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Where are we going with what we are doing?

Fulfillment Elusive for Young Altruists In the Crowded Field of Public Interest

By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 2, 2007; Page A01

A friend pointed out this article for me. I have to wonder that if in our efforts to look at ICTD academically if we’re going to create another glut of idealists with nowhere to go. But there’s so much to do! I have been watching interest in this area grow over the past three years, and have high hopes that the entrepreneurial spirit of this generation of b-school and international relations graduates will be able to look beyond the traditional NGO positions and forge ahead with their own grassroots efforts. And of course, that this crop of people will be well trained to listen and live with the communities they want to help, and genuinely provide services that the communities need in a way that they can sustain them.

I’m not sure what all the schools are that have a good focus on information technology and international development. It seems that most Poli Sci, Public Health, and Public Policy programs are fairly cognizant of the theoretical issues around development, but are not always as well versed in technology. Haas Business school at Berkeley is fairly experiential in this area and actually sends students (where possible) to developing countries like Ghana. They are also part of the Global Social Venture Competition, along with London Business School and Columbia Business school, which have given rise to entrepreneurial efforts like World of Good and many other socially-minded organizations. Cornell’s Johnson School of Business also has a Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise which sends people to developing countries, knowing that while not everyone will continue to work on sustainable development post-graduation, the experiences they have as part of the program will be useful no matter where they end up. And of course I have to mention the Blum Center for Developing Economies, which sponsors a lot of my research and has recently started a new minor for undergraduates.

From a computer science perspective – developing new technologies explicitly designed for the infrastructural, economic, political, and social realities in developing regions, there is (of course) the multi-disciplinary TIER group at UC Berkeley, some work being done at University of Washington, and Keshav’s Tetherless Computing group at University of Waterloo, in addition to the very capable individuals scattered throughout other universities.

Craig Newmark Speaks: we listen

Craig Newmark of Craiglist recently gave a talk as part of my Social Entrepreneurship class. I’ve attached my notes from the talk here (Notes: Craig Newmark on Craigslist), and you can listen to the audio on the ischool podcast.

Craig, as a self-proclaimed-and-proud-of-it geek is a fun speaker with lots of interesting perspectives. As someone who has lucked out by having some really good insights into what people want (simple, functional, straightforward ways of linking people with things to people that want them), he looks at his brainchild from a very technologically deterministic perspective. Give them what you have, listen to what they want. And if they don’t like the principles you stick to, its okay – there’s always another community that will.

And so it turns out that the stuff that I think is really interesting about craigslist (besides the fact that it is so useful) isn’t really all that interesting to Craig. I asked if he could highlight any differences in how different communities have picked up craigslist – if perhaps there were certain characteristics that lend towards the craiglist-principles being more appropriate or not. At the very least, there’s a tipping point – if there aren’t a lot of postings then it’s less useful as a resource for people that are looking for things. Craigslist apartment listings, for example are probably more useful in the bay area, than some random small town. There was a time where it was only useful in the bay area. Although it’s in a lot of cities now so maybe we aren’t so different after all. But try to transfer the idea to another country (madrid?) and see what happens. Do the categories and everything reflect some structural element of American culture, or is their model flexible enough to reflect any culture?

What I’d really like to see is a sort of Craiglist-free tag for connecting specific NGO-needs with micro-donors. A micro-donation marketplace, where approved social entrepreneurs can list their needs and be matched with people willing to donate time or money, either on a one-time or an ongoing basis. We’d have to be careful not to inculcate dependence, but to make sure the projects listed are well thought out. I guess instead of craigslist you could think of it as a kiva.org, extended to allow micro-donations and not just micro-loans, crossed with an idealist.org that recruits people to come and do particular tasks. For example, HEAL Africa, a hospital I do some volunteer/missions work for in the Dem Rep of Congo, could list their needs: salaries for their employees, school fees for the families that take in orphans, oxygenators, etc, and individuals could adopt particular needs, rather than donating to an unlabeled bin called “HEAL Africa”. People like being connected to specific achievements; it just feels more engaging to pay a particular doctor’s salary, than to be writing a yearly check to a faceless NGO.

Getting back to the topic at hand, I’m really glad Craig never sold out – especially to the banner ad people. I stopped using Yahoo! Mail because the banner ads kept getting more and more…umm…skanky. I didn’t really appreciate always having some half-naked model on a banner ad occupying my screen while I was reading email. (Besides, threaded conversations are just so much easier to track/manage.) It’s amazing to realize that a site with 9 billion page views per month is managed by only 24 paid employees. An ongoing problem is that of scammers, something that is as much as possible policed by users, but still a serious concern. And a recurring theme is the one of listening to the users. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. It’s not just about listening, but about hearing what they are saying and knowing what to do about it. And I think that’s what a lot of development-speak boils down to: take the time to listen to your users and you might actually be able to work with them to develop something they will actually use!

Talk: Musings on Going to Goma

As a follow-up to my missions trip to Goma this past summer my teammates and I did a two hour presentation for our church, talking about what we did, and what we’re planning to do.

Normally I’m pretty skeptical about missions. I mean really – what depth is there to going out to beaches over spring break and walking up to random strangers to tell them about God? It’s pure proselytization. But over the past few years I’ve been taking development classes and talking to people in Ghana, and I’ve realized that missions are not purely evangelical; many of the schools and hospitals in Africa are missions in which people have devoted their time and skills towards God’s mission of feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and curing the sick. But still.. what can one do with two weeks? Short missions trips are always ultimately for the benefit of the person going and not to the community supposedly being served.

This trip was different. We gathered together as a multi-disciplinary group of people who wanted to go to Goma to listen to the people there, to hear what needs were there, and to serve in whatever way we could. We preached, installed wireless routers, and taught workshops on how to play with children. We even painted a mural! I really think we made a difference… and I can’t wait to go back.

(more…)

I never dreamed…

Tonight I saw an incredible performance – no, not just one incredible performance, but feat after feat of phenomenal artistry. The China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe is composed of talented dancers and musicians, each one visual or hearing impaired, with three additional performers with physical disabilities.  Somehow, despite the fact that they performed in the Athens Olympic Cultural Show and a number of other remarkable venues, I hadn’t heard of them.  But fortunately for me, my friend Alice got ticket through a friend of hers, and I had the opportunity to see them at the Masonic in San Francisco.

Even discounting their disabilities, the performances were phenomenal – their timing was perfect, elegant, and graceful.  The first piece is a bodhisattva piece, with the 20+ hearing-impaired dancers moving their arms as if attached to one body. In another piece Huang Yangguang, a man without arms, uses dance to show how he waters and grows his fields.  Following intermission, we were treated to a chinese orchestra, performed entirely by blind instrumentalists.  For me, that was the most remarkable – in order for them to play music, they have to hear it and replay it, without the benefit of sheet music to learn from, and despite the fact that they had no conductor (they wouldn’t be able to see a conductor) they were perfectly synchronized. Having spent some part of my youth in various orchestras and bands, it’s hard to stay synchronized even when you do have a conductor!

Anyways, they are in California (mostly LA) doing live performances and publicizing a recent documentary, “My Dream,” about their group. If they come your way, check it out!

Planned Obsolescence and Rapidly Changing Markets

A little while back Fast Company published an article on Grameen Phone’s phone ladies:

Unplanned Obsolescence

Grameen’s famous Village Phone Program lifted thousands out of poverty– and helped Muhammad Yunus win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem: It’s not working anymore.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/unplanned-obsolescence.html

There is a counterpoint to this article on the website for one of the about-Yunus books:

http://www.youcanhearmenow.com/?p=97

Primarily, the FC article notes that the “phone lady” model is no longer working in Bangladesh; mobile phones have become too ubiquitous. The counterpoint says FC is missing the forest for the trees; the fact that mobile phones are more ubiquitous speaks to the  growth in the overall income of the area (or to the drop in price of mobile phones).

In most of the villages I went to in Uganda, the VillagePhones (a collaboration between Grameen and MTN) operated alongside mobile phone vendors from a variety of service providers (Celtel, UTL/Mango), and there was mostly ubiquitous coverage.  However, that wasn’t always the case – generally the Village phones start out in areas where a mobile phone would need a rather unwieldy booster antenna in order to have reception.  Eventually the mobile service providers are able to extend their coverage and build a nearby cell tower, allowing more traditional mobile phones to work, and lowering the barrier to entry; the capital required to be a “village phone”. I don’t think it’s clear that it is the village phone that causes the mobile service providers to expand their networks, although certainly MTN‘s presence in a particular area causes some “first-to-market” fears in Celtel and UTL.  At the same time, I suspect the development of rural telecommunications infrastructure is much more driven by goverment policy (and certainly rural subsidy taxes), and the Ugandan Communications Commision’s (UCC - the FCC of Uganda) forward-looking efforts to find ways to help rural areas benefit from communications infrastructure.

Replication of the Village Phone in other countries (e.g. Uganda) aside it goes to say that the ultimate goal of most development projects should be obscelescence.  Wouldn’t it be great if extreme poverty were eradicated and everyone would have the power to (as Jeffrey Sachs might say) raise themselves on the ladder of development?

p.s. Another interesting article – on how housing/property demands are changing the lives of farmers in India.  I think this guy is faring better than the lottery winners in the US.

SPOTLIGHT ON INDIA: The Price of Modernization
Millionaire still keeps cattle in his garage
Only 2 years ago, he was living on $5,000 a year on the farm

Heidi J. Shrager, Chronicle Foreign Service

Sunday, November 4, 2007

GPS Tracking Melissa (the shark)

A friend forwarded me this post about a new Discovery Channel game, in which the positions of the sharks in the game reflect the actual position of actively tracked sharks in the ocean. Cool, huh?

So if you can’t figure out where I am, at least you can always find Melissa the shark…

Uganda/Ghana World Bank Statistics

I’m saving these here mostly as bookmarks, but thought they might be useful to anyone reading this blog…

The World Bank database has lots and lots of interesting and relevant stats (if not necessarily entirely accurate). The following two links are the summary pages for Uganda and Ghana. You can also do queries on the databases directly.

Uganda
Ghana
Rwanda

Another good statistical resource is the World Health Organization at who.int.

Solar Power and Mbarara Update

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with not nearly enough access to internet cafes!

This week I am back in Mbarara, currently using the computer science lab (which is empty because the students are all doing exams now), but also meeting with various professors here (again!) and working with Ben and Richard on the Smartphones for OBA project.

The major update is that we are now collaborating with the Faculty of Science at Mbarara (Physics Dept) to figure out solar power options for the health clinics participating in the OBA program. They are currently engaged in research evaluating the degradation of imported solar panels and are the perfect collaborators for this project. They also have experience with circuit-soldering, so they’ll try to use Manuel’s solar charge controllers both for their own experiments and our project.

We also visited the Marie Stopes International Uganda office and one of the Marie Stopes Uganda clinics. They are currently using the VMUS database developed by Microcare, and have two people entering the data from the (triplicate-carbon-copy) forms that are collected from the various clinics participating in the OBA program. Right now the system is down, so the forms are piling up, and they are entering the data into Excel, so they can process the reimbursements. I’ll head back there today or tomorrow to hammer on the SmartForm and figure out exactly what it should look like. At the clinic we spoke to Steven about his experience participating in the program. The major issues he identified are timeliness of reimbursement processing, limitations on the range of treatment options (if someone is diagnosed with a non-STI bacterial infection then they have to pay for treatment in addition to what they paid for the voucher, although I think the consult is covered), and patients coming in with vouchers that clearly don’t have an STI, and therefore are not eligible for subsidized treatment.  So there is a need for better and clearer marketing.  Richard suggested giving distributors placards that (literate) patients can read so they know what services the voucher will cover.  They also have problems with people going to multiple centers, and not having documentation for previous visits, or buying multiple vouchers and having tests done unnecessarily.   We hope that with the SmartForms project we’ll be able to address some of these issues, by making voucher records more accessible, and improving the communications process around the form submissions.  There’s lots of ideas flying around and a lot of work to do!

For the rest of the week (before I take off for Ghana) Richard and Ben and I will be visiting the various health clinics and talking to them about the project, getting a feel for their willingness/interest, as well as the environment in which the phones would be deployed.  We’ll start testing/piloting in August when I get back.

Of Former Health Ministers and Toilet Paper

So today is the first time I’ve needed to have my own toilet paper.  After lunch (karo and beef stew) I peeked into the bathroom nearby, saw that there was no tp, and decided to go to the hotel instead.  Although initially we were in the Oxford Inn (25,000 Sh or $14/night) this morning we checked into the Westland Hotel (10,000 Sh or $6/night).  And looking in my own bathroom, I realized there was no paper there either.  Fortunately, this morning I picked up Mallory’s extra paper as I was checking out of the Oxford Inn and could use that. :)

So the big news around Uganda these days is that the Health Ministers seem to have lost some $1 million from an immunization project.  The former health minister, Muhuwenzi (sp?) ran off to the UK, presumably for a medical check up, and refuses to come back to be in prison.  His other corrupt colleagues are now "comfortably" in jail, without recourse to bail.

Yet life goes on, and we’ve had two meetings with the Ministry of Health so far, and will have another one in a couple of weeks. My general impression is that this government is very progressive, has done a very good job actually decentralizing delivery of health care, and is encouraging of appropriate IT projects.  They’ve made it a priority to get Internet connectivity at each of the district hospitals in the next two years, possibly even faster, and have recently held meetings with the Institute of Computer Science here in Mbarara to figure out what can be done in terms of computerizing services in the Mbarara District Hospital.  Healthnet Uganda is active is 5 districts (formerly 2 districts, but split into 5 as part of decentralization), with forms submitted via infrared and GPRS with the help of Palm Tungstens/m130s and WideRay jacks.  The whole system is still cash and carry, but at least Microcare is doing a great job of delivering health insurance, and making inroads into delivering better healthcare in the rural informal sectors. Overall, this is a relatively easy place to work!

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About

Hi there! Welcome to my semi-incomplete page. I am filling this web site in over time, so you’ll see these pages revamp themselves a bit often. For now, if you are interested in knowing a bit more about me, just surf through the pages on this site or check out these other resources:

photos: gallery, another gallery, TIER gallery, imagestation, flickr
stories: melisssaisfaraway mailing list
church: First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley
school: School of Information, UC Berkeley
profiles: orkut, friendster, linkedin, facebook
bookmarks: del.icio.us
im: melissa.ho (Skype), mrh9 (Yahoo), melissa.ho (Gmail), MelissaRitaHo (AIM)

I’m doing research on technologies for developing regions with the TIER group at UC Berkeley (Cal) and Intel Research in Berkeley. In past lives, I’ve done an MSc in Data Communications, Networks, and Distributed Systems (DCNDS) at University College London, and worked for a couple of up-starts (they don’t quite qualify as startups anymore) companies, Actional andEnsim. If you want the nitty-gritty details,
you can take a look at my old cv/resume. And if you want the dirt you’re going to have to track me down and call me. :) Eventually I’ll be getting myself into this, but in the meantime, I’m happily ensconced here.

I love reading – mostly sci-fi/fantasy, but also a few in the technical, non-fiction, and Christian genres. I also have a number of hobbies, including acrylics, watercolor, Chinese brush painting, and arabic calligraphy. I’m terrible, but I figure with a few more decades of practice,my work might become at least passable. When I’m in California and have a spare weekend, more often than not, you’ll find me hiking and camping in Yosemite.

I’m fascinated by personality theory (I’m INTJ and 5) and other cool things like
optical illusions.