternal health, many designed to reach women in rural areas where there is a severe lack of healthcare services. Mhealth in particular – the use of mobile phones to improve health – has taken off as a tool for providing critical information to pregnant and new mothers. In USAID’s MAMA project, for example, pregnant women in Bangladesh receive weekly information updates via text or voice message.

Photo credit: Open Ideo

But what is the best method for disseminating health information to rural women? How can the women learn and interpret the information in a way in which they can understand its value, making certain behavior changes if needed? Vikram Parmar, a professor at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, attempted to find this out through research conducted in India with 120 women from seven different rural villages. Parmar wanted to know how to motivate users of a Primary Health Information System (PHIS) to adopt positive health practices through designing and developing a Health Information System that maximized information dissemination.

Parmar wanted to explore how to improve information dissemination where health ICT projects had fallen short in three areas. First, he was concerned with the limited impact of Health Information Systems in educating rural users, as well as ICT-based health interventions such as film showings and radio program broadcasts that had not improved the health practices of rural target audiences. Secondly, the typical content and design of Health Information Systems did not encourage regular use due to the “non-persuasive setting of health interventions,” resulting in an information gap between rural women and primary health information. Finally, HIS deployed to rural users were based on content developed for urban users, resulting in a mismatch between the information given to rural women and the information they actually needed. In particular, maternal health and other personal women’s health issues had not been addressed.

Parmar proposed addressing these problems by employing a user-centered design framework to develop ICT interventions (see framework in full below). He tested this framework in the context of the PHIS. The results of his exploratory research indicated that the rural women’s knowledge had improved after interacting with the PHIS, signifying the importance of understanding user needs, taking into account existing social beliefs and practices related to health issues. Using this framework could improve information dissemination, resulting in positive change in rural women’s health-related practices.

October 14, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Marketing “Mobile Midwife” in Ghana

Can information delivered on a mobile phone affect the outcome of a pregnancy in a developing country? Can communities and healthcare workers use mobile phones to save the lives of newborns? These are some of the questions that the Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) program in Ghana is trying to address. Grameen Foundation is working with Ghana Health Service and Columbia University in one of the poorest rural districts of Ghana to try to improve the health outcomes for mothers and their newborns using mobile phones. But once a service has been created, how do you generate awareness for it and ensure there is adequate participation?

In July 2010, we launched a service called “Mobile Midwife,” which enablespregnant women and their families to receive SMS or pre-recorded voice messages on personal mobile phones. The messages are tied to the estimated due-date for the woman so the information is time-specific and delivered weekly in their own language. Nurses also use mobile phones to record when a pregnant woman has received prenatal care. If critical care is missed, both the mother and the nurse receive a reminder message on their mobile phones. To date, over 7,000 pregnant women and children under five have been registered in the system. More detail about the program can be found online in our “Lessons Learned in Ghana” report.

One of the challenges we faced in the development of this system was how to generate awareness for the “Mobile Midwife” service in the first place. Unless people register for the service, they cannot receive the important information we are able to provide about pregnancy. As we talked to people in the rural villages where “Mobile Midwife” would be available, it quickly became clear that communities in Ghana, and particularly the Upper East Region, had been inundated with cartoon-like health message campaigns from myriad NGOs and government agencies. People told us that if campaigns were seen as “too slick,” people would not think the messages were relevant to them. The MOTECH team decided to pursue an approach that sought to provide “aspirational” images that were differentiated from the typical “NGO cartoon” campaign, but still were relevant to the UER population. This included using real photographs instead of drawings, and ensuring that the people in the photographs were wearing clothes in the style of those worn in the rural areas where we worked. Part of the aspirational message was dressing the models in new, clean clothing, which proved to be effective. When field testing the marketing styles, many people said they “liked the lady in the pictures and it made them feel good as one day they would like to be dressed well too.” The team also decided to create some messaging that was targeted specifically to men, in an effort to respect their roles as decision makers in the family, get them to listen to the messages with their partners, and be a part of making positive health choices throughout pregnancy, birth and early childhood. As the program evolves, we expect to experiment with broader reach marketing vehicles such as radio and community mobilization.

Initiative:

Maternal Newborn mHealth

Order:

October 5, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

USAID MAMA initiative leading the way in mobile for maternal health projects

The USAID-initiated MAMA (Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action) project that utilizes cell phones to improve maternal health in developing countries gave an in-depth update at the latest mHealth Working Group meeting.

The pilot initiative, announced in May by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and co-sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, has begun work in Bangladesh. MAMA seeks to achieve “scale, sustainability and impact” by creating a replicable model of reaching low-income mothers and household decision-makers (husbands, mothers-in-law) through increasing the impact of current mHealth programs, providing technical assistance to new mHealth models, and improving methods of applying mobile technology to improving maternal health.

At the working group meeting, Sandhya Rao of USAID and Pamela Riley of USAID’s SHOPS (Strengthening Health Outcomes through the Private Sector) program discussed the status of Aponjon, the MAMA project in Bangladesh. Aponjon provides vital health information through mobile phones two times a week to expecting and new mothers, reminding them of when to receive checkups and how to stay healthy during the pregnancy. Bangladesh was chosen to pilot the project because the country’s government has been a leader in promoting and expanding access to ICTs and is very active in mHealth.

Photo credit: Council on Foreign Relations

In order to bring it to a national scale, the burgeoning MAMA initiative has established private, public, and NGO partnerships to help implement its activities, and is carefully monitoring its methods and practices to ensure that the project is reaching its target goals. For example, Aponjon is constantly tweaking the content of its phone messages so that mothers and decision-makers understand, retain and relate to the information given.

Photo credit: Highmark Medicare Services

Another aspect of the project that MAMA will be monitoring is its business models to determine which are the most sustainable and effective. Currently, customers pay service providers to retrieve the phone messages. Text messaging is the cheapest method for remitting information in most developing countries, but many of the poorest clients are unable to read the texts. The alternative is interactive voice response (IVR) through which customers can hear recorded messages at a much lower cost than call centers but more than texting. MAMA and its partners are experimenting with different pay schemes, such as subsidizing rates, working with service providers to offer low rates or donate funds to the project, and charging fees based on usage.

It will take the new initiative years before sustainable, reliable, and replicable models are in place. What is clear is that the potential for improving maternal and newborn health through the use of mobile phones is being tapped.

September 29, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Health, HIV/AIDS, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Scalable and Replicable: ICT4Health is Chosen Theme for UN South-South Awards

Digital Health 4 Digital Development was the theme of choice for the 2011 South-South awards that took place earlier this week. The United Nations-supported awards ceremony, held September 19th, honors governments, organizations and individuals accelerating progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and this year awards were given for utilizing ICTs for the advancement of the MDG health goals.

Prime Minister of Bangladesh receives South South award from

Photo Credit: thefinancialexpress-bd.com

The awards were organized by South South News, a digital media platform launched by the United Nations General Assembly High-level Committee in 2010. The platform disseminates development news and allows countries in the global South to share best practices in advancing implementation of the MDGs. As health remains a high priority within the international development field, with three of the eight MDGs calling for health improvements by 2015, this year South South chose the “catalytic and unifying force of ‘digital health’” as its focus.

Awardees were recognized for policies, programs and projects that address global health using ICTs as a mechanism for “scalability and replicability of the broad development agenda.” Awards were given on health categories such as Women and Children’s Health and HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria with special consideration given to achievements in the fields of mobile, broadband, Internet, medical, and pharmaceutical applications.

Among the winners was Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina who received recognition for the use of ICTs in addressing women and children’s healthcare. The government of Bangladesh has made increasing the use and availability of ICTs a priority over the past decade, declaring IT a “thrust” sector and implementing a national ICT policy in 2002. The prime minister has been a catalyst for ICT development in Bangladesh, launching the Digital Bangladesh 2021 program, reducing taxes to make computers and other electronics more affordable, and giving free internet services to schools. This is not the first time she has been recognized for her ICT work in the country. The PM noted during the ceremony that most of Bangladesh’s 11,000 community health clinics have been digitized, allowing for free treatment of diseases like malaria and AIDS and reducing maternal and infant mortality rates.

Use of PDA by the nurses at ICDDRB hospital in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Photo credit: Bytesforall "ICT4Health" Network

Other development agencies and UN-affiliated organizations are also choosing to give awards to those using ICTs to advance public health initiatives. The Elena Pinchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation, rising from the work of UNAIDS High Level Commission on HIV Prevention, has launched a competition to find innovative start up projects that use social media and mobile phones for HIV prevention. The competition is taking applications until October 1^st and the winners will receive up to $10,000 to implement one-year projects.

As global health becomes a pressing priority, it is essential to utilize, innovate, and increase access to ICTs within the healthcare sector. The South South awards have set a precedent by recognizing the success of ICT4Health in accelerating the Millennium Development Goals and could encourage Global South countries to follow in the footsteps of nations like Bangladesh.

September 22, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Infectious Diseases, Maternal & Child Health, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

India to use mobile phones to track millions of immunizations

Child being given vaccination. Photo Credit: getty images

India’s health minister announced earlier this month a new initiative designed to boost the country’s rate of immunizing newborns by collecting mobile phone numbers of all pregnant mothers to monitor their babies’ vaccinations over time.

Ghulam Nabi Azad, the health minister, told a World Health Organization meeting in New Delhi that his ministry has been supervising the collection of about 26 million mobile numbers of pregnant women in India since January and plans to finish the job by December.

The women whose numbers are collected will be tracked via the mobile phones in the future by the Indian government to ensure the women’s babies receive the proper immunizations at the proper times. Babies in India are supposed to be immunized against tuberculosis, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whopping cough and measles, health experts say.

According to Mr. Azad, the campaign will “enable us to monitor our immunization service at a national level. In addition, the central government will be able to check on the accuracy of data collected locally, which is often in doubt.”

The impetus for this program manifested due to a decentralized and deficient public health system, poor monitoring methods and sub standard vaccination coverage.

Photo Credit: wisdomblog.com

In 2010, only 72% of Indian babies received the three doses of the DPT vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, an accepted indicator of a successful vaccination program, according to a joint estimate United Nations Children’s Fund and the WHO. That compares poorly with Bangladesh at 95% and Indonesia at 83%, according to the same joint estimate.

An inherent problem with the monitoring of vaccinations in India is that once babies are vaccinated, there tends to be no physical record of that baby being vaccinated. It is up to the guardians of the child to remember which vaccination was administered at which time. Also, the district levels governments may report erroneous numbers when reporting on the number of children vaccinated.

This initiative will give the central government the ability to contact the new mothers to confirm their babies’ immunization. “We’ll know the capacity of each state so they can’t fool us,” said Mr. Azad, reflecting widespread frustration.

Such an encompassing initiative is bound to face obstacles. Mr. Azad already encountered problems when he tried calling ten numbers from a list gathered back in February. “In front of all of the ministers, I picked up the phone and dialed the first 10 numbers. Only six of them were accurate numbers. Knowing we were going to be checking these numbers, our health workers still collected 40% faulty numbers—that is very bad” he said.

Mr. Azad declined to detail the cost of the program or how many numbers have been entered into the government’s system so far. But he said that tracking 26 million babies “is not an easy job.”

This is an ambitious project to say the least. Mobile phones after all aren’t permanent tools. A family could potentially report one number and procure a new phone with a new number. Also keep in mind, the Indian government is talking about a series of vaccinations that will span over a number of years for families living in rural areas. There could be a high turnover issue of mobile numbers. Families could also report a false phone number for fear of government intrusion – there is no way of double checking for that. Don’t forget, not all mothers will have a mobile phone to begin with.

The list of possible impediments could go on, but the bottom line is that attaining 26 million accurate and functional mobile numbers is idealistic at best. Nonetheless, this is a good start for the central government – it shows they are paying attention to the issue.

August 29, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Infectious Diseases, Maternal & Child Health, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Tanzania tracks malaria prevention with mobile phones

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.

August 17, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Mobile, Nutrition, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Youth rewarded with food and medicine for going to school

Child using the mPowering mobile app. Photo Credit: fastcompany.com

Can children in impoverished areas that sacrifice school to make an extra dollar for their family be given the opportunity to go school without worrying about the family?

One organization is taking a stab at breaking that crippling cycle. mPowering, a nonprofit organization that aims to use mobile technology to empower the impoverished to climb out of poverty has implemented a mobile phone program that provides children with food and medical incentives for going to school.

The organization, founded by veterans of Salesforce.com and Apple, is partnering with nonprofits in the developing world to provide food, medicine, and other goods to people in places like Orissa, India who perform poverty defeating actions like going to school or taking advantage of prenatal care.

mPowering employs a plan for finding the right population to work with. They pinpoint areas in the developing world where poverty is widespread and then partner with local organizations in those areas to develop mobile phone programs that facilitate a path for climbing out of poverty.

Photo Credit: mpowering.org

One area mPowering is currently working in is Orissa, India, the poorest region in India with over 20 million people living in extreme poverty. In Orissa, mPowering has partnered with the Citta foundation to build a school, hospital and establish the mobile phone program.

Forty-nine families in the region were given phones by the Citta foundation, which they now use to document when they go to school or attend local health care classes for expectant mothers.

A child going to school, for example, logs in to the “school” option on the mPowering mobile app and scans his barcode to check in. The app is entirely picture-based, so users don’t have to be literate. At the end of each month, the families pool together their points to score medicine, food, and clothing from the nonprofit partners, in Orissa’s case, the Citta foundation.

The idea behind mPowering is to attack the phenomenon of children dropping out of school to work for their families and not being able to afford healthcare while doing so. This is critical since 41% of Orissa’s children suffer from malnutrition, and 65% suffer from anemia.

Providing food and medicine incentives for going to school has a two sided effect. It gives the family the supplies they would have the children work for, and it motivates the child to go to school and stay enrolled.

mpowering mobile app interface. Photo Credit: fastcompany.com

Many of the potential obstacles have been accounted for. A program manager is responsible for monitoring and distributing the incentives to families every month. Also, phone chargers are provided to schools so that families without electricity can charge their phones at schools while the children attend class. mPowering also holds training sessions for the families who receive their phones.

Breaking out of the cycle of poverty is a difficult and tricky thing to do. However, tackling the problem through children may be a fruitful avenue to go through given that children who are impoverished grow up to perpetuate the cycle all over again with their families.

August 12, 2011/by actualize

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