The Nation Newspaper

Category: Impact Journalism Day

Sleepbus

An Australian business consultant has dedicated his skills to stopping the need for people to “sleep rough” in his home country and around the world.

Simon Rowe, a 43-year-old entrepreneur who advises businesses on how to run more efficiently, has designed and built Sleepbus – a converted coach that can sleep 22 homeless people in pods the size of single beds and eight pets in kennels underneath.

The bus, which is free for people to sleep in, would also offer toilets and a USB port in each pod to charge electronics. Mr Rowe said when the bus parks in one place overnight he aims for it to become a “hub” of services where those on board can get food, clothes and advice from charities in one place.

After a successful crowdfunding effort that raised more than $90,000, his idea will be trialled for 90 days in June, before the first bus gets on the road in Australia.

But he has already been approached by charities and politicians overseas, including 50 charities in the United States, to say they are interested in bringing the bus to their cities.

Mr Rowe said a safe night’s sleep was the most important thing for people who are homeless, and his bus would give them safety, security, and stop them from falling deeper into a cycle of poverty.

June 25, 2016
Hospital at your doorstep

“I didn’t come here on my own accord. They visited me at home and had me brought here.” said Afsana Khatun, 40, sitting in the waiting room of the hospital. She was recently diagnosed with a tumor on her left elbow.

This is quite an uncommon scene. While most people are usually deprived of medical services, medical teams from this particular hospital actually visit homes to track down patients and bring them here for treatment.

The hospital’s field workers had to convince Afsana’s conservative family to bring her to the hospital. She only came after her husband visited the hospital first and gave his approval.

Afsana is not the only one who now avails free medical services here. There were nine other women, including two new mothers, also in the waiting room. They all came to the hospital with the help of the hospital’s field workers.

This is Biyanibazar Cancer and General Hospital, locally known as the ‘Londoni Hospital.’ It is a private entity set up by Bangladeshi expatriates living in London. These people are colloquially termed ‘Londoni’ (The ones living in London) and hence the hospital’s name.

The hospital authorities said they carried out an eight-month door-to-door campaign in March last year. A 40-member team has been formed to ensure the success of the mission. Its primary aim was to raise awareness about cancer.

The medical officials identified 431 people in the area and diagnosed them with tumors. Of them, 60 per cent were women.

Additional manager of the hospital, Fatema-tuz-Zohara monitored the field workers. She said, “A group of three or four staff members collect data about the people. They have visited 15,747 households so far.”

Field worker Ima Begum said they have been teaching people about seven symptoms of cancer. “If more than one symptom was detected in a person, he or she was examined immediately,” she said.

According to the authorities, 119 patients have been diagnosed with cancer so far. Their ages range from 45 to 65. Of them, 71 were women. Women mostly had breast and uterine cancer while men were diagnosed with cancer of the mouth, oesophagus, liver and blood.

The hospital’s warden Sajibur Rahman said most of the cancer patients were unaware of their disease.

Another 1,052 women have also been selected for the screen test. Dr Mohiuddin, advisor to the hospital, said, “The women will be given diagnostic services free of charge.”

Nurun Nahar, 65, a resident of Borolekha village, was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has already undergone chemotherapy. She said, “I could not tell whether I was at a hospital or in London. The doctors and nurses were so good, you couldn’t tell the difference.”

Chemotherapist Saad Uddin Jaigirdar said chemotherapy at an upazila level is uncommon in the country. “One day, all services to cancer patients will be possible here at the hospital,” he said.

A patient has to pay Tk 3,500 (USD 45) for the chemotherapy. Chemotherapy normally costs around Tk 10,000-15,000 (USD 128-192) in any other hospital. The patients who are well-off, are supposed to buy medicines. All costs for the chemotherapy for poor patients are usually paid from the hospital’s ‘poor fund.’

Specialist physicians provide the people with medical services at the general section of the hospital. These services cost just Tk 60 (below USD 1) each.

So far in 2016, 8,000 registered patients were given medical treatment. The hospital authorities claim that their diagnostic services cost 40 per cent less than any other hospital.

Local parliament member and education minister Nurul Islam Nahid laid the foundation stone of the 50-bed hospital in 2010. “I was a little uncertain as to whether the initiative would succeed, but I am happy now,” the education minister observed.

The hospital started providing services on the 20^th of February 2015.

It takes half-an-hour to reach the four-storeyed hospital building from Biyanibazar, a township 245 km north-east from the capital city of Dhaka. It has 12 doctors, including a supervisor, providing patients with medical services. A total of 40 officials, including 20 field workers, are working there.

“People of our country are usually diagnosed with cancer at the advanced level. They are unaware of proactive medical treatment when the symptoms appear. That’s why taking medical services to the people’s doors is a great initiative,” said Md Habibur Rahman, the local civil surgeon, a government health official.

The hospital was founded by 26 entrepreneurs from Biyanibazar, Sylhet. They initially formed a four million pound fund. Later, 229 expatriates joined the initiative following a call from the pioneers to invest a thousand pounds each each.

Shamsuddin Khan is the chairman of the hospital’s trustee board. M Sab Uddin is the CEO and managing director

June 25, 2016
A prescription for access to medicine

In Egypt, a pharmacist’s matchmaking system links thousands of needy patients with excess drugs

When Waleed Shawky came across a large cache of donated medicine in a Cairo mosque in 2010, he was awestruck.

Knowing how difficult it was for his low-income customers to pay for drugs they needed, the pharmacist had long wondered where unused medicine ends up. He says corporate waste of medicine in Egypt equals roughly E£1 billion (US$112 million) per year.

“I asked where the medication goes, and the people at the mosque said: ‘A pharmacist may come or he may not come,’ ” Shawky recalled, seated in his modest pharmacy.

Subsequently, Shawky launched Medicine For All, an NGO that collects surplus medicine and matches it with needy patients. First, he partnered with pharmacy students to open charity pharmacies for college staff. Then he scaled up the program, reaching 60,000 Egyptians last year.

Medication represents the largest expenditure in the Egyptian health system, and is out of reach for a significant number of Egypt’s nearly 90 million people. According to the World Bank, while more than half of Egyptians have access to some sort of health insurance, 72 percent of healthcare costs are still covered out of pocket. With more than a quarter of the population living below the poverty line, and 17 percent having trouble even purchasing food, many go without medicine.

Medicine For All works by redistribution, linking excess supply—unused or partially used medicine—with demand. The majority of donations come from pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies, since they are not allowed to sell medicine three to six months before expiration, even if the medicine is still good.

Donations also come in from private individuals who, by law, must buy full packages of medicine, whether or not smaller quantities suffice. In certain cases, people switch medications or die before finishing their prescription. Affluent people might donate unused medicine out of altruism, or because the donations are tax deductible and can count as tithing to one’s church or mosque.

Shawky’s idea has won him recognition, from being a finalist at the MIT Arab Forum to being named an Ashoka Fellow in 2013.

In Medicine For All’s headquarters, in the eastern Cairo neighborhood of Nasr City, a large donation from a pharmaceutical company is spread across a dozen plastic weave bags, waiting to be sorted. Shawky trains volunteer pharmacy students to screen and filter the donated medicine, giving them invaluable hands-on experience working with actual drugs.

His team discards expired or compromised medicine, cataloguing the rest into a database. Then the organization distributes the medicine via partner NGOs, which select recipients based on their medical need and economic means, following up to ensure patients complete their course of medication. Each month, medical caravans also deliver medicine to patients in remote areas. Last year, Medicine For All distributed E£1.6 million worth of donated medicine, up from E£300,000 in 2013, when the NGO was officially created.

In Zeitoun, an eastern Cairo neighborhood, Helmy Torky’s organization, Al-Nour Al-Mohamedy, distributes medicine to about 30 patients each month.

“I can’t even buy half a pill,” said Saber Mostafa Mohamed, a 64-year-old former plumber. Mohamed receives E£360 a month in social insurance, but his medicine would cost him nearly twice that.

Even before he had to stop working due to his heart condition, he would have had trouble choosing between supporting his family and his medicine. “I would’ve had to put my fate in the hands of God,” he said.

With about E£100k in annual expenses, Medicine For All is self-sustaining for now, in part due to the stipend Shawky receives from his Ashoka fellowship. Shawky hopes to scale up operations, and is seeking more funding and partnerships.

He has launched a sponsorship program for chronically ill patients with diseases such as hepatitis C and schistosomiasis, which are endemic in Egypt and require expensive medicine. In Zeitoun, Karima Bakry Ahmed, a 54-year-old building attendant, held her latest lab results, which showed she has been clear of the hepatitis C virus since receiving medication through Medicine For All.

Wasted medicine and high drug costs plague countries around the world, and have led to similar programs elsewhere. In the United States, the organization Sirum uses an online system for peer-to-peer redistribution.

“Wherever there is the problem of the misuse of medicine, the project could work there,” Shawky said. “I know it is replicable for the Middle East and the Gulf region. My friends in those countries tell me they have the same problem as Egypt.”

Beyond the medical and developmental benefits, Medicine For All has caused changes in mentality, encouraging even the neediest to share.

“The organization taught me how to live,” said the plumber Mohamed. “If I have any leftover medicine, I bring it back to Mr. Helmy.”

For more information

Website: https://www.ashoka.org/fellow/waleed-shawky

Dr. Waleed Shawky, 36, founder of Medicine for All, at his pharmacy in Cairo. March 2016.

June 25, 2016
WAVE: Employability skills for youths

Godwin Udobassey was working with the Loss and Prevention department of a Security outfit as casual staff when he heard about West Africa Vocational Education (WAVE), a pioneering social enterprise from an alumnus of the organisation.
He applied to WAVE because he wanted to acquire more skills and get a steady job after learning about the multiple opportunities the organisation had to offer.
Godwin was challenged with the process of discarding his old self and embracing the new path WAVE offered him. It took a while for him to learn and unlearn, but he was able to adapt and go through the programme.
Three weeks after graduation from WAVE, Godwin got a new job with The Orchid Bistro Restaurant as a waiter. ”The systems thinking I learnt from WAVE has helped me to discover errors in my workplace before anyone else within my department—apart from my senior colleagues,” Godwin said.
Godwin is one of the 435 people who have so far benefitted from WAVE’s training with more than 70% of them placed in entry-level jobs doubling and tripling their incomes.
Over 40 million West African youth are chronically disconnected from the formal economy because they lack academic qualifications, skills and experience. WAVE gets these youth ready for work through skills training and connects them to the right entry-level jobs that enhance their social mobility.
WAVE was founded in 2013 by Misan Rewane, a graduate of Economics from Stanford University following a discussion with colleagues at the Harvard Business school about unemployment in Africa.
“It is a vocational training platform aimed at empowering millions of disadvantaged West African youth with employability skills that transform their mindsets and employment opportunities that enhance their social mobility through vocational training.”
According to Rewane, WAVE provides self-motivated youth with skills employers want, teaches them how to stand out professionally by inculcating a mindset of continuous improvement and places them in paid technical apprenticeships in high-growth industries where they earn while they learn.
“We identify, train and place talented under-served youth in entry-level jobs in high-growth industries (like the retail and hospitality sector) that double their income. We screen job-seekers for innate talent like emotional intelligence and provide training in industry-relevant employability skills, like problem solving and customer relations. Making a match is a win for our trainees and employer partners.”
WAVE’s three week training programme offers a unique combination of hands on tasks, case studies and simulations.
“The classes were fun, my teammates were awesome and I learnt so many things that I did not have the opportunity to learn in four years at University,” said Temiloluwa Abiola, an alumni of WAVE.
“Our trainers did not mind repeating themselves just for one person to grasp the point. They were relentless in helping us to understand the lessons.”
By empowering these youth, WAVE seeks to enhance their social mobility and spark a cultural mindset change of professional excellence that could catalyse Africa’s economic development.
Potentially WAVE’s screen, train, place model could be replicated across other regions beyond West Africa to reach and connect millions of young people to jobs.
WAVE’s target group is the traditionally excluded populations (18-35 year-olds without a university degree living on less than $2/day). It focuses on harder-to-teach soft skills and changing industry behaviour by promoting a “hire for attitude, train for skill approach.”
Hope Mari, another beneficiary of WAVE’s training said she learnt a lot about team work which has helped her at work. “It has changed my orientation completely. Before I joined WAVE, I used to hate anything that had to do with joint work. I would rather do my own part and leave the rest. But with what I have learnt at WAVE I can say I now see the need and have more understanding about team work.”
In furtherance of accomplishing its goals WAVE hopes to build a model that can be replicated to screen, train and connect millions of marginalized youth to entry-level jobs and to combine and leverage “our direct programmatic experience with policy advocacy to change the education-to-work system more broadly.” WAVE needs partnerships with businesses, governments, funders and peer organizations to make this a reality.

June 25, 2016
LiveWrap: Saving motherhood

A woman can bleed to death in a couple of hours, or even less, after giving birth. In rural areas, where hospitals may be days away or sometimes inactive or under-equipped, this leaves very little hope for women suffering from haemorrhage, the leading cause of maternal mortality. Across the globe, a woman dies per 4 minutes from such dire post-natal complications.

LifeWrap, which is a low-technology, first-aid device that can be placed on women who are haemorrhaging, can prevent these unnecessary deaths. This device decreases blood loss, recovers women from shock and keeps them alive while they are travelling to a hospital or awaiting treatment.

NASG or LifeWrap is made of neoprene and Velcro^TM and looks like the lower half of a wetsuit, cut into segments. This trouble-free piece of equipment helps women survive delays in getting to a hospital and also in getting the treatment that they need. It can be applied by anyone after a short, simple training. To date, it has been used on over 10,000 women in 33 countries.

The NASG is light, flexible and comfortable for the wearer. It does not need to be removed for uterine massage, examinations or vaginal procedures, with the abdominal part only being opened for abdominal surgery. Upon wearing the garment, a patient’s vital signs are often quickly reinstated and consciousness is regained.

The NASG was introduced in 2002 as a part of the Safe Motherhood Programme, founded by Professor Suellen Miller, of the University of California, San Fransisco.

June 25, 2016
Impact Journalism Day: 45 newspapers unite to bring readers uplifting, solutions-based news

Reading the news on a daily basis can be a depressing affair. Worldwide, readers and audiences repeatedly report that they are put off by how negative the news seems to be.

Yet the media’s role is to bring major issues and problems to the foreground and to keep us alert. Must the headlines conform to the age‐old adage that “when it bleeds, it leads”?

The idea behind Impact Journalism Day is to show that the media also fulfill their role by reporting on inspiring solutions to the world’s problems.

The alliance of 45 newspapers, united by Sparknews, presents a different vision of journalism: problems AND solutions can make the news together. This view, along with the conviction that quality, solutions‐based news is something readers aspire to have more of, is part of a growing movement in the press to feature stories of hope and change.

Impact Journalism Day is just the beginning. Each edition has seen a steady increase in the number of newspapers and newsrooms onboard, excited to show their commitment to solutions‐based reporting. Some journalists were initially concerned this content might be naïve or simplistic, but are now eager to participate and uphold this philosophy in their day‐to‐day activities. They are fueled by conviction and also by seeing firsthand that this type of reporting has a measurable impact on the ground.

When the public learns of real solutions, the results can be tremendous. Readers gain greater understanding of the problems and are given the means to engage and the hope to believe that they can become changemakers.

Every reader can and does make a difference. Last year’s articles helped contribute to the growth of the projects featured, via an increase in awareness, volunteering, orders, investments, donations or even via replication in new countries.

Now it’s your turn to be part of the movement!

Show the media that this kind of news matters. Tell your friends and family about Impact Journalism Day, buy an extra copy for your children or your colleagues, share the articles you like on the web and be part of the conversation on Twitter and Facebook.

You can take part in our selfie contest by posting a photo of yourself and this newspaper via Twitter (#ImpactJournalism and add the @ thenationnews) or the Facebook page of our founding partner, AXA (facebook.com/AXAPeopleProtectors).

Help the innovators and entrepreneurs featured in these stories to overcome the challenges they face by joining a brainstorming session (beta.makesense.org/ijd).

And suggest projects we might consider for next year’s Impact Journalism Day (www.sparknews.com/ijd).

Enjoy your read!

Christian de Boisredon and the Sparknews Team.

Christian is the founder of Sparknews and an Ashoka Fellow.

For more information: impact@sparknews.com

June 19, 2015
Texting people out of poverty

A bank account is one step on the road to financial stability. A program called Juntos “talks” to its users to ensure that the newly banked actually put their money aside, writes Laura Shin

Carmen Hernandez, 34, lives in Dallas with her husband and five children. Her husband works in construction, earning about $50,000 a year. Hernandez makes party decorations and tailors clothing, making $800 to $1,000 a month.

In February 2014, the family only had $300 in savings. That month, Hernandez began using a program called Juntos that sends text messages to her mobile, a basic cell phone.

The texts would ask her things like, “Do you want to save more?” If the answer was yes, she would respond with an amount, which would be deposited into her savings account.

Or, they might ask if she had an emergency and remind her that she could use her savings. Or, they might just encourage her to continue saving.

A year later, the family savings was closing in on $5,000.

“All the messages they send really help me,” said Hernandez, with her 14yearold son acting as translator. “If I didn’t use it, I would save less.”

The San Carlos, Californiabased company behind the program, Juntos Finanzas (which goes by Juntos), promotes financial inclusion and helps firsttime bank account holders, or the “newly banked,” to manage their money. “Our hope is to increase active client rates and active balances in accounts,” said Katie Nienow, cofounder and vicepresident of business development.

The company got its start in 2009 at the Institute of Design at Stanford, when a student named Ben Knelman (now CEO) created a simple app to help the school janitors.

Initially, a janitor named Karina laughed at the idea that she could save on her $21,000 salary. But a year later, she had saved $2,000 by using the app. Juntos went on to win the innovation award for financial inclusion at the 2012 G20 summit in Mexico City.

In a pilot study in Colombia, participants working with Juntos ended up with 50 percent higher balances than the control group. Many users, who already feel connected to their phones—one referred to hers as her baby—end up feeling such a personal connection to the app that they respond with messages like, “I just want to thank you for your help.

Your motivation has been very useful.”

The company now has 200,000 users, obtained through partner financial institutions, in Colombia, Mexico and Tanzania. A team of writers with backgrounds from psychology to design use behavioral economics and ontheground research to customize each version to the dialect and culture of that country. Juntos also has a version for users in the United States, which is targeted at recent immigrants who are new to the banking system.

“In recent years, innovations like branchless banking, mobile banking and mobile money have meant that banking services could be provided to the poor at cheaper cost, so access to financial services was becoming a reality for the poor,” said Nienow. But while banks have an easy time getting people to open accounts, customers often immediately let their accounts fall dormant, or unused. Dormancy rates for the newly banked range from 40 to 90 percent around the world.

People who don’t have active accounts may engage in behaviors that put their money at risk. They may keep cash at home, where it might get stolen. Or they may use risky or difficulttoliquidate informal savings vehicles, such as asking a family member to hold their cash or buying inventory for their small business.

“When the poor have their money weighing too heavily on their minds, they’re not able to give their mind to other things with their full presence, which has implications for their job performance and their future earning potential,” said Nienow, citing studies that showed that people perform less well on IQ tests when money is scarce.

Dormant accounts also cost the banks, which spend time and money to develop, advertise and maintain them. That makes Juntos and financial institutions natural partners: the banks have customers that Juntos can target for financial inclusion, and Juntos can help banks lower dormancy rates.

After enrollment, which may or may not be automatic, depending upon the institution, a user receives a note from Juntos explaining that the service acts as a free financial coach.

The company will try several different texts to see what gets the person to write back, then refine its algorithms based on the responses it receives. “We’re constantly testing different messages to see what resonates the best,” said Nienow.

Once a customer replies, Juntos will ask her if she’s interested in a particular aspect of the account. For instance, if she gets free health insurance for maintaining a certain balance, the company will send reminders of that.

Antonique Koning, a financial sector specialist at The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, says that Juntos’s use of algorithms to analyze big volumes of customer data and continually update responses is innovative among organizations tackling financial inclusion. She feels that the Juntos platform helps people to believe in their banks.

“Providers need to become much more focused on the customers, better understand the customers’ realities, needs and preferences, and develop solutions that help,” she said. “People don’t trust the financial system because the system doesn’t speak their language.”

For more information

Website: http://juntosglobal.com/

Video: http://www.sparknews.com/fr/video/juntosfinanzaspositivefinancialimpact-

sms

June 19, 2015
Safermom: Using technology to reduce maternal and infant mortality

Justice Ilevbare writes on a technology based initiative; Safermom has been put in place to address the issues relating to the maternal healthcare care crisis in Nigeria by using interactive and low cost personalized text/voice messages.

The joy of Mrs. Ariyo, knew no bound when she delivered her baby few years ago. Before her new bundle of joy, she had suffered repeated loss during childbirth ‐a situation which earned her several name tags from her in‐laws.

Today, the story is different. Mrs. Ariyo, an Ekiti‐based mother and several others are beneficiaries of SaferMom initiative – a platform that addresses the issues relating to maternal healthcare care crisis in

Nigeria by using interactive and low cost personalized text/voice messages.

With just about two years of its establishment, SaferMom already have not less than 2,500 subscribers on the platform, “we have registered 2,500 subscribers to our platform, some which are fathers or relatives in case the mother has no access to a mobile phone,” Lanre Adeloye, CEO of SaferMom said.

SaferMom basically engages mothers with vital health information in form of SMS and personalized voice call to improve maternal and child health. Apart from pregnancy follow ups, tracking of immunization, nutrition guides, child health and safety tips, SaferMom also send messages that help disprove superstitious believes to women.

Adeloye and his team are poised to eradicate the cases of maternal, neonatal and child mortality using mobile health technology in underserved communities in Nigeria, expressed satisfaction of the success recorded so far since the introduction of the SaferMom initiative, “the testimonies we receive have been one of the best thing that happened to us and also our driving force. Maternal and child health illiteracy is considerably high in Nigeria,” he added.

The team which comprise of experts of Physiologists, public Health practitioners, Physicians, Designers, programmers came together to reduce this phenomenon, presently works in South West Nigeria with hope to make it a pan Nigeria project with time.

For Adeloye and his team, the idea to introduce the SaferMom initiative is more than just hype but the passion to provide a solution to the scourge ravaging poor women in the society. A passion driven by the result of a research, “Our research shows that most solutions available aren’t targeted at mothers below the poverty line but rather with mothers with smart phones or internet enabled phones. Our innovative and unique solution allows mothers to access our platform irrespective of the kind of phone they use or their location,” Adeloye said.

He added, “As we speak, a mother had just lost her life due to complication related to pregnancy and child birth according to reports by World Health Organization. In a core village in Northern Nigeria, an unskilled health practitioner is probably battling with a life of a child which has little or hope of surviving.

“These are few realities of a country that loses about 40,000 mothers and 260,000 new born babies yearly due to preventable health challenges. With about 50% of total population of Nigeria living in low income communities, access to comprehensive healthcare is a luxury. Many new and expectant mothers travel for several hours away to access healthcare thereby reducing antenatal care by 40% in the developing world.

“Many new mothers fail to present their babies for immunization routine for several reasons ranging from distance barrier, contrary religious believes, high transportation cost, negligence and illiteracy. In slum areas where health facilities are present, wards are densely populated due to poor schedules, disease burdens on health workers mainly due to communicable diseases such as TB, Malaria and HIV/AIDS.

“A skilled medical attendant has to deal with about 20,000 patients with varying degrees of ailment in very harsh conditions. In some communities, modern medical healthcare is seen as abomination. Women are barred from receiving modern health care thereby seeking native approaches which may be unsafe and hazardous to health.

“Our focus basically is to help as many mothers by providing key health care information through their pregnancy phases to child developmental stages which is key to their survival.”

Eventhough it has recorded some successes, Adeloye outlined a number of challenges to include:

* Messages fail due to network subscriptions used by mothers

* Not all mothers still has access to Mobile phones

* Since mothers receive our contents via their phones, their phone is not always charged (might take 2 or more days before gets charged again)

* Registering more mothers to ensure national scale is still a huge task

* Raising funds, getting professional translators of our contents to local languages, getting more volunteers to register more mothers among others.

Amongst others, the SaferMom allows pregnant mothers to constantly listen to targeted NGOs, corporate firms working towards MDGs. Other programs of the team include; tracking of vaccination, education on breastfeeding, safe health/family campaigns and follow up of pregnant or nursing mothers.

SaferMom also allows health workers to track/follow up health behaviours of pre and post‐natal activities of mothers and receive feedbacks immediately.

Additionally, SaferMom helps to provide information and reminders to mothers and entire family on hygiene, family health and preventive health tips and with just a click, rural dwellers/mother’s health can be reached and accessed.

In an emergency situation, SaferMom is used to reach rural communities in just a fracture of minute.

June 19, 2015
A smarter smartphone

A young Dutch designer reinvents the mobile phone (and experiments with everything else), writes Nina Siegal

When his digital camera broke during a vacation in Greece in 2012, the then 23-year-old student Dave Hakkens decided to take it apart and see what had gone wrong.

He found the source of the trouble: the lens motor had died. Hakkens contacted the manufacturer and learned that he couldn’t replace that single element of the camera.

He’d have to buy a whole new camera.

“At that point, I realized that that’s how it always goes with electronics,” he said. “When something is broken you can’t fix it anymore; you just have to buy a new one. I felt like I’d like to find something to change that.”

So, for his graduation project at the Eindhoven Design Academy, Hakkens decided to try to upgrade another piece of electronics almost everyone uses: the smartphone.

His concept was to design a modular telephone built of moveable blocks that would allow people to replace individual components of their phones separately. He called the idea “Phonebloks” and posted a short video explaining the idea on YouTube in September 2013.

Within 24 hours, the video had gone viral, with more than a million views.

Hakkens’ initial goal was to find 500 supporters for the project and some phone or technology company willing to get involved. In less than two months, he’d already engaged 800,000 people in a Thunderclap campaign to promote the idea to millions more via social media. His phone and email were buzzing with offers from potential business partners across the globe.

Then Google called. It turned out that its developers had been secretly working on a modular smartphone quite similar to Hakkens’ concept in their Advanced Technology and Projects group, under the name Project Ara. Hakkens was invited to the U.S. to see the work in progress, and Google offered him a job, he said. But he turned it down, and instead made a deal with Google that they would open up their product development to the public and allow him, and his new community of modular phone backers, to become part of the development process.

“It was a really nice offer, and a nice place in San Francisco, but when I thought about it I wasn’t interested in working for a phone company, and I didn’t really want to dedicate myself to one company either,” he said. “Phonebloks had a huge amount of interest in it, and we had to remain independent so we could let them know.”

There were other offers, too, including suggestions about how to leverage the popular support to raise capital and launch a competing venture, but Hakkens is that rare individual who isn’t particularly phased by promises of personal fortune.

“I guess my mind works more from what’s the best for the world, and not what makes you the most profit,” he said. “The idea right now is to keep things open and free, because that way everybody gets smarter and everybody wins.”

Hakkens is now 26, and though he’s significantly more famous he’s not substantially richer than when he was a student. He lives with his girlfriend in a soontobe-demolished house, and works in a studio in an “antikraak” industrial building, which means he pays nearly nothing because the landlords need to keep someone in there to prevent it from getting squatted.

He’s the kind of guy who likes to try new ways to do everything. On his blog, he reports on his 30day juice fasts and his shampoofree experiment. Over the winter, he convinced his girlfriend to get a Christmas tree to plant in their garden. When Christmas rolled around, they brought it inside the house for three weeks, then planted it outside again.

“I read that it’s really bad for the environment that people buy Christmas trees and then just throw them away,” he said.

The couple also adopted a chicken that lives in their yard, via a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable farming. Previously, the chicken had been living on a farm in such confined quarters that it had lost all its feathers. Now it has its feathers back. “That was something we wanted to try out, that you can make a chicken happier again,” he said.

On the work front, Hakkens regularly visits Project Ara headquarters and reports back to his followers on social media. His Phonebloks site has become a kind of campaign headquarters for promoting electronics that produce less waste. (Project Ara, meanwhile, is planning to launch a limited market pilot of its modular phone this year.)

These days his primary focus is another project he began while at design school: recycling plastic into household items. He discovered that it’s actually quite easy to recycle plastic, but most plastics companies don’t want to, because the machines are enormous and expensive. So Hakkens decided to design a much smaller machine that could be placed somewhere like a community center. That way, individuals could bring in their own plastics and turn them into fun household objects, like lamps or chairs.

So far, he hasn’t gotten anywhere near as much support for his plastics machine as he did for Phonebloks. But he’s passionate about this idea on a personal level, admitting that “you might have to be a maker to find the plastic project interesting.”

For more information

Website: https://phonebloks.com/en

Video: http://www.sparknews.com/fr/video/phonebloksoneyearalready

June 19, 2015
Seeing for two

The app “Be My Eyes” allows sighted volunteers to help blind people all over the world, just by using their smartphones, writes Justin Cremer

Kamilla Ryding has had severe visual impairment since birth but that has hardly slowed her down.

The 29yearold is building a research career in her native Copenhagen, has lived in the U.S. and Australia, and is a competitive distance runner currently considering her first full marathon. But still, there are times when Ryding wishes she could have a set of working eyes, if only for a few seconds.

Thanks to her fellow Dane Hans Jørgen Wiberg, she now can.

Wiberg is the cofounder of the iPhone app Be My Eyes, which connects blind users with an army of sighted volunteers (an Android version is under development). When a blind user needs help, she accesses the app using the iPhone’s VoiceOver controls and Be My Eyes rings up the first available volunteer.

The two are connected over the blind user’s video camera and the sighted user lends his eyes for a fairly mundane task, such as checking the expiry date on food, that usually takes just a minute or two. It’s a process Wiberg refers to as microvolunteering. “A lot of people want to do something good but they are busy,” he said. “With this app, they have an opportunity to help out if they have time.”

Ryding, who has only one percent of her vision left, said she typically uses Be My Eyes once a week, primarily for help in identifying household goods.

Wiberg himself is visually impaired, and many of his blind friends were already using their iPhones to get assistance from family and friends for small tasks. A craftsman by trade, he had no real tech experience but knew there must be a way to connect blind and sighted users on a larger scale.

In 2012, he presented his idea at a Danish startup conference and Be My Eyes was born. Less than three years later, the app was officially launched. Thousands of users signed up, a few celebrities offered endorsements, and the next thing he knew, Wiberg was at the helm of one of the year’s fastest growing apps, now boasting around 200,000 sighted volunteers, 18,000 blind users and connections in 80 different languages.

As helpful as the app is for physical challenges, perhaps its biggest benefit is psychological. Blind users no longer have to rely solely on family and friends, which keeps them from feeling like a burden. “I like to have a friend be a friend and not a helper,” Ryding said.

Wiberg said that the blind users appreciate “being able to ask for help without really asking” and that the app allows them to accomplish minor tasks immediately rather than waiting for a friend or neighbor.

For Ryding, Be My Eyes hasn’t been a game changer, but it is one more tool in her toolbox. She said, “I’ve been living 29 years without the app so I’ve gotten into certain systems and routines for doing things without it. I have to get used to using it instead of asking other people or just trying to figure it out myself.” She noted that she enjoys using the app and finds it helpful.

That is exactly how Wiberg would have it.“I don’t consider Be My Eyes as something that will change people’s lives but it can help them do things they otherwise wouldn’t,” he said. “My dream is that blind people will be able to live more independent lives. Maybe they will cook dinner so that it’s ready when their spouse comes home because now they know that if they get stuck in the middle of the process, they can just use Be My Eyes to check something and move on.”

Although it’s successfully connected tens of thousands of blind and sighted users, Be My Eyes still faces growing pains. One issue is funding. Original financing for the project runs out in September and Wiberg said his team is “open to any suggestions” including donations, crowdfunding and sponsorships. He vowed that the app will always remain free for users.

Wiberg also said they are dealing with the “positive” problem that sighted volunteers outnumber blind users ten to one. Nonetheless, blind users still sometimes encounter long wait times that lead them to give up and find a different solution. The day I met Ryding, she tried to use the app but the connection kept dropping; she insisted it was the first time she had encountered this issue.

Once Be My Eyes irons out these problems, Wiberg hopes to expand into the developing world.

The World Health Organization estimates that 90 percent of the world’s 285 million visually-impaired people live in lowincome areas.

But blind people aren’t the only beneficiaries; volunteers also have much to gain. After helping a blind man read a card he received in the mail, one volunteer from Hawaii posted on Facebook, “This is the first app that has ever affected me on such an emotional level, and the idea that my tiny contribution made a difference in some complete stranger’s life leaves me with a huge sense of satisfaction…I feel like I’m getting more out of this app than the person who called me.”

For more information

Website: http://www.bemyeyes.org/

Video: http://www.sparknews.com/fr/video/bemyeyessmartphoneapphelpblindpeople

June 19, 2015