Reconstructed Living Lab » Projects

Reconstructed Living Lab: supporting drug users and families through co-operative counselling using mobile phone technology

Marlon — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:28:31 +0000

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.

Virtual Rehab on MXit

Marlon — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:32:06 +0000

The collaboration platform Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) has created a live counselling portal, JamiiX, on mobile social network MXit called ‘Angel’. According to RLabs, the portal is for South African youth in need of substance abuse counselling, and is being released in conjunction with Drug Awareness Week (21 to 27 June). Currently Angel have over 40,000 subscribers with more than 1,000 of those subscribers accessing the LIVE Counselling services via their mobile phones. More about this collaboration can be read in the IT Web (22 June 2010) article.

Speed dating with the moms

kingross — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:06:43 +0000

Speed dating with the moms

View more presentations from Rene Parker.

Today we decided to do the Mom3.0 Cafe Session differently. We will be doing it Speed Dating style. Here is just a brief description of what speed dating is.

SPEED DATING: Wikipedia

Speed dating is a formalized matchmaking process or dating system whose purpose is to encourage people to meet a large number of new people.

SPEED DATING: RLABS

The reason for us doing the Mom3.0 session speed dating style is that we want to introduce the moms to as many Social Media sites as possible. This is also a good way of doing recap with the moms and for those that joined the class late.

Melissa Jonhson one of the students says: “I could do so many things today as I had many tabs open. I had my Facebook, Gmail, Blogger and Hootsuite (twitter) open at the same time. This session was so fruitful!” So it seems these new speed dating sessions are paying off and we will be looking forward to having more of them with the moms in the future.

A special thanks to all the moms for attending the speed dating session as this would not be possible without you ladies. And to all the facilitators. Keep up the good work.

Angel on MXit supports over 23,000

Marlon — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:15:05 +0000

Another exciting project that RLabs have been involved in has been the Angel on MXit project where we offer people support and advice in the areas of substance abuse, abuse, depression, debt counselling,stress and coping via their mobile phones. This partnership with MXit Lifestyle will allow us to scale our services and also provide much needed access to all MXit users. The Angel project allows MXit users to “find their Angel” where they can get help for the social issue they are dealing with.

Over the next few weeks we will increase the capacity of our mobile counselling support centre and grow it to support thousands of MXit users across South Africa. Since starting our new campaign yesterday we’ve already attracted more than 23,000 users to the service.

Kujali: Mobile Application for Home-based healthcare

Marlon — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:36:12 +0000

Over the past few weeks RLabs have been part of a project with CPUT Innovation Hub to develop a Mobile Application for Home Based HealthCare (HBHC). This project started last year as a collaboration between universities in three provinces in South Africa and the first prototype was showcased at this year’s IST Africa Conference in Durban, South Africa. The solution “Kujali”,(Swahili for “Care”) is a mobile solution that supports home-based healthcare (HBHC) providers that face severe difficulties in providing a sustainable and comprehensive health services to poorer communities. In addition to the healthcare professional and caregiver needs, family members and other citizens need to also be supported and informed about the patient’s state of health.

This mobile application is downloaded and can be used on most Java enabled handsets. It provides the caregivers with their patients for the day’s information (patient record) within Kujali. The caregiver therefore does not need write any lengthy reports but fill in an easy to use Kujali patient management system via their mobile phone. The patient data, once submitted by caregiver, immediately gets uploaded to the main database where data becomes available to agencies and health centres to access this up to date patient data to support decision making and management of services to the communities in need. Patient family members would also be able to access the patient information via mobile phone and will receive alerts in serious cases. RLabs will be part of the deployment and R&D team getting this much needed solution to the local community and other developing markets.

Source: Technology for Community Empowerment

Unfreemedia and RLabs

Marlon — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:39:03 +0000

One of the exciting partnerships that RLabs have had through the World Bank Innovation Fair has been with Unfreemedia who’s goal is to overcome censorship with independent, investigative and frontline journalism. This amazing movement is spearheaded by the inspiring and experienced editor Leonard Doyle (@LeonardDoyle)who is based in Washngton, DC. He is a former foreign editor of The Independent (UK) and The Observer (UK), and he leads a network of correspondents in some of the most troubled spots around the world. Unfreemedia operate in and around some of the world’s most repressive places, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran, Burma, Tibet and Ethiopia. Through our partnership with Leonard and the team we hope to establish stronger partnerships as we give real stories independent and frontline journalism on the ground by the people for the world.

Below is a video Leonard and the Unfreemedia team released on his trip to the Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) and visiting some of the spots where Clinton Liederman (featured in the video) and The Reconstructed spent their early days.

Back to Back with Rlabs

kingross — Fri, 14 May 2010 13:43:28 +0000

About a month ago Clinton Liederman entered a competition on twitter which you could stand a chance of winning 1 whole unit of South Africa’s national braai animal, the lamb and the winner was “Clinton Liederman”. This was a competition by the man behind National Braai Day janbraai. Yesterday we had a nice braai and social gathering outside the red walls celebrating a hands off keyboard and no gadget eve LoL but yet some of the guys played Wii they must pay a fine I think

Today we back at RLab doing two projects today the first one is our citizen journalism with young ladies from schools in our surrounding area today Marlon Parker is teaching them how to create a fan page. The citizen journalism group got a name check out their page iMo’journ

After the Journalism project we had a follow up blogging session with She’s The Geek. In today’s session Monique did picture blogging with the ladies and they shared the blog post on Facebook

Feel free to read the blog post of the ladies remember this is their second blogging session www.mom2zero.com

Girl Power

kingross — Wed, 12 May 2010 12:03:44 +0000

Yesterday we ran a Social Media class with the girls City Mission Educational Services. We had not had a class with them for a while now. In yesterday’s session we did a recap on Gmail with them. These girls have a long way to go and much more to learn.

I remember when was first exposed to a computer about 2 years ago and did not know anything. It was a very overwhelming feeling and did not know if I was going to be able to finish the course. Well if I see where I find myself today I know teaching these girls is not impossible.

I am looking forward to the next session with them. We will be taking them to the next phase which will be Facebook. Soon they will be bloggers and setting the World Wide Web alight. Watch this space.

We have to impart in them what we have learned. If someone did not take the time out to teach us we would not be where we are now.

Mobile Phone Counselling breaks 50,000 conversations barrier

Marlon — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:52:59 +0000

It has been almost 2 years offering Mobile Counselling Substance Abuse Support services for people across South Africa. Since then we’ve had amazing experiences ranging from Live television to online and print media coverage. However, the best feeling for us has always been making a difference in the lives of people and offering hope through the use of technology. It is with great excitement when we broke the 50,000 conversations barrier earlier this week (Over 3 Million Messages) and supporting over 12,000 unique users on our Mobile Phone Substance Abuse Counselling Service.

Below is an example of a typical mobile phone chat counselling session (please note T is the person in need and me is our counsellor):

“8:25 PM T: More edgie and irritated
8:26 PM me: Hi
SO tell me whats wrong?
8:28 PM T: husband using tik, want 2 know what the effects is
me: The last time we spoke u were telling me bout ur hubby
8:29 PM lack of sleep, changing eating patterns, unhealthy loss of weight, his skin will be different
T: yes so badly wanne help dont know how
me: He will becum fidgety
8:30 PM Tell me where r u based?
T: i know, my son saw him smoke
8:31 PM me: Does he deny it?
T: (****** NB: We removed location )
yes
me: Lies is another sign
8:32 PM experiencing any of that?
So what does he tell u when u confront him?
T: And then he left doesnt love me anymore. baby of a month old
me: So sorry to hear
8:33 PM R ur family around to support u ?
I’ll be honest with u…
Tik is an evil thing
T:that he can contrl himself
8:34 PM me: it deceives ppl, and ppl think they can control it
T:no, is any of his decisions clear and normal
8:35 PM me: not at all
the decisions of running away cud b the drug…
did u hav any marital probs leading up to his decision?
8:36 PM T: Drugs has always been there but not like this
8:37 PM it was now and again
me: k
Did he ever go for help b4?
8:38 PM R u staying on ur own or with family?
T: he doesnt think he has a problem
me: Thats what we all say
T: me and kids
me: We hav it under control
8:39 PM But the drug is in control
T: how do i help kids are needing him
8:40 PM me: U told him bout the kids?
Hav u got support from family?
8:41 PM T:yes no joy
not really
me: Well I can hear that you’ve been strong throughout
8:42 PM I believe that there is always hope….
8:43 PM u hav to make sure that the kids dnt see him when he is tripping
or on a high
Does he do it at home?
T: Trying my best he blames me 4 every thing
8:44 PM use 2 he moved out. how long does the high last
8:45 PM me: it depends on the intake
Well its the deception that causes him to blame others for his condition
When the high is finish then he goes into a gutter stage…vary low
8:46 PM Thats where he think again about how he can get the nxt hit again
The truth is that he will never b able to find that high he got on the first hit
He will be chasing after it foreva
T: ok u r doing a great job, wish i can get involved and help others”

Fortunately through our mobile service we were able to support this lady by connecting her with a local organisation in her region for further counselling.

Social Media Teens Is Back For More

kingross — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:58:51 +0000

Michael and Terence started the first Social Media for Teens class for this year (2010). This was more of a refreshing course for some of the teens that attended, as most of them has been with us from last year.

The new teens singed up for a gmail account and will soon be using these accounts to sign up for facebook ,and to be contributors to their teen blog. www.socialmediateens.blogspot.com .This is the start and introduction to the wwworld for these teens and the start of great things.They have so much to contribute and the a huge potential to encourage other teens out there.