Below is a mind map of a discussion held at the International School of Digital Transformation in Porto, Portugal thanks to Ricardo Cruz:
Community-Driven Mind Map at ISDT 2010
Posted: 30th July 2010 by Marlon in Innovation, UncategorizedTags: Community, Community Empowerment, Community-driven Innovation, ISDT10
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Youth Research Partners and Grassroots Healthcare
Posted: 28th July 2010 by Marlon in Innovation, MobileTags: JamiiX, Mobile Phones, Mobile Youth, Reconstructed Living Lab, RLabs, South Africa, youth, Youth Research Partners
Over the past few years we’ve increasingly seen grassroots healthcare services not being accessible especially in developing communities. This is also evident with the service delivery to the large youth market in Southern Africa where in some cases we only have social worker or health care professional for every 40 schools in most parts of the country. Therefore most youth and children do not have access to these free services and their families are unable to afford proper healthcare services.
Although we’ve seen the need in South Africa growing for improved healthcare service delivery, the country has also seen opportunity to leverage technology to meet some of these needs and fill some of the gaps in the grassroots delivery system. The Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) oversees various programmes addressing some of these issues through the use of technology, community empowerment and grassroots/community champions. Youth Research Partners, a youth research and marketing agency built for the 21st Century and with youth at heart, asked some interesting questions in an interview about the work their RLabs partner does at a grassroots healthcare level.
Why Social Services should go Mobile
Posted: 23rd July 2010 by Marlon in Innovation, Mobile, News, social mediaTags: advice support, Angel, Community Empowerment, JamiiX, Mobile Counselling, Mobile Phones, mxit, RLabs, youth
It has been one month since we’ve re-launched our Angel support service a partnership between Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) and MXit. Since then the service had over a 100,000 subscribers with just over 47,000 regular subscribers. Organisations who are working with youth should consider the use of Mobile phones as part of their programmes and below you will find reasons why:
- Most of the users of the service is youth (82% aged 25 and younger)
- Our LIVE mobile counselling service on average receives 200 queries per hour with approximately 92% being identified as youth.
- Most youth request further support, but prefer having it via the Mobile medium. Even when we recommend centres to attend or websites to visit they want a solution that they can access via their mobile phone.
- We’ve developed Mobile virtual support sessions with experts or professional counsellors and achieve 100% referral rate compared to 26% when referral is telephonic and/or face-to-face.
- Most youth are expert mobile phone users and would be able to transfer relevant information in required formats (text, audio, video, images)
- Youth tend to promote mobile services faster and easier to their friends/buddies/contacts via their mobile phones.
- The average number of contacts/buddies/friends youth will actively chat to daily is 19 (based on mobile interviews with LIVE conversations). Most youth would have more than 50 contacts/buddies/friends in their Mobile Instant Messenger (MXit).
As we are continuously trying to improve our Social services through the use of mobile phones, it is advisable for organisations working in this space to start considering the more active use of mobile phones.
One Percent Club: You Make it Work
Posted: 23rd July 2010 by Marlon in Uncategorized, business, social mediaTags: 1% Club, Community 2.0, Community Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, Social Giving, social media, Web 2.0
Many opportunities exist to get involved with emerging social projects and one that RLabs have found to be extremely effective is the Innovative One Percent Club. 1% Club is the marketplace that connects smart development projects with people, money and knowledge around the world (Something similar to the Kiva initiative – See video above). With projects from over 36 countries supported by close to 5000 members it is one of those Social Entrepreneurship success stories.
I will also have the privilege to attend and speak about our Community Experiences at the One Percent Club Event in Amsterdam, 17 September 2010, that brings together people from all over the world to engage in the use of Web 2.0 and Innovation for Social Good. For more information about the event visit the event website and you can join 1% Club on Facebook or follow them on Twitter
Social Media at UCT Graduate School of Business
Posted: 21st July 2010 by Marlon in Uncategorized, social mediaTags: Community Empowerment, Community in Tension (CiT), Facebook, mxit, RLabs, social media, twitter, UCT
Today I had the opportunity to share at the UCT Graduate School of Business MBA programme on the use of Social Media to empower communities. Some of the Social Media information I used can be viewed in short presentation below:
Social Media and more Social Media
View more presentations from Marlon Parker.
Future Everything: The City as a Living Lab
Posted: 13th July 2010 by Marlon in UncategorizedTags: Innovation, Living Labs, Reconstructed Living Lab, RLabs
Below is a very interesting presentation on another use of the Living Lab concept that immediately gave a few ideas on how we can continue evolving our Reconstructed Living Lab movement.
JamiiX used for RLabs Drug Advice Support mobile counselling service
Posted: 10th July 2010 by Marlon in Innovation, Mobile, NewsTags: Drug Advice Support, JamiiX, Mobile Counselling, Reconstructed Living Lab, RLabs
Latest research by RLabs and the JamiiX Mobile Drug Counselling support system provided the following evaluation:
- In practical terms, the advisors have the capacity to help more people (n = 27) in a two-hour session than advisors at helplines (n = 4).20 The DAS system aggregates the conversations for the advisors, allowing them to respond to the requests more easily and faster.
- The DAS system enables multiple advisors to assist during a given session.
- When an advisor does not have the necessary experience or skills to deal with a case, it can easily be transferred to someone with the necessary skills.
- The advisor receiving the reassigned conversation can view previous conversations with the client, so questions need not be duplicated.
- The advisor can refer a person in need to any other organisation, and maintain a help directory of available services.
- The service proved to be particularly useful for families of drug users, and they were offered family sessions and help if required
The full research paper was publsihed in the South African Family Practice journal. Below is a video showing one of the counsellors in action using JamiiX to provide advice for people with substance abuse problems.
10 Days of Sex, Drugs, MXit and ISLabs
Posted: 6th July 2010 by Marlon in Innovation, Mobile, News, UncategorizedTags: Drug Advice Support, Impact Direct, ISLabs, JamiiX, Mobile Counselling, Mobile Phones, mxit, RLabs
Today marked the 10th day since we’ve moved our Drug Advice Support (DAS) service over to JamiiX in collaboration with MXit. It was also an opportunity for JamiiX to test out its new Virtual Machines provided by our hosting partner ISLabs. The partnership with ISLabs really brought much better performance to the DAS service therefore allowing us to enhance the support to people in need. Over the past ten days the service had an average of 8 counsellors available for each session (3 hours a day) with each taking care of 49 conversations during such a session. This collaboration with MXit and ISLabs not only provided us the opportunity to increase our support numbers but also allowed us to expand on functionallity of the JamiiX innovation. Although we still have some ground to make, we are enjoying this journey of making a difference in the lives of thousands thanks to the RLabs and Impact Direct counsellors (See image), MXit and ISLabs we were able to achieve the following in ten days:
Number of Conversations: 3953
Number of Messages: 22731
Over the next few weeks we will be introducing a number of social services being launched on the JamiiX platform in South Africa and in other parts of the world. Special thanks to MXit, RLabs, ISLabs and Impact Direct for impacting lives for good.
CrowdFunding: New face of Venture Capital?
Posted: 6th July 2010 by Marlon in businessTags: business, Crowdfunding, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital
As we’ve started our first Community Tech startup a few weeks ago, we will be sharing a number of interesting business resources to help other Technology startups especially those in emerging economies. One of the latest trends in the Venture Capital (VC) world “CrowdFunding” that has brought changes to the traditional methods for VCs that includes the possibility of a much higher return. This investing model has been introduced and experimented by a number of entrepreneurs and below are some interesting slides to explain Crowd Funding as an investment method. In South Africa the concept is still fairly new but some have started the process of experimenting with Crowd Funding as a medium to invest in small start-up companies.
The Big Bang of Crowdfunding: Startups as a Public Asset Class
View more presentations from trendcaller.
RLabs partner with Youth Research Partners
Posted: 2nd July 2010 by Marlon in Mobile, NewsTags: Mobile Youth, RLabs, Youth Marketing, Youth Research Partners
This week was another exciting week for the RLabs family as we officially joined the Youth Research Partners Network. Youth Research Partners are a global partnership of youth research and marketing specialists in Africa, The Americas, Europe and Asia. We collaborate to share insights, best practices and better serve clients. We are really honoured to be part of this dynamic and excited partnership and looking forward sharing more about this collaboration that will change the future of youth marketing. For more information about Youth Research Partners at an upcoming Young Ideas Salon webinar and read the official RLabs announcement here.
Source: Reconstructed Living Lab