Do aid agencies skew the debate? Charities urged to improve websites on mobile phones. By Jenna Pudelek, Third Sector, 3 July 2012 The Charity Commission has a mobile website Charities could be missing out on donations because they have not optimised their websites for mobile devices, digital fundraising experts warned yesterday. At a session called The Latest Digital Fundraising Trends, Jonathan Waddingham, product manager at the online donations platform JustGiving, said charities must "think mobile first".
But a straw poll of the room, which was filled to capacity with 145 delegates, showed that only one of the organisations represented had a website that was adapted for mobile phone and tablet users. And only four delegates said their organisations measured how much traffic to their website came from mobiles. Waddingham said charities should make it easy for people to donate using their mobiles. "Think not just about designing a campaign for desktop, but how we make this mobile. " The growth in traffic from mobile devices was being driven by social media, he said. What if We Could End Famine? This is a community post, untouched by our editors. Source: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Today, May 25th, marks the worldwide celebration of Africa Day.
It is a day to explore African diversity and celebrate the cultural and economic potential that exists. Amidst the celebration, there exists a need to increase awareness of the hardships and challenges that remain. West Africa and South Sudan continue to experience drought, collapsed local markets and heightening local conflicts. Drought and poor economic growth continue to exacerbate poverty and famine. In the Sahel region o fWest Africa, up to 16 million people are in need of assistance and one million children are at risk of malnutrition. Save the Children, have been warning of an impending disaster since last year but despite these efforts, the West Africa Appeal is now responding to a crisis situation in Niger, where 1 in 10 children are expected to die from hunger.
A meatless solution? The panel declared: CHART OF THE DAY: Android Is The Platform Of Choice In The Developing World. Crowdsourcing Maps Using Ushahidi. This is a community post, untouched by our editors. Making maps requires the collection of large amounts of data. The size of the area you wish to map increases the amount of data needed to make the map effective. One way to accomplish the data collection is by crowdsourcing your map. A central user or community can set up a base map and allow users to input data into this map. Mapping a city this way would allow people familiar with specific areas of the city to map what they see and know about those areas.
They are the local experts. There are several GIS software platforms for creating a crowdsourced map. A Demo Ushahidi Map Showing Incident Reports By Users. A Form For Adding Data to the Map. Being free and open source, Ushahidi can be deployed and configured as a community wishes. Once a map has been built and customized, there are several ways people can crowdsource your map. Adding Data To a Map Using the iPhone App. Let’s put these tools, knowledge and applications to good use.
MasterPeace.org - Music above Fighting. TEDx Baghdad: Iraq is infinity. Washington, DC- “My father gave me a great Iraq that now I have to pass down to my son. Will I be able to deliver to him what my father gave to me?” Manhal Al-Habbobi looked straight into the eyes of his audience. It was the first-ever TEDxBaghdad conference, and Manhal was wrapping up his impassioned speech with a call to action for his fellow Iraqis in the audience and around the world watching. “Sometimes I wonder if we are the broken link in the chain,” he continued, “and will our generation be able to pass along this message of a great civilization to the ones to come.”
A gifted and visionary architect, Manhal had recently won a competitive bid to design the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, a $250 million project to develop one of Iraq's principal government buildings. As a volunteer speaker coach, I had the honor of working with Manhal in crafting and delivering his speech to a global audience. Manhal concluded his speech that day with a personal anecdote. TEDxBaghdad Live TEDxChange 2012. Selecting Mobile ICT Devices for Agriculture Services and Applications in sub-Saharan Africa. The True Size of Africa. This is a community post, untouched by our editors. Within the 54 countries which make up Africa, only a handful are classed as developed, however, with so much space, the opportunity of development is massive, and this infographic demonstrates that by clarifying the true size of this continent. Africa is large enough to embody the USA, Japan, the whole of Europe, India and China combined, and as India and China continue to industrialise on a rapid scale, could we see central Africa begin to do the same in coming years?
Click to Enlarge Previous Infographic: Apple: The Numbers. Horn of Africa Crisis: Drought Zone - Fault Lines. Lends €28.1 million to support access to reliable energy in Kenya. The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved on 7 December a € 28.1 million senior loan to support the Thika Thermal Power Project in Kenya. This reliable energy private sector power project will encourage economic growth by helping to address Kenya’s energy shortfall. The 87MW Thika thermal power plant, located in the town of Thika, some 35km from Nairobi, comprising five heavy fuel oil generators convertible into natural gas if gas becomes available, and a 7MW steam turbine will respond to Kenya’s shortage of dependable thermal capacity for which demand is growing by 6% to 8% a year. Moreover, the power plant’s steam turbine will increase the efficiency of the plant, thus reducing carbon emissions. It will also ease the burden on the Nairobi area’s grid, which suffers from frequent voltage reductions and blackouts.
Technical contact: Richard Claudet. “Land Grabs”: Development or Disaster in the Making? This is a community post, untouched by our editors. Image via Flickr - Planète à vendre Land is one of the world’s most precious and limited natural resources. It allows for us to grow food to eat, build homes for shelter and draw water to drink. It is this precious resource that has come under scrutiny by the UN for “land-grab” deals that have sprung up in Asia and Africa. In these deals, fertile land is being sold off to private buyers and taken away from indigenous groups and local farmers.
Though there have been deals that benefited both the local economy and private interests, many sales have been branded as greedy grabs for land in a time of a potential food crisis. Malagasy child with sugar cane; source: Flikr Woodlouse The World Bank reported that deals between the period of 2008 to 2009 saw 60 million hectares of land—roughly the size of the Ukraine—sold to private interests. In scenarios such as these, who benefits? African child mortality: The best story in development. 2015)QUILT. Wonen en werken in ... Afrika | Werken in het buitenland | Tijd voor iets nieuws | Ontwikkeling.
African Day Playlist: 8 Songs to Feed the Soul. A Call 2 Action. Missed A Call 2 Action? | A Call 2 Action. AC2A initiatives. Ruralweb.info. A Call 2 Action. Ac2a. ACall2Action morning : un album. A Call 2 Action. Nailab. Crowdfunding Nederland. We komen er wel. Voordekunst. Join the Social Good Summit Global Conversation. From September 22-24, the third annual Social Good Summit will unite global leaders as they share how to use the power of innovative thinking and technology to solve the greatest challenges facing the world today. This September, we want you to help us make history and join the conversation with leaders and citizens from around the globe. On September 24, we invite people all over the world to connect through local meetups, where they will address the same question: How can new technology and new media create solutions for the biggest problems facing my community? We want to create one of the biggest and most powerful global conversations the world has ever seen.
So sign up for a meetup now and get engaged, express your thoughts and help to improve your local community and, in turn, the world around you. To get started, visit the Mashable Meetup Everywhere page and either find a Social Good Summit meetup in your city, or start your very own! Step by Step Find a Meetup Community Near You.
NAIS SMS Platform launched | iConnect Online. Trash Playgrounds in Kibera, Kenya. This is a community post, untouched by our editors. Trash Lands by Jose Ferreira our production cycles aren’t so much cyclical as linear Tweet Share Have humans become a worldly parasite; leeching off our host? It is estimated that annually humans produce over a billion tonnes of waste each year. This comes at no surprise considering most of our production cycles aren’t so much cyclical as linear. Now, if you’re like me you cannot actually imagine what 1 billion tonnes of waste looks like, perhaps you’re guessing that we’re running out of place to put the stuff.
In developing countries, particularly in informal settlements, people aren’t so ‘lucky’. I recently came across an Engineering for Change (E4C) article describing, in my opinion, one of the best public space transformations in recent years. You can see the population density as a reflection of slum density in this birdseye of kibera.
Kibera is infamous for being one Africa’s most populated settlements. Maura O'Neill: Crowd-Sourcing Development Innovation in India. India has become synonymous with innovation. Inexpensive mHealth applications. The Tata Nano. Low cost eye surgery. These are just a handful of the frugal innovations that India has developed and is now exporting. With a booming social enterprise sector, a number of the world's leading academics, Nobel Prize winners and thinkers, a vibrant private sector, and world-class NGOs like Pratham, India has been dubbed the innovation hub for the West. In light of this innovation boom, Administrator Raj Shah challenged us to think about how we could harness the enormous creativity and frugal innovation found in India, and how we could partner to find and scale high-impact development solutions that drive down the cost of development and get results faster--not just for India but for the rest of the developing world, and even here in the United States.
We didn't have to look further than Lalitesh Katragadda, who is an Indian citizen who earned his robotics PhD at Carnegie Mellon. The Tao of Crowdfunding: A Practical Guide to Crowdfunder Etiquette | Hat & Soul. So you now know some of the keys of a successful campaign from reading the first post in my Tao of Crowdfunding series, but that’s only part of the ongoing battle to find alternative sources for financing our creative projects. Based on the incredible response “The Three Ps for a Successful Film Campaign” received from the indie film community and beyond, I’ve decided to soldier on and address a topic which some of my closest friends have cited as a bit of a concern––Crowdfunder Etiquette.
Some of you might be thinking to yourselves I didn’t know such a thing existed! It does or doesn’t, based on your own experiences crowdfunding. But I prefer to call it by its more common name: Good Manners. Whether your crowdfunding platform is IndieGoGo, Kickstarter or any of the myriad others out there, here are five basic tenets every campaigner should follow: 1. “I’m Not Only the Campaigner, I’m Also a Funder!” 2. Travis Legge tweets "Please" for Poetic on IndieGoGo. 3. 4. 5. Like this: ABN AMRO doet proef met crowdfunding: eerst zaaien, dan oogsten? Medio 2010 kondigde ik op [finno] al aan dat ABN AMRO naar verwachting in het najaar van 2010 ging starten met een crowdfundingplatform. Ruim twee jaar later is het eindelijk zover. Een paar weken geleden ging het langverwachte crowdfundingplatform van ABN AMRO van start.
In het persbericht staat duidelijk dat het om een pilot gaat. ABN AMRO is voor zover ik weet de eerste bank wereldwijd die een crowdfundingplatform begint. Eerste bank met crowdfundingplatform Seeds is niet het enige crowdfundingplatform in Nederland, maar wel de eerste die vanuit een bank is opgezet. Ondernemers met een goed businessplan krijgen toegang tot investeerders die met beperkte bedragen kunnen investeren. Meer dan financieel rendement Geen lening, geen aandelen. Naast de mogelijk financiële beloning kan een investeerder ook extra’s krijgen in de vorm van bijvoorbeeld producten en diensten van de onderneming, zoals we dat ook zo goed kennen van het Amerikaanse Kickstarter.
Geduld is een schone zaak Heilig geloof. ABN Amro behaalt eerste succes met Seeds.