Mobile Quizzes For HIV/AIDS Awareness: Zain and Text to Change

Posted by AnneryanHeatwole on May 18, 2010

In Kenya, a partnership between the non-profit organization Text to Change and the telecommunications company Zain used SMS mobile quizzes to keep Zain’s employees up-to-date on the latest HIV/AIDS information.

For four weeks in November and December of 2009, Zain’s Kenyan employees were part of a pilot program for SMS mobile quizzes. Employees received three multiple choice questions each week that focused on different aspects of HIV/AIDS such as prevention and treatment. The quizzes also directed participants to testing centers in order to learn their HIV/AIDS status. Says Bas Hoefman, co-founder and managing director of Text to Change,  the choice to partner their mobile program with a telecommunications company was logical: “We thought, ‘why isn’t Zain using its own products – mobile telephony and SMS – to educate its own employees?’  Use your own product for your own employees.”

Zain covered the cost of the SMS quizzes and the employees’ responses, as well as sponsoring prizes (such as additional airtime, mobiles, or health club memberships) for employees who answered questions correctly. Hoefman estimated that the total cost of the SMS mobile quiz program was between $5,000 and $10,000 USD, including Text to Change’s work on the development and technical side, and Zain’s prizes and hosting charges. Employees participated for free.

Among the 506 employees targeted by the program, the pilot received a 43% participation rate with roughly 220 responses for each question. Hoefman said that the results were encouraging, because it shows that the program can raise awareness while engaging the audience. He says, “We did some internal communication, and people tend to like to be educated in a playful way during work time.” 

The system works by sending out a question, with multiple choice answers, over SMS to employees phones. Each employee can respond with his or her answer; if participants answered correctly, they received supplementary information about the subject, if they answered incorrectly, they were texted the correct answer with an explanation. See this chart, from Text to Change’s website, for an illustration of the program:

According to Hoefman, the main technical challenge was adjusting the system to run on another country’s platform (Text to Change’s SMS mobile quiz was originally designed in Uganda, where the non-profit is based).

The second, larger challenge was getting people to move beyond just responding to the quizzes and to take action in response to the information presented through the SMSes. Zain set up an in-house HIV/AIDS testing center on-site during the pilot, but they found they had to work around the stigma of HIV/AIDS. Explains Hoefman, “The challenge, of course, with HIV/AIDS is that it has to be confidential. There was in-house testing arranged, but if you encourage people to go for a test people don’t like to be seen when they walk into a test center. But you can use SMS for people to stay anonymous. So the test center was not on the work floor, but in another building.” By allowing users to anonymously participate over SMS and to be tested discreetly, the pilot tried to get participants to take action. During the pilot, there was a 10% increase in the number of Zain employees accessing health services. 

According to Hoefman, Text to Change is about to roll out a new version of the pilot in Madagascar and he says that the organization learned a lot from the Kenyan pilot: “Some of the questions in Kenya were a bit intrusive, people felt that ‘this is not a question you ask on a Monday morning’ or something like that. So that’s something we learned, and we have to adapt the content."

Text to Change’s SMS Mobile Quizzes are an anonymous and easy way for participants to keep up to date with health information and find relevant testing, prevention, and treatment information. 

 

 

Basic Information
Organization involved in the project?: 
Project goals: 

Use interactive quizzes to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS among Zain employees in Kenya.

 

Brief description of the project: 

Text to Change partnered with telecommunications company Zain to run an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. The pilot used interactive SMS quizzes based on Text to Change's existing SMS platform to get employees to answer questions about HIV/AIDS, and to encourage them to get tested for HIV/AIDS. The pilot ran for four weeks in November and December of 2009, and had an overall response rate of 43%.

Text to Change offers interactive mobile SMS quizzes, combining knowledge transfer with incentives in the form of airtime. The SMS Quiz is designed to raise and help resolve key issues around local development programs.

Target audience: 

The target audience was 506 Zain employees in Kenya.

 

Detailed Information
Mobile Tools Used: 
Length of Project (in months) : 
1
Status: 
Ended/Complete
What worked well? : 
  • The 43% response rate was considered encouraging, and the fact that there was a 10% increase in employees who sought health services during the course of the pilot.
  • Text to Change also found that the partnership was a good foundation for setting up telecommunications contacts in order to launch future projects outside of their home-base country, Uganda.

 

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

The pilot faced several challenges:

  • Employees didn't want their co-workers to see them going to the on-site testing center because of the stigma of HIV/AIDS.
  • Due to the sensitive nature of some questions, Text to Change had to ensure the privacy of the employees' responses.
  • Adapting Text to Change's technology from Uganda (where the company is based) to run in Kenya.

Mobile Quizzes For HIV/AIDS Awareness: Zain and Text to Change Locations

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In Kenya, a partnership between the non-profit organization Text to Change and the telecommunications company Zain used SMS mobile quizzes to keep Zain’s employees up-to-date on the latest HIV/AIDS information.

For four weeks in November and December of 2009, Zain’s Kenyan employees were part of a pilot program for SMS mobile quizzes. Employees received three multiple choice questions each week that focused on different aspects of HIV/AIDS such as prevention and treatment. The quizzes also directed participants to testing centers in order to learn their HIV/AIDS status. Says Bas Hoefman, co-founder and managing director of Text to Change,  the choice to partner their mobile program with a telecommunications company was logical: “We thought, ‘why isn’t Zain using its own products – mobile telephony and SMS – to educate its own employees?’  Use your own product for your own employees.”

Zain covered the cost of the SMS quizzes and the employees’ responses, as well as sponsoring prizes (such as additional airtime, mobiles, or health club memberships) for employees who answered questions correctly. Hoefman estimated that the total cost of the SMS mobile quiz program was between $5,000 and $10,000 USD, including Text to Change’s work on the development and technical side, and Zain’s prizes and hosting charges. Employees participated for free.

Among the 506 employees targeted by the program, the pilot received a 43% participation rate with roughly 220 responses for each question. Hoefman said that the results were encouraging, because it shows that the program can raise awareness while engaging the audience. He says, “We did some internal communication, and people tend to like to be educated in a playful way during work time.” 

The system works by sending out a question, with multiple choice answers, over SMS to employees phones. Each employee can respond with his or her answer; if participants answered correctly, they received supplementary information about the subject, if they answered incorrectly, they were texted the correct answer with an explanation. See this chart, from Text to Change’s website, for an illustration of the program:

According to Hoefman, the main technical challenge was adjusting the system to run on another country’s platform (Text to Change’s SMS mobile quiz was originally designed in Uganda, where the non-profit is based).

The second, larger challenge was getting people to move beyond just responding to the quizzes and to take action in response to the information presented through the SMSes. Zain set up an in-house HIV/AIDS testing center on-site during the pilot, but they found they had to work around the stigma of HIV/AIDS. Explains Hoefman, “The challenge, of course, with HIV/AIDS is that it has to be confidential. There was in-house testing arranged, but if you encourage people to go for a test people don’t like to be seen when they walk into a test center. But you can use SMS for people to stay anonymous. So the test center was not on the work floor, but in another building.” By allowing users to anonymously participate over SMS and to be tested discreetly, the pilot tried to get participants to take action. During the pilot, there was a 10% increase in the number of Zain employees accessing health services. 

According to Hoefman, Text to Change is about to roll out a new version of the pilot in Madagascar and he says that the organization learned a lot from the Kenyan pilot: “Some of the questions in Kenya were a bit intrusive, people felt that ‘this is not a question you ask on a Monday morning’ or something like that. So that’s something we learned, and we have to adapt the content."

Text to Change’s SMS Mobile Quizzes are an anonymous and easy way for participants to keep up to date with health information and find relevant testing, prevention, and treatment information. 

 

 

Basic Information
Organization involved in the project?: 
Project goals: 

Use interactive quizzes to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS among Zain employees in Kenya.

 

Brief description of the project: 

Text to Change partnered with telecommunications company Zain to run an HIV/AIDS awareness campaign. The pilot used interactive SMS quizzes based on Text to Change's existing SMS platform to get employees to answer questions about HIV/AIDS, and to encourage them to get tested for HIV/AIDS. The pilot ran for four weeks in November and December of 2009, and had an overall response rate of 43%.

Text to Change offers interactive mobile SMS quizzes, combining knowledge transfer with incentives in the form of airtime. The SMS Quiz is designed to raise and help resolve key issues around local development programs.

Target audience: 

The target audience was 506 Zain employees in Kenya.

 

Detailed Information
Mobile Tools Used: 
Length of Project (in months) : 
1
Status: 
Ended/Complete
What worked well? : 
  • The 43% response rate was considered encouraging, and the fact that there was a 10% increase in employees who sought health services during the course of the pilot.
  • Text to Change also found that the partnership was a good foundation for setting up telecommunications contacts in order to launch future projects outside of their home-base country, Uganda.

 

What did not work? What were the challenges?: 

The pilot faced several challenges:

  • Employees didn't want their co-workers to see them going to the on-site testing center because of the stigma of HIV/AIDS.
  • Due to the sensitive nature of some questions, Text to Change had to ensure the privacy of the employees' responses.
  • Adapting Text to Change's technology from Uganda (where the company is based) to run in Kenya.

Mobile Quizzes For HIV/AIDS Awareness: Zain and Text to Change Locations

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