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.

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.

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.