• 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.

Midnight sun in Kiruna, picture source Wikipedia

MKFC Stockholm College and MKFC Helsinki College takes off for our annual summer break during July.

With midnight sun in Sweden we gather our families in our ’summer homes’.

Until August, Happy Holidays!

Sharing Awareness ™ -team in Stockholm and Helsinki

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

Mobile phones are transforming health care in many developing countries, reports BBC.

The use of mobile phones worldwide is becoming more and more widespread each day, which makes it an ideal tool for health workers gathering vital information. Using an application called EpiSurveyor, critical data collection concerning, for example, vaccines and HIV rates, has now been made faster and more efficient. The application has been used successfully in several projects, for examle in a malaria study in Nigeria.

Read more here.

Source: BBC.

Written by Fanny Johansson

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

Foster and Africa Works try to find business opportunities and build links between countries in the areas of travel, studying, business, education, civil society. You will also find information about learning cultures in African countries.

Watch the movies for more information and inspiration!

Kay Obiri-Mainoo, successful MKFC cooperator in Ghana, initiated village people to make a great change for a better life. Here interviewed by Emma Hedlund, MKFC tutor in Stockholm outside our office.

Kay Obiri-Mainoo together with Kalle and Emma Hedlund

MKFC Partner Kay Obiri-Mainoo from eCap Ghana Foundation arrived to Stockholm today for a two-week visit to Stockholm. Kay is the project manager for village development projects in Ghana, using action learning and e-learning in collaboration with MKFC. Kay runs a business from Kumasi, Ghana, called eCap Ghana Foundation, and continuing cooperation with MKFC

The work, based on the change in the power of the people living in villages, has been very successful. Thanks to improvements in hygiene and sanitation, malaria and diarrhoeal diseases declined drastic. New buildings, including a school building was being built, and the change process continues all the time – and after a time on its own merits.

Written by Olle Lundberg

With April 25th as ”World Malaria Day” A visit to Niliyungdo was decided to see and report what has happened since the last update , and how the people were coping with malaria.

The village of Niliyungdo is moving at a pace where even the people themselves are so proud of the changes that has taken place that they talk about it everywhere they go.

Because of the healthy changes, there has been over 30 additional families that have moved into the village from nearby villages.

The drastic reduction of malaria infected people has reduced to 30% from the previous rate of 60% within the last 4 months!

Although the majority of mothers and children still do not use mosquito nets to protect themselves from mosquitos, they have opted to clean the environment to reduce the risk of getting malaria!

From newborn babies and mothers, to children under 5 years of age gather to take a picture with smiles on their faces for the whole world to know they are making a change in their small part of the world!

From cleaner roads to trash bins infront of houses are all steps that the people have taken to reduce to risk of malaria.

Breaking down and pushing back old washing areas to building newer and stronger ones away from sleeping areas to cut down on water piling up at one place are also basic steps the people have taken to protect themselves from malaria.

Others have found it odd to see that out of all the communities Niliyungdo is the only one that is clean and tolerable to be in.
Through MKFC Sharing Awareness, these changes are seen in the lives of these people.

As we celebrate today as World Malaria Day, we tip our hats to those that can say proudly that they are making changes that tomorrow they can be proud off!