• economic growth, agriculture and trade;
• global health; and,
• democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarian assistance.

USAID has set up Grand challenges which include such acute development needs as installing piped drinking water for households, deploying high-quality irrigation systems with locally-accessible replacement parts, and using the latest mobile technologies for banking, sharing vital health data, paying salaries, and checking commodity prices.

Some of their mobile phone initiatives right now are SMS together with radio in Haiti, $100 Million project opportunity for mHealth in Malawi.

Read more on their blog and become a fan on Facebook.

Picture: Millennium International Documentary Film Festival

Tomorrow, June 12, marks the start of the second Millennium International Documentary Film Festival in Brussels. This week-long festival, supported by the United Nations, will show films that deal with different aspects of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

One of the festival’s main aims is to show the realities – the real lives of real people – behind the eight MDGs. Some of the topics that will be addressed are the Congolese civil war, a Polynesian community dealing with the effects of climate change, and the harsh working conditions of the Kenyan flower industry. Several different documentaries will be shown between 12-18 June, and there will also be panel discussions, special events and live performances.

For more information, please refer to the Millennium International Documentary Film Festival official homepage or the UNDP homepage.

Source: UNDP.

Written by Fanny Johansson

Paul Polak is founder of Colorado-based non-profit International Development enterprises (IDE)—is dedicated to developing practical solutions that attack poverty at its roots.

Polak share his experiences and practical strategies in this video clip. You can also find more information on his homepage and Twitter.

Human Rights, Childrens Rights, democracy and gender are in focus in the MKFC discussions with Catherine Isaksson, Secretary General of Centerpartiets Internationella Stiftelse. CIS, among others, runs ongoing projects in South Africa to improve shanty town pre school activities, and another one aiming to improve the quality of teacher educations at a college near by. MKFC could contribute with high quality educational content as well as the e-learning method End-to-End eLearning™.

In the discussions so far we have a similar opinion on the power of change for development in learning activities, and on the huge potential in good e-learning, including the use of different social media.

Olle Lundberg

The 5th International Conference on ICT for Development, Education and Training. This annual event for developing e-learning capacities in Africa took place in Lusaka, Zambia on May 26th to 28th 2010.

Four members from MKFC Stockholm and Helsinki College took part in this conference: Eva Kagiri with eCAP East Africa, Jonas Kwadwo Ansah Boateng with House of Grace Foundation / Ghana Institute of Jornalism, Tuomas Erkkila with MKFC SharingAwareness and Kwabena Obiri-Mainoo with eCAP Ghana Foundation.

Eva Kagiri held a pre-workshop on Wednesday, 26th May, on “Sharing Awareness – Lifelong Well-Beingfor Communities: Improving Health and Creating Change at the Community Level Using ICT”.

Participants who were interviewed after the sessions commented that the workshop was “very interactive and helpful for others to use in their projects.”

Kwabena Obiri-Mainoo also shared a presentation on Thursday, 27th May. His topic was “Sharing Health Education with Rural People in Ghana through ICT”.

The presentation focused on practical ways eCAP Ghana Foundation has been working to bridge the gap in providing health education in underdeveloped and rural communities.

Topics: mLearning, mHealth or mBanking

Rules

Competition is open for everybody. You take part with a group or as an individual. You will choose one topic and produce a “solution” from cases described below. Only case solutions that are submitted in time and that fulfil the requirements will be evaluated. One group can take part with one case solution. MKFC Stockholm College and Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences reserve all rights of the case solutions.

All participants are welcomed to take part in the MMMLife Workshop & Festival, where they will have the possibility to present their case in workshop.

Registration to case competition is open 24th of May – 30th of June at http://tinyurl.com/MMMLifeCASE

Competition Time: 24th of May – 23rd of July

mLearning. Come up with a plan how to provide education for app. 100 people living in remote location with mobile technology. There is one landline Internet connection at the location. Nearly everyone at the location has a simple mobile phone and there are good mobile connections at the location. You have 2000 euro at your disposal to provide a lasting solution to provide for people at the location. You can alternatively choose a real remote location and come up with similar plan (2000 euro limit) to provide education with the help of mobile devices.

mHealth. Come up with a plan how to provide health services for people living in remote locations with mobile devices or with the help of mobile devices. You should also consider ways how to raise awareness of health issues such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, diarrheal, warnings about dangerous areas, spreading of diseases etc. can be shared with mobile devices. Also consider, what sort of health services might be needed in remote locations and can these needs be met with mHealth. You can take a real life, existing example of mHealth from a location of your choice, analyze it and build your suggestion upon it.

mBanking. Choose a remote location/s where mBanking is used. Find out reasons why mBanking is used, what needs the people have for mBanking and are they met and what services are currently being provided. You can take a real life and existing example of mBanking some where from the world, analyze it and build your suggestion upon it or you can choose more locations and compare them. Come up with proposal where you benchmark solutions, analyze the current needs at location/s you’ve chosen, provide a solution how these needs could be better met and provide rationale why your solution is transferable to other locations.

Alternatively you can suggest as case of your own. Send your suggestion, to ville@mkfc.se. The suggestion must include a relevant problem within the use of mobile devices, and a hands-on case that the solutions produced will address. Your suggestion for case will be evaluated by the organizers, and if itʼs accepted as a case, it will be published at the event website, so that others can also provide solutions for the case.

m?

Alternatively you can suggest as case of your own. Send your suggestion, to ville(@)mkfc.se. The suggestion must include a relevant problem within the use of mobile devices, and a hands-on case that the solutions produced will address. Your suggestion for case will be evaluated by the organizers, and if itʼs accepted as a case, it will be published at the event website, so that others can also provide solutions for the case.

The case solution must include:

- Paper (max 10 pp.) and presentation or video or website
- Case must be presented also in NING, in the group with same topic
- The groups must also participate weekly in the NING-group of their topic, for example by posting some insights of their case solution, interesting developments within the case topic or some other contribution to
- “Hands on” approach with suggestions that are usable in real life
- Creative approach in all the materials produced

The case solutions can include:

- Analysis of existing practices
- Group’s own experiences form their local region
- Development / Combination of existing practice

In all cases the following aspects should be taken into consideration:

- What devices and technologies are most appropriate
- Applications that will be used
- Which Service providers will be used
- Transferability of the solutions to different locations
- Energy consumption
- Different age groups

Submission of case solutions.

By email to ville(at)mkfc.se (videos: preferably a link to Youtube or equivalent. )

Evaluation

After the competition has ended a case competition committee will evaluate the solutions, the materials used to present the solution and groups’ contribution in MMMLife-NING. The winning group will be contacted latest 5th of August and information about the winner and winning solution will be published at http://mymobilemylife.org/?page_id=125

Prize

- One 1000 EUR voucher/ gift card to mobile devices supplier of winners choice
- MMMLife Workshop – Festival & dinner party free of charge
- The winning group will get to present their solution in the summer event as one of the main speakers.

- If no one of the winning group is able to take part in the MMMLife Event, it’s alternatively possible to make a video that will be presented at the event. Take this into consideration while preparing the case solution materials

Read more on the My Mobile My Life blog

My Mobile My Life Community

My Mobile My Life Facebook

Panos London promotes the participation of poor and marginalised people in national and international development debates through media and communication projects.

Communication at the heart of change explains the essential role that information and communication plays in development.

Sustainable development demands that people participate in the debates and decisions that affect their lives. They need to be able to receive information, but also to make their voices heard. But the poor are often excluded from these processes by geography and lack of resources or skills. The video explores what can happen when poor and marginalised people are listened to, and given access to the information they need.

Source

Photo: Lars Plougmann

For the first time in decades, maternal deaths have fallen worldwide, according to a new study from the University of Washington, Seattle.

The study shows that maternal deaths are now down to about 350 000 last year, compared to more than 500 000 in 1980, reports BBC. Countries such as China, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Egypt have made the most significant progress, while more than half of all maternal deaths worldwide occur in only six countries: India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Nigeria. Perhaps the most surprising result is that in the US, the number of maternal deaths has actually increased in the past 20 years, but this could potentially be explained by changes in how maternal deaths are recorded. One of the Millennium Development Goals is to reduce maternal deaths by 75% by 2015.

More information on maternal health can be found on the WHO website.

Source: BBC.

Written by Fanny Johansson

227 million people worldwide have been able to move out of slum areas to better living conditions since 2000, according to a new report from UN Habitat.

This positive development means that the Millennium Development target of improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers before 2015 has been surpassed. In countries such as China and India, extensive improvements of slum areas have already begun – but a lot remains to be done, not least because the “absolute number” of slum dwellers has actually increased by 100 million people since 2000, largely due to migration from the countryside to larger cities. In fact, a majority of the world’s population (around 51%) now live in urban areas – in sub-Saharan Africa, 62% of the urban population still live in slums.

The full report can be found here.

Source: UN Habitat.

Written by Fanny Johansson

The co-founder of Facebook and Obamas social media strategist for the election 2008 are building a social-networking site to connect individual and organizations to change the world.

Jumo brings together everyday individuals and organizations to speed the pace of global change. We connect people to the issues, organizations, and individuals relevant to them to foster lasting relationships and meaningful action”.

“There are no magic solutions to the challenges our world faces. But there are millions of people around the globe who work each day to improve the lives of others. Unfortunately, there are millions more who don’t know how to meaningfully help.

We think this is a really good initiative, we are looking forward to join this and to see more what this will be in the future!

Read more about Jumo
Follow the development of Jumo on Twitter