iGUIDE: ICTD Resources in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area

This project created the roadmap for an online resource and print directory to foster increased contact and collaboration between the public and private sectors to achieve the Millennium Development Goals through the innovative use of ICTs. Based on a comprehensive survey of ICTD stakeholders in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area and a thorough analysis of the market place, the iGuide will map the local ICTD landscape as well as aggregate and deliver information for practitioners in an innovative, easy to use format. Through a collaboration with the UN's Global Alliance for ICT and Development, the iGUIDE is currently expanding to other countries, beginning with Brazil.

Mobile Money:

RiOS Institute has received a grant from the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at UC Irvine, which is funded the Gates Foundation, to study the intersection between transnational financial networks, Information and Communication Technologies(especially mobile) and the financial inclusion of the poor. We will conduct fieldwork in Latin America, studying cultural meanings of money, microfinance and mobile technologies and their impact on the economic development of the poor.

Uganda: Mobile Phone Application for Rural Healthcare Delivery

This project worked on a mobile-phone based data collection application for health information management, in collaboration with an Output Based Aid (OBA) program called HealthyLife that is used to treat Sexually Transmitted Infections, and in partnership with Marie-Stopes International, a health NGO and Microcare, a health insurance firm. The overall project is funded by the German Development Bank. The final project goal is for staff to fill out claim forms on a mobile-phone, see an immediate automated preliminary validation, and then transmit them for final verification over GPRS (all clinics have coverage) at the rate of about $1 per 500 forms per clinic per month. This results in shorter reimbursement pipelines, less duplicate effort associated with tedious data entry, and more timely feedback on treatment protocol, leading to better adherence to treatment protocols and overall improvement in sustainability of the HealthyLife program. The project is also supported by the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley. This project was initiated as part of our graduate seminar on "Social Entrepreneurship in ICTD" at UC Berkeley's School of Information.

Maplight: User Engagement in Money and Politics

Government accountability starts with information. Citizens have won the right to information about campaign contributions, gifts from lobbyists, how our representatives vote and who inserted a last-minute earmark. MAPlight.org is creating the platform that mobilizes this information, giving it legs in a dynamic content-management system and connecting the dots from numerous databases to produce a clearer story of the relationship between money and politics. The team was working on the next step: making this information reach out. Civic engagement equals user engagement, and the project created the outreach and tools that advocacy groups, journalists and citizens need to hold our officials accountable and counter the force of money in politics. This project was initiated as part of our graduate seminar on "Social Entrepreneurship in ICTD" at UC Berkeley's School of Information.

Seva Foundation: Knowledge Sharing and Peer-to-Peer Learning

The team worked with the Seva Foundation, an organization based in Berkeley, CA with offices around the world, that aims to alleviate suffering caused by disease and disease and pThe goal of the project was to create a virtual platform that facilitates knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer learning. A scalable social networking function embedded in an intranet will not only foster collaboration and increase peer-to-peer learning across its field Offices and partners, but will also streamline Seva's internal communications to address the information gap and inefficiencies inherent in its. This project was initiated as part of our graduate seminar on "Social Entrepreneurship in ICTD" at UC Berkeley's School of Information.

East Palo Alto: Course Management System Online

This project customized a free open source Course Management System called Moodle for 8th Graders at a school in the Ravenswood City School District in East Palo Alto. Due to limited resources in the school district, students do not gain the same experience working with computers as those in the adjacent school districts. As a result, when these students transfer to high schools in adjacent districts they find the transition difficult. In particular, high schools often use a computer-based online course management system that provides another forum for interaction between teachers and students. Students coming from the Ravenswood District however have no exposure to online course management. By implementing Moodle, the team hopes to ease this transition for the students. This project was initiated as part of our graduate seminar on "Social Entrepreneurship in ICTD" at UC Berkeley's School of Information.