Gemalto and mHealth Initiative

Gemalto and mHealth
Gemalto, the world’s leader in digital security, has pledged its support to the GSMA pan-African mHealth Initiative (PAMI). PAMI is a network of mobile and health industries. Gemalto and mHealth will improve nutrition and maternal and child health throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

Gemalto is providing its expertise for two mHealth programs that are part of PAMI, the United Nations Every Women Every Child Global Strategy and the Global Nutrition for Growth Compact.

Gemalto will educate its users in a compelling manner through the use of its advanced SmartMessage interactive messaging platform. The technology’s objective is to break down barriers that often hinder relationships between patients and health providers, in order to deliver important health information through cellular phones.

PAMI is a part of GSMA’s “Mobile for Development mHealth” program that utilizes a wide range of communication tools to provide support for a variety of mHealth services. The project’s aim is to reach over 15 million pregnant women, and mothers with children under 5 years old throughout the African continent.

PAMI will be initiated in seven countries, including the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda and Zambia, in September 2014. The second phase of the program will begin in early 2015 by expanding to Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.

Additional partnerships involved in the initiative include South African based telecommunications company MTN, Samsung, Omega Diagnostics, Hello Doctor, Lifesaver, Mobenzi and Mobilium.

According to a study conducted by GSMA in 2013, sub-Saharan Africa has the fastest growing, unique mobile subscriber rate in the world. Over the past five years, the region’s subscriber base has increased at an annual rate of 18 percent.

These promising figures have fueled the relationship between GSMA and Gemalto.

Gemalto’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) Philippe Vallée, emphasizes the importance of the collaboration, stating “As the world is becoming ever more digital and wireless, we are thrilled to see our solutions being used to support a noble social cause with this initiative. There can surely be no clearer illustration of the potential of mobile solutions to fundamentally change the expectations and outcomes of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.”

– Talia Langman
Sources: ITWeb Africa, Market Watch, IT News Africa, Guardian News
Photo: Apps World

Design for Extreme Affordability

Design for Extreme Affordability, a graduate course offered by Stanford University, aims to give students the tools needed to “design products and services that will change the lives of the world’s poorest citizens.”

Offered by the university’s Institute of Design, 40 students from a variety of different disciplines complete the course each year, producing ten final projects that aim to achieve cheap solutions to serious global problems.

They are taught design and marketing principles, form student teams, collaborate with local partner organizations, travel to their project sites, prototype and test their products and present their final projects product proposals. According to the Stanford course website, emphasis is placed on “design for the developing world, including economic, technological and cultural considerations.”

When the course is completed, many students actually fulfill their proposal and see their idea through to completion. In fact, a considerable number of Design for Extreme Affordability projects have found global success.

For example, Embrace, an international nonprofit maternal and child health organization, was created as a result of the course. The Embrace Warmer, the organization’s central product, is a low-cost innovation to help care for premature infants in developing countries.

Usually, the solution for premature infants is to place them in an incubator until they are able to regulate their own body temperature. However, incubators are expensive and require electricity, training to use and maintenance. Consequently, mothers in less-developed countries must find different methods to save premature infants from hypothermia. They often resort to using fire, light bulbs or hot water bottles, all of which are dangerous and ineffectual. There was a clear need for an affordable, non-electric and safe method to keep infants warm.

This was the challenged posed to one team of graduate students taking the Design for Extreme Affordability course, and the Embrace Warmer was its result. The price tag is under 1 percent of the cost of a standard incubator, and its wraparound design is durable, portable, safe, hygienic and very effective.

The Embrace team’s idea has blossomed into an international organization that has reached over 50,000 infants across the world and made a real impact.

Stanford’s Design for Extreme Affordability is not just another school project. It is an intensive year where dedicated and motivated students–with support from expert staff–create practical solutions to life-threatening global problems.

With the courses direction, students have been able to consistently create innovative products that are making a difference in the world today. Hopefully the course will continue to inspire the university’s gifted students to direct their talents toward the global community.

– Emily Jablonski 

Sources: Embrace Global, Huffington Post, Stanford
Photo: Stanford Daily

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Random Hacks of Kindness

random hacks of kindness
Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is an inventive global initiative “involving over 6,000 innovators in more than 35 countries who make the world a better place by developing practical, open source technology solutions to some of the most complex challenges facing humanity.”

The initiative was created in 2009 when representatives from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! convened at a panel in Washington, D.C. to discuss ways in which technology could be used in the midst of global crises. Each of these top technology companies recognized the immense impact they could have if they stepped into the world of crisis management.

However, they needed a way to circumvent their usual competitiveness, a way to bring their employees together around a common goal.

Random Hacks of Kindness was the solution. The project aims to bring together expert volunteer employees and humanitarian leaders to create solutions to some of the world’s toughest problems. The World Bank and NASA, along with the aforementioned Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, became founding partners, creating an altogether outstanding mix of expertise in many different fields.

From the beginning, RHoK has stressed how important their specific method is to their success, a process which requires a significant amount of teamwork between different sectors. “The RHoK process — engaging with experts to define strong problem statements, collaborative rapid prototyping through hackathons and creating clears paths for the sustainability of effective solutions — enables the volunteer community of thousands to create impact through their efforts.”

The first step is to collect extremely detailed and well-defined problem statements from people in the field. Users from all over the world can submit descriptions of problems in their local communities to the RHoK website, allowing anyone anywhere to benefit from the talent of RHoK volunteers. These reports are then scrutinized by field professionals and are revised to best fit the sector’s needs.

Developers are the stars of the second step: global hackathons at which prototypes of possible solutions are created during coding-intensive weekends.

Unlike other organizations of its kind, Random Hacks of Kindness volunteer technologists are able to tackle global issues with help from field specialists. “Having an expert on hand at a hackathon to work with the teams and provide real-world experiences and knowledge is [an] invaluable piece of the puzzle when working to build a solution with realistic impact potential.”

The third step involves RHoK’s Sustainability Project, which aims to take the most promising prototypes created at the hackathons and successfully execute them. Through the initiative’s efforts, the prototypes are able to receive the proper funding and support needed to make them a reality.

Random Hacks of Kindness has worked with noteworthy humanitarian organizations like OXFAM and Amnesty International as well as small local communities. It is led by an intensely motivated volunteer community trying to make the world a better place through technology and teamwork.

“Using existing, and freely available, documentation of best practices, and empowering the community to further develop and iterate on them through community-led, individual and organizational initiatives, RHoK continues to remain at the forefront of creating impact through hacking for social good.”

– Emily Jablonski 

Sources: Crisis Commons, Geeks Without Bounds, RHOK
Photo: Technical.ly

10 Quotes about Life

Presented here are 10 quotes about life and its values:

1. “The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
~Mitch Albom

2. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings … If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
~Henry David Thoreau

3. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
~Aristotle

4. “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.”
~Ann Landers

5. “In the end, no thought is unthinkable, no problem unshrinkable, no two strangers unlinkable.”
~Robert Brault

6. “With patience you can even cook a stone.”
~Anonymous

7. “You can close your eyes to things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel.”
~Anonymous

8. “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.”
~Anonymous

9. “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations.”
~George Bernard Shaw

10. “The ultimate measure of man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As members of this society, we are challenged daily to remember inspirations like these and to value and respect the existence of every human life.

– Ashley Riley

Sources: motivationgrid 1, Quote Garden, Thinkexist, Brainy Quote 1, Brainy Quote 2, iz quotes, Flickr, Brainy Quote 3, Brainy Quote 4
Photo: Quantum Life Skills

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WASProject: 3D Printers

The company WASProject is pursuing an innovative idea: it will develop materials to build homes by using 3D printing technology.

WASProject – which stands for “World’s Advanced Saving Project” – is based in Italy and has already produced an impressive line of distinct and advanced 3D printers.

However, the team now has even bigger dreams focused on impacting lives. The money accumulated from selling the previous printers was used to finance a bigger printer – created with the noble goal of providing housing to those living in developing nations.

The company’s main objective is, “to produce a big Delta Robot, capable of printing huge objects and use this machine to produce housing structures or housing modules, using natural materials such as clay, soil, natural powders, mixed with resin, etc,” said WASProject team member Sebastiano.

The Big Delta 3D printer already made its debut in 2013 at the Rome Maker Faire, which considers itself the “World’s Largest Show Festival” and is sponsored by Intel, the reputable semiconductor chip maker.

The basic goal of the Big Delta is to produce building material for houses made of clay. The building material is created by inserting a mixture of soil, water and oil into the printer in order to print out the pieces of clay housing structure.

The Big Delta is incredibly versatile. It will not necessarily be confined to printing the same housing structures, and therefore, can prevent the creation of a monotonous and dull neighborhood of tract houses in these developing countries.

In developing areas, such as Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeastern Asia, many families live in poor conditions, with little or no access to energy or sanitation. These areas are often also affected by floods and landslides.

With new technology and social inventions, devices like the Big Delta can be utilized to address these issues of sustainable housing that millions of people throughout the world face.

A properly established housing structure serves as a launching pad to address other pressing issues. For instance, after the problem of housing is dealt with, the issue of proper sanitary structure can be implemented, including access to latrines and clean water.

The Big Delta has the potential to improve the economy of a region by providing work to the citizens to boost the demand for labor. While the printer only prints structures, human hands are needed to piece them together to build the homes.

– Christina Cho

Sources: WASProject, 3DPrint
Photo: Wikipedia

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Causes of Malaria

Malaria, a disease largely eliminated in the developed world, remains a health issue for developing nations. According to World Health Organization estimates, 207 million cases of the deadly disease emerged in 2012 alone, with about 80 percent coming from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

To help communities in these nations fight malaria, NGOs and foreign aid providers must not only provide malaria treatment methods but also find ways to address and protect people from its causes.

So, what are the causes of malaria?

The Mayo Clinic identifies the main path to infection as the transmission of parasites through mosquitoes. Mosquitoes can carry small parasites that cause malaria, and when they bite humans the parasites can enter the bloodstream. Once in the body, the malarial parasites travel to the liver, where they grow and develop. The maturation process lasts from a week to nearly a year, but once the parasites reach adulthood, they enter the bloodstream and infect red blood cells.

At this stage, the common symptoms of malaria, including fever, chills and sweating, develop. At the same time, mosquitoes that suck infected blood will get the malarial parasites, allowing them to spread through bites to other people.

Though malaria primarily spreads through mosquito bites, people can contract it from other sources. Malaria is a blood-borne disease, and receiving blood transfusions from infected individuals can lead to transmission. Sharing dirty hypodermic needles will also cause malaria to spread, and mothers can pass the disease on to their unborn children.

If left untreated within 24 hours of the first symptoms, malaria can cause brain damage, fluid buildup in the lungs and liver failure, all of which can be fatal. The World Health Organization believes that in 2012 malaria killed 627,000 people, the majority of whom were African children under five.

Fortunately, the mortality rates of malaria have fallen 42 percent globally since 2000. Still, the disease is lethal enough that a child in Africa dies every minute from malaria-related symptoms.

With no existing vaccine for the disease, programs to reduce deaths must focus on preventing malaria and safely treating existing cases.

Knowing that mosquitoes are the primary transmitters of malarial parasites, what do governments and other organizations do to prevent bites?

According to the World Health Organization, the two primary methods to keep mosquitoes away from people and their homes are to use insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying of insecticides.

Projects from NGOs and foreign aid agencies to provide these services to communities free of charge will help prevent mosquitoes from spreading malaria.

While using either insecticide-treated nets or indoor residual spraying to stop mosquito bites is effective, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that, in areas of medium transmission, using both methods reduced the risk of infection an extra 36 percent compared to one method alone.

Public education programs to teach people and doctors not to reuse medical equipment, not to give transfusions of infected blood and how to recognize symptoms quickly can also supplement insecticide-treated nets and indoor residual spraying to stop malaria at its source.

Malaria is a dangerous disease that takes the lives of many young children daily, but since people know what causes malaria, it can be prevented. Thanks to technology to kill parasite-carrying mosquitoes, deaths from malaria are dropping and the world is becoming a safer place to live.

– Ted Rappleye

Sources: The Mayo Clinic, World Health Organization, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
Photo: TreeHugger

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Six Ways to Improve Land & Food Security

The green revolution was a period of agricultural revolution that increased food production in the mid-twentieth century. It showed that a global effort can enlarge and develop food systems with new techniques and technology transfers. Lately, with rapid population growth, increasing food prices and climate change, there have been calls for a second green revolution. Here are a few ways that this revolution can be jump-started.

1. Land is at the center of these food security problems. 
While the relationship between people and the Earth has changed immensely, land remains an essential piece to the puzzle. Nate Kline, of the Enabling Agriculture Trade project at Fintrac, said he cannot think of another sector that is more tied to the land. “Land is the chief, primary input in all agricultural production,” he said.

2. More people live in urban areas than rural areas now.
Consequently, cities have to be connected to food distribution cycles that are reliable and can supply food to numbers of people at a dependable rate.

3. The method of organizing land will determine the answers to questions about future food security.
The way international organizations, communities, nations and families decide on organizing land, which will secure land rights and land ownership claims, will be important in answering questions about a food-secure future.

4. Food security is also about how the agricultural sector can become a more dependable way of income for people in rural areas.
The income of the poor is closely related to growth in the agricultural sector. Food security programs usually pursue raising incomes of those in poverty. When land users feel secure that their land will be in their possession however long they want to keep it, then they are more likely to finance the long-term development of their resources and land.

5. Food security often come with better land-use choices.
Conserving water and soil nutrients instead of exhausting resources will make food more secure for the future. It can also mean landholders are keener on paying the costs of equipment and fertilizers which can lead to higher incomes and more profitable crops.

6. When families sell more and better food, those yields generate income to spend for household food needs.
There is a direct connection between the access to land and willingness to make investments that may eventually pay off. With more money from profitable and nutritious crops, families have the option to invest in their nutrition as well as use the money from the crops to buy better equipment and use better management techniques. Food should be nutritious, affordable and part of a sustainable system.

In order to ensure food security, the world will need to engage with a comprehensive set of actors and work with numerous sectors.

– Colleen Moore

Sources: Devex 1, Devex 2
Photo: Eco Tope

The State of World Affairs

Following a methodological review of great transformations in the past 500 years, Professor Nicholas Boyle of Cambridge University advances that we are at the brink of another “great event.” Boyle’s prognosis is the result of establishing a correlation between “great events” that took place in the second decade of each of the last five centuries and our current state of world affairs.

In 1517, it was The Reformation of churches and the rise of Protestantism. 1618 marked the beginning of the 30 years war and decades of religious unrest in Western Europe. In 1715, the Hanoverian and British rule were established. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna took place, and thus began decades of relative peace. In 1914, Wold War I began. Today, the end of one of the worst financial crises to date may mark the beginning of another “great event.”

In light of these events, Boyle claims that “the character of a century becomes very apparent in that second decade,” later adding, “so why should ours be any different?” This argument establishes a strong correlation between chronology and world events. However, is this sufficient enough to make such a drastic claim about world affairs?

According to Gareth Evans, former Foreign Minister of Australia (1988-1996) and President of the International Crisis Group, there is certainly a wide array of events that point to a breakdown in the international system. However, as bad as things seem, they are not bad enough to warrant a doomsday event.

Evans gives several reasons why we should not lose our sleep over the state of current world affairs. First, we are not really at the brink of another world war. While countries like the U.S., China and Russia are periodically competing and sometimes refuse to cooperate, they are widely integrated and dependent on each other for progress. In regard to each country’s desire for influence, Evans adds, “they want greater influence in international institutions, not to overturn them.”

Second, the decline of U.S. influence is not a matter for concern. In the big picture, great imperial powers are bound to slow down at some point, especially when there are other powerful and developed countries. This brings forth a third reason: the struggle for influence does not have to take a military form. While exercising dominance will continue to be something countries compete for, the way in which this takes place can be as much a matter of cooperation as of coercion.

It is undeniable that stability in the international system is a moving target. However, alarmism only leads to further pessimism. As a society, we have learned from past mistakes, and we must acknowledge the fact that the international system has become much more effective in solving problems.

– Sahar Abi Hassan

Sources: Project Syndicate, Daily Mail
Photo: Baylor

Rebels in Northern Mali Threaten Region’s Stability

The slow and steady recovery that Mali experienced after the extended Islamist occupation by the Tuaregs in the north was recently thrown into jeopardy. A handful of recent clashes between separatist rebels and government forces have begun to increase insecurity and hamper the effectiveness of aid efforts in the area.

What’s worse is that parts of the country have even fallen back into rebel hands.

While some displaced people have begun returning to their homes in the north, many still worry about their safety and security. Some of those who have returned even had to flee again due to rebel activity in their community.

“Tensions within communities and concerns of retribution mean people do not feel safe to return home,” said Erin Weir, Protection and advocacy advisor with the Norwegian Refugee Council. “That the constant power shifts – one day an area belongs to the rebels, the other day it is back in government hands – means people might feel secure one minute, the next they are inclined to flee again.”

This ongoing crisis with rebels in Northern Mali is often ignored by the public as other issues receive more coverage from media outlets. Yet, staff members of the Red Cross were attacked in the area earlier this year, which resulted in the stoppage of food distribution to the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu. This left 11 percent of the population, or 1.9 million people, in need of food assistance.

Similar attacks have also interrupted food distribution by the World Food Program.

Just under 250,000 people in the north are considered food insecure, and approximately two-thirds of those people are defined as in ‘crisis.’ This is only worsened by the fact that operations in Mali are underfunded by one-third.

“The recent fighting has set back the humanitarian situation and deepened the crisis,” Weir said. “Services in the north are still restricted and access to health care, education and markets are limited, not to mention food insecurity that is affected by recent displacement.”

While there are countless other humanitarian crises taking place around the world, the world cannot forget those that still haven’t been completely resolved.

While progress might be slow, the recent conflicts with rebels in Northern Mali only show how long and hard the road to recovery is. Further work is needed in order to ensure that the hard-won progress is not lost.

– Andre Gobbo
Sources: IRIN, The Economist, The Guardian
Photo: AlJazeera

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Childhood Poverty and Emotional Problems

Childhood Poverty
Over the years, numerous studies have demonstrated the damaging effects of childhood poverty on development. Recent testing helps to unravel how growing up poor causes psychological problems.

The human brain grows the most during the first few years of life. It has been discovered that children from poorer homes are more likely to have psychological disorders in their adult lives. To explain the correlation between poverty and psychological problems, one theory suggests that exposure to high amounts of stress during this early critical time permanently hinders an individual’s ability to cope with stress.

Testing done by Professor K. Luan Phan supports this notion. During her study, scientists examined the brain function of 24-year-old individuals, whose family situations had already been recorded 15 years prior. The participants were asked to try and control negative emotions while looking at a series of pictures.

The ability to suppress and manage feelings is key to helping individuals deal with the stress of life.

From the tests, researchers were able to conclude that the individuals who were the most impoverished at 9 years old scored the lowest on the exams as 24-year-olds. Even if the subject’s living conditions improved over the years, childhood poverty proved the dominating factor for test performance.

The findings connect childhood poverty to a lower ability to control one’s emotions. This connection supports the notion that the high-stress situation of living in poverty as a child directly affects an individual’s ability to handle strains in their adult life.

Other research done by the Washington University School of Medicine helps to explain the phenomena in a more anatomical sense. Their study showed that the psychological effects of childhood poverty are likely connected to smaller brain volumes in areas associated with emotion processing and memory. The researchers examined brain scans of children between the ages of 6 to 12, whose family history had been previously recorded.

From the scans, scientists found that the stress of poverty physically changes a child’s brain; those living in impoverished homes had smaller volumes of white and cortical gray matter. These white and gray areas are associated with the part of the brain that is associated with communication, as well as sensory and emotions. A small amount of matter in this area of the brain suggests that those functions are hampered.

So, childhood poverty has a visible effect on the brain, which reflects an impairment of emotion processing.

Though both studies are still in the testing phase, the connection drawn between childhood poverty and its lasting effects on mental development is alarming. According to UNICEF, over 22,000 children die everyday because of poverty.

Seeing the permanent damage poverty causes to childhood development highlights its severity and the critical need to address it.

– Kathleen Egan

Sources: Spring, US News, Global Issues
Photo: Portside