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Why Social Services should go Mobile

Marlon — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:24:59 +0000

It has been one month since we’ve re-launched our Angel support service a partnership between Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) and MXit. Since then the service had over a 100,000 subscribers with just over 47,000 regular subscribers. Organisations who are working with youth should consider the use of Mobile phones as part of their programmes and below you will find reasons why:

- Most of the users of the service is youth (82% aged 25 and younger)
- Our LIVE mobile counselling service on average receives 200 queries per hour with approximately 92% being identified as youth.
- Most youth request further support, but prefer having it via the Mobile medium. Even when we recommend centres to attend or websites to visit they want a solution that they can access via their mobile phone.
- We’ve developed Mobile virtual support sessions with experts or professional counsellors and achieve 100% referral rate compared to 26% when referral is telephonic and/or face-to-face.
- Most youth are expert mobile phone users and would be able to transfer relevant information in required formats (text, audio, video, images)
- Youth tend to promote mobile services faster and easier to their friends/buddies/contacts via their mobile phones.
- The average number of contacts/buddies/friends youth will actively chat to daily is 19 (based on mobile interviews with LIVE conversations). Most youth would have more than 50 contacts/buddies/friends in their Mobile Instant Messenger (MXit).

As we are continuously trying to improve our Social services through the use of mobile phones, it is advisable for organisations working in this space to start considering the more active use of mobile phones.

RLabs Vision and Mission Statements

Marlon — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 18:56:11 +0000

Last week the RLabs team went on a day retreat to plan for the future as well as looking at the Vision and Mission of this vibrant and growing movement. Below is the Vision and Mission of the Reconstructed Living Lab that captures the heart of what we stand for:

Vision:
To impact, empower and reconstruct local and global communities through innovation

Mission:
- To create an interaction space for collaborative design, creation, dissemination and application of knowledge
- To develop and empower champions in communities through innovation
- To give hope and make a difference
- To be leaders in innovation continuously adding value

JamiiX: Our baby is growing up

Marlon — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 20:20:10 +0000

Tonight was one of the most amazing experiences we’ve had in RLabs where we saw our little baby JamiiX growing up and taking its first step. JamiiX is a web-based platform that has been incubated in RLabs for almost 3 years and having the opportunity to make it public was a memorable one. Not only did we see the blood, sweat and tears of almost 3 years culminating into one amazing moment last night, but we also saw thousands of lives being changed and touched by the use of the JamiiX technology.

The launch dinner last night was also the opportunity to share with many individuals who have journeyed with RLabs and celebrating our first innovation that was created on the Cape Flats that will be exported as a global product and brand. It was also a good time just to reflect where we’ve journeyed from and we are looking forward to see JamiiX being used to break new barriers in Conversation Management on Social Networks and Instant Messengers. Our baby is really growing up and we excited to see it expand globally.

Source: Marlon Parker

Exciting Week awaiting RLabs

admin — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 19:22:05 +0000

This coming week is one with so many exciting things happening at RLabs. Expecting many new innovative events happening this week:
- Monday the Social Media Factory will be doing training with a national non-profit SCAT implementing their Social Media Strategy.
- Tuesday the team will be running a Social Media training session for Small Businesses as well as the long awaited launch of JamiiX one the first commercial products incubated in RLabs. Read story here.
- Wednesday is the arrival of our partners from Namibia who will be spending two days with us.
- Thursday hosting our Namibia partners with the possibility of launch a RLabs in Namibia.
- Friday is Mom 2.0 training and ofcourse a World Cup opening event at RLabs
- Saturday is the Mobile Journalism programme in collaboration with Cape Community Newspapers.

With such a packed week ahead, the RLabs team is looking forward to new partnerships and exploring further how we will use innovation and technology to Reconstruct communities.

Social Media in Khayelitsha with our partners Silulo

admin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 22:24:25 +0000

Today the RLabs team was at Silulo Ulutho Technologies out in Khayelitsha (Cape Town’s largest township). The RLabs team was divided into two groups to co-facilitate with the Silulo Ulutho Technologies staff at two of their training centres. This was the follow-up of last week’s session.

The trainers did their first Socail Media session with their clients today (35 people per session). The sessions focused various Social Media activities such as blogging, social networks and micro-blogging. The Silulo staff did exceptionally well with the various training sessions and it seems that they are all good to go to do the training in Khayelitsha in partnership with Rlabs to ensure the Reconstruction of Communities. Well done to the RLabs team.

Source; Inspired by Craig “King” Ross

Social Media Surgery with iGeek

admin — Mon, 31 May 2010 21:38:24 +0000

Last week Saturday the RLabs team had the privilege of hosting Gerhard Potgieter from iGeek fame who workshopped monetizing your blog. The Social Media Surgery took a slightly different structure to our last one as it was more focussed on developing the team to develop a sustainable Social Media model for Communities in Tension. Some of the key points during Gerhard’s talk were:

1. focus you blog (niche)
2. be passionate about your subject
3. be obsessed about your topic
4. build a following
5. when you combine all of these you will build a following easily

Over the next few weeks the team will be training a number of community members on how they can maximise the use of their blogs in a self-sustainable way.

RLabs training trainers in Khayelitsha

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:15:19 +0000

Below is an extract from Clinton Liederman’s post who is one of the RLabs trainers at Khayelitsha:

Today team RLabs were out once again doing what they do best, “Reconstructing Communities through Innovation.” The team went out to Khayelitsha at Silulo Ulutho Technologies doing Social Media training with their facilitators. The topics covered on Day 1 are listed below:

* Introduction to Social Media by Marlon Parker
* Blogging for Trainers by Craig Ross
* Facebook for Trainers by Clive-Marcus Evertse

Mom3.0 sharing experience

admin — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:48:48 +0000

Above one of our Mom3.0 participants Gail Gelderbloem shares her experiences with the RLabs team and what she enjoys most of her Cafe sessions at RLabs.

Kujali wins at IST Africa Conference

admin — Sun, 23 May 2010 19:45:45 +0000

After a very productive week at the conference with the Socio-Tech team presenting 3 papers and participating in the e-Health Forum, more exciting news were to follow at the end of one of Africa’s leading Technology Conferences. The SAFIPA sponsored Kujali (means “Care” in Swahili) stand won the “Best Demonstration” award at this leading conference. It was also one of the few selected projects that were demonstrated to the Minister of the Department of Science and Technology, Minister Naledi Pandor (See Image Above). The interest by the minister was very overwhelming and the potential for other areas other than just home-based healthcare was sugguested to be explored.

Throughout the conference the Kujali stand were buzzing with participants of IST Africa who wanted to explore the possibilities of the Home-base Healthcare innovation in various developing contexts. Congratulations and well done to all of the team who attended the conference and those who were working at the Hub taking care of things behind the scenes.

Source: Technology for Community Empowerment

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