HI all
Found this link on the Linkedin this morning. It is alot about the games which might be good for behavioral change. Ho´wever big gains are probably the facility of access credits and banc accounts ,Time will tell. Interesting topic worth to explore .madeleine

www.impatientoptimists.org/en/Posts/2012...187_member_128464814

Hi All,

thanks so much the amazing and enriching inputs.

Will definitely go beyond and see how applicable it can be in my community .

Regards,

Divine

I forgot to mention that mobile can really facilitate for payments and credit ,
Small loans are important for investments such as a good toilet the mobile is currently a serving thousands of user to access their savings and facilitate for getting access to small loans
Some utilities in African cities are now trying to use cellphones to make sure that people pay water and sanitation services bills in time.THis in combination with a good management will cater for better services in the long run,
Another important usage of the phone is the wistle blower function to communicate faulty construction and services etc...
Cheers
madeleine

Sry, a bit off-topic, but since this was asked:

ndivine wrote: ...my question is how Sustainable are Mobile Phones ?

A good, rhetorical question.

"Sustainable" at the moment only in a way that they are being used in a society that is used to repairing broken parts instead of buying new products. There are some manufacturers who are already marketing "green phones". It still isn't a big issue though, especially since many consumers don't specifially ask for it. Probably only interesting for manufacturers to optimize on costs.

Some possible future options for sustainable mobile phones imo are:

• lease/rent hardware instead of buying/owning
• non-toxic materials used in final product and process
• recycling of parts planed right into the production process, i.e. ease of disassembly
• use of higher grade materials regardless of the costs because only the use will be paid for, not the ownership and it will then be taken back by the manufacturer
• use of alternative energy sources and optimization of energy consumption (e.g. dynamo manual charges, solar panels) and a different approach to the battery concept (where batteries are designed for short term energy storage and the energy is directly produced when required)

Anything else?

I really like it how these two fields are getting combined (sanitation & mobile phone sector) and would love to see even more use cases that go beyond the monitoring or reporting part.

HI
I think that there must be many opportunities to encourage communities to continue to their daily management and
monitoring of sanitation facilities with help of the mobiles.
There are alot of fosil fuel/ time / human resources to save if simple monitoring and information sharing could be done through mobile communication , voice mail and smart apps . This is really an area to explore since the innovation is enraized in Africa or other regions. In Africa mobile communication is extremely important since the desent infrastructures and public communication are really underdimensioned.
Information that would save the communities time would be
about the availability of spare parts and
service provider to empty full latrines or when handpumps break down.
INformation about prices of fertilizer would help communities market urine for agriculture.
Small competitions would help communities to keep their facilities operationals.
Information of keeping facilities prepared and cleaned before the rainy season would be extremely useful.
Cheers
madeleine

Hi All ,

this is really exception idea and believe its applicable but I have the follwoing questions :


1- The Latrines are more perculiar in Rural /Remote Communities and taking into consideration they may not have the ability to get a mobile phone for this purpose. What if we administer training programs / workshops for this purpose where we focus on educating the communities on Sanitation?

2- Secondly , we are right now experiencing lots of Climate Changes and one of the most important issue is to get a sustainable world / environment , my question is how Sustainable are Mobile Phones ?

Thanks once more.

Divine

Hi All

Some interesting ideas on how mobile games can improve sanitation.
Read this article that appeared today on the BMFG blog "Impatient Optimists"
www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/06...p-improve-sanitation

And then share your thoughts and ideas on this avenue of using gaming to promote sanitation.

I quite liked the gaming idea mentioned in the article as follows

Toilet Hunt introduces obstacles along the course of finding a safe place to go to the bathroom. As the player searches for sanitary latrines on a basic map, they must use the clues to decide whether the latrine is safe.

Rgds
Trevor

Hi juergen
Thanks for sharing the mWASH document, which is really comprehensive and impressive (yet a very big document)

Hi frederik
Thanks for sharing!


In all this discussion here, we really need to be specific about the different purposes that mobile phones can bring in:

- m&e (data collection and visualization) = Flow/akvo
- awarness creation (sms campaign, games) = TTC
- wash services = maji

During the wsscc global Forum samuel musyoki from Plan Uganda have a presentation on harnessing ICT.
wsscc-global-forum.org/wp-content/upload...ConferenceOc2011.pdf

Also launched in Mumbai, has identified MWASH as one of their 2 themes. And Pippa Scott will soon write more about it here in this Forum soon.

Thanks for sharing this, some very interesting ideas in there, even if we may not be able to transfer the concept 1:1 to our project areas. The "quiz concept" is definitely interesting as a social change tool.

Marijn

Hi Trevor,
The planned WASH project would be the first of its kind in the region. Most past and on-going Text-to-Change projects are in the field on health communication such as HIV/AIDS awareness, child health, etc. Please visit their site for more information.
www.texttochange.org/project-list

Regards,
Fredrick

Dear All,

This discussion very much reminds me of a presentation I heard during the 35th WEDC International conference held at Loughborough University in the UK. The presentation was held by Ben Taylor, the Tanzania coordinator of an NGO called Daraja.

Ben Taylor spoke of the sustainability challenges that Tanzania faces in the distribution of its water points and the inequality in the different areas. There is a project known as Maji Matone that caters to the repair of broken down water points via the use of mobile phones.

Therefore if a rural water point breaks down, a rural citizen sends an sms to 15440. The sms is delivered to Daraja and is then shared to media partners who highlight the issue on live radio. In addition, they also update the water point database.

The actions taken are as follows: The radio station contacts the citizens, confirms the sms and broadcasts, asking the local government to implement a solution to the challenges by immediately repairing the water point. The local government mostly responds to the media pressure and repairs the water points.

Challenges of this method he pointed out are that of the approx. 960 sms they received in the first 6 months, 196 were followed up and there were only 15 known successes (Please note that this presentation was held on 06.07.2011). In addition overcoming apathy is a challenge and user friendly technology is paramount as many people were unable to send the sms with the format that was required.

He also mentioned that it was a challenge for them to maintain good relationships with the ministry of water and the local government in Tanzania because the media tended to push the government to make the changes. So issues of accountability, public awareness were prevalent. Nevertheless I see this as something very promising.

Best regards

Doreen

Hi Kiku

Please drop any links or info about any other sms based data collection, competitions or use in the WASH sector in Uganda and its neighbours that you have encountered. Really excellent to gain insight and learn how things have been done or not done, so as to look to making them work even better in the future.

Rgds
Trevor