Things are changing at MobileActive. When we started in 2005 at a legendary event that we hosted in Toronto, Canada, there were few practitioners and few projects but many ideas on how to use mobile tech in development. We had identified about 100 people worldwide who were actively using mobiles in their social change and social development work and brought 40 together.
The US Broadcasting Board of Governors and the US organization Freedom House recently collaborated on a new study on mobile safety in 12 countries. The study, Safety on the Line: Exposing the myth of mobile security (PDF), sets out to investigate two distinct areas: 1.
One of the issues we all struggle with as we are working in mobile tech for social change and development is the lack of reliable data on mobile use, penetration, and costs. The GSMA sells a service, Wireless Intelligence, that provides detailed data on mobile subscriptions worldwide as well as country- and carrier-based information.
In the Horn of Africa, Somalia makes headlines but often only because of drought, famine, crisis, and insecurity. Al Jazeera recently launched Somalia Speaks to help amplify stories from people and their everyday lives in the region - all via SMS.
The second round of workshops in the Exploring Taboos project was recently held in Cairo organized by Nazra team, and at the same time bloggers who took part in the first round of workshops kept on writing about social taboos in Egypt. Under the title “Sexual Rabies”, the blogger Freedom Fighter published post looking back at some of the sexual harassment that took place in early October, as people were celebrating the Muslim feast (Eid).
We have got some exciting updates from the FOKO Madagascar project. FOKO has completed its expansion efforts in Northern Madagascar. The SAVA region and Antsiranana are now part of the FOKO network. More news from the project Blog:
