cellphones

We are very pleased to announce the first set of translations of MobileActive's Strategy Guides into Arabic. Thank you to the National Democratic Institute for its pro-bono support for the translation.

Mobile phones have become a powerful emerging tool for participation in civil society. The MobileActive series of Strategy Guides, now in Arabic, examines the effectiveness of civil society organizations using mobile phones to build their constituent lists, influence political causes, and raise money. In the Guides we aggregate strategies, case studies, and lessons learned to encourage the adoption of mobile phones by nonprofits.

This series of Strategy Guides is designed to equip organizations around the world with the know-how to deploy effective mobile campaigns for a variety of types of activism and advocacy.

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Mark Glaser at MediaShift PBS met me some time ago and we spoke on the subject of citizen media and the future of it. I truly believe cell phones are the right way to go here. Combine this with the proper business model. I would describe the features of such. Shortly I will reveal the first site using the technology in a more general atmosphere.

Key quote from article:
"The key here is that the media organizations need to realize they are losing control. They can't really control [the news] now because people are posting this stuff to other blogs. I think it would be better to merge traditional reporting with citizen media rather than have a [totally] new media.

To take the best of the old fashioned news organizations and bring in the power of the bloggers, because you have so many people investigating. Mix them and you have an extremely good organization and you'll have content that's really important in finding out the truth." -- Erik Sundelof, Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University

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Cell phones have added $650 million to Bangladesh’s gross domestic product (GDP) and created almost 240,000 jobs in the country. On top of that, most of the jobs pay significantly more than the average job, a recent study by the international firm Ovum found. Grameen Phone, and its Village Phone program, should be given a lot of credit for this.

Grameen Phone is currently the largest mobile phone company in Bangladesh with seven million subscribers in April. The telecom company itself is a for-profit operation but has a nonprofit arm that works with the microfinance giant the Grameen Foundation to get mobile phones to people living in poor, rural areas. How the Village Phone program works is that select members of Grameen’s micro-banks, usually women who have proven their ability to work and repay loans, use a small loan from Grameen to purchase a mobile phone. Often times this is the first working phone the village has ever had. The women then turn the mobile phones into businesses, charging fellow villagers a fee to make calls. Essentially this makes each owner of a Village Phone the head of a small, mobile call center.

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I came across this article from Business Wire, "Mobile Marketers Get Warmed Up: Latin America's Wireless Content Market Set to Samba - Region's Rapid Subscriber Growth, New Network & Handset Technologies and Cross Network Connectivity Make Mobile Services Market Ripe for Brands Seeking Direct Connection to Young Latin American Consumers"  The article is available here.  So, how active are youth in Latin America with mobile phones?  How do you facilitate their activity in politics?  If they're buying ringtones, how does politics and social issues reach the masses?