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Question Box
Localização
Women are disproportionately illiterate. Question Box is pioneering grassroots live hotlines, bringing local expert advice and Internet access to the village and slum level - live, in their local language. Question Boxes are public wireless technology callboxes connecting villagers to a live person who looks their questions up on their behalf. We also teach organizations to run simple hotlines.
Sobre Você
Seção 1: Sobre Você
Seção 2: Sobre a Sua Organização
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Sim
Nome da Organização
Open Mind Company
Página da organização na internet
Telefone da organização
(301) 580-6601
Endereço da organização
1158 26th Street Suite 267, Santa Monica, CA 90403
País da organização
Estados Unidos
Sua organização é
OSCIP/ONG
How long has this organization been operating?
Entre 1 e 5 anos
As informações que você fornecer aqui serão usadas para preencher todas as partes do seu perfil deixadas em branco, como interesses, informação da organização e website. Nenhuma informação do contato será tornada público. Por favor, desmarque aqui se você não deseja que isso aconteça..
Sua ideia
Dê um nome ao seu projeto
Question Box
Describe Your Idea
Women are disproportionately illiterate. Question Box is pioneering grassroots live hotlines, bringing local expert advice and Internet access to the village and slum level - live, in their local language. Question Boxes are public wireless technology callboxes connecting villagers to a live person who looks their questions up on their behalf. We also teach organizations to run simple hotlines.
Country your work focuses on
Índia, MM
INOVAÇÃO
What makes your idea unique?
To our knowledge, we are the only innovation like this in the world, both in terms of the core concept, and in terms of the fact that our mission is to train other organizations to replicate and advance the Question Box approach. No one else is offering the tools and knowledge to set up do-it-yourself information hotlines. There is nothing like it available Open Source. We are the creators of the Question Box, which is unique in the world. Besides being the only group offering the tools to replicate Question Box, we are the only organization that we have encountered that offers a broad spectrum of information to people in the developing world, live & in their own language.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Não
Impacto
Temas relacionados à inscrição
Tell us about the social impact of your innovation. Please include both numbers and stories as evidence of this impact
Question Box meets the needs of people in the developing world who lack access to information. For instance, we have helped: isolated farmers whose crops were dying of a virus; school children with homework; & mothers whose children were very ill. We have been incubating the Question Box set of tools and approaches on two continents for 3 years. During this period, we have piloted in 7 Indian villages and in 2 Ugandan districts, answering thousands of questions.
In much of the developing world, women are more likely to be illiterate and hence cut off from information. Villagers and slum dwellers can simply walk up to a Question Box at their local store or school and get answers they need and want now. Before, there were very few options – Internet access is scarce; SMS and recorded voice menus require new skills; mobile phones need someone specific to call. With Question Box, users do not have to be literate; they can listen and speak to get information. Our system helps local organizations make their expertise available to users all day long, and not just on the days when a field agent comes by to visit. Question Box sometimes makes all the difference - it has already saved lives & helped farmers survive tough conditions.
Question Box also helps service organizations that have expertise but lack the resources to be always available to their constituents. With our system, these groups can establish a point of contact to their offices and invite conversations with the people they serve. For example, we are in discussion with an organization teaching nutrition and childcare to women in slums. Question Boxes can keep the conversation open and two-way, even though women may not have their own phones.
For women, we are developing a special Question Box booth. It is partially enclosed, and equipped with benches, allowing for privacy as well as small group gatherings. This allows the Question Box to serve as a women’s community space in places where women often lack covered public spaces.
Problem: Describe the primary problem(s) that your innovation is addressing
Many in the developing world are missing out on the digital revolution, particularly those over 30 years old. 1 billion adults are illiterate. Two thirds of these are women. Nearly 4 billion people have never been online. Due to lack of electricity, computers, computer educators, Internet connections and local-language content, many of these 4 billion never will experience the Internet. Smart phones will fill some of this gap, but for the vast majority, their price, complexity, and lack of local content will make them unattainable.
As such, much of the developing world relies on word of mouth, newspaper, radio and television for their information. These systems are not optimal when handling specialized expert information, such as agriculture assistance; private, sensitive information, such as HIV; nor rapidly-changing data, such as train times, examination scores, or produce prices. As such, people around the world make their best guess, unsupported by external information sources.
In parallel, there are countless community organizations that have informational expertise but lack the resources to be readily available to their constituents. These include hospitals, agricultural aid groups, women’s organizations, education groups, etc. Currently, contact with constituents usually requires either a field worker to circulate and travel amongst the target population, engaging with people one at a time, or else requires the population to seek out and come to the place of work of the organization. Both of these methods are inefficient from an information exchange perspective, and makes ongoing relationship more difficult.
Actions: Describe the steps that you are taking to make your innovation a success. What might prevent that success?
Our team has developed 5 iterations of our Question Box hardware, moving from a landline model to a mobile phone model, then to optional solar power, & now to a customized circuit board and microprocessor.
We have developed and field-tested our own backend software, Open Question. Open Question allows for the integration of local databases, making local searches fast in places where the Internet connection is slow or erratic.
Our team is comprised of passionate, talented people. It includes a suite of Ugandan software programmers; a fully operational team in Pune, India that includes hardware engineers, program managers, MBAs, and academics; top web developers; as well as a skilled, enthusiastic team of program assistants, MBAs, and technical advisors. More than a dozen community organizations across the social services sector are ready to pilot Question Box in their projects, and we receive inquiries almost every day from additional organizations.
In a way, Question Box is a new media form, delivering information in a very tailored and time-sensitive manner. As with newspapers, radio, or television, there is always the risk that the content could be skewed, incomplete, or incorrect, driven by the incompetence or bias of those providing it. However, we think that the benefit of making available a new form of information channel outweighs the risks.
Results: Describe the expected results of these actions over the next three years. Please address each year separately, if possible
Open Mind – Question Box Three-Year Goals:
Year 1: Integrate Offerings, Pilot 3rd-Party Deployments
- Stabilize & pilot locally Question Box v.5 – microprocessor-driven
- Produce standardized partner operational and technical handbook
- 12 partner organizations pilot customized Question Box systems across India; at least 4 are women’s organizations
-Open Question Open Source software customized for partners on request; ongoing technical & implementation support provided
-Open Question in the Cloud – online data-management software. Organizations will have choice to store their data, web sources and FAQs on our servers.
Year 2: Replicate, Replicate, Replicate
- Incubate & locally deploy Question Box v.6, adding display monitors, RSS feeds, text-to-speech playback of common information, handsets and private booth options
-Continued improvement of Open Question through Open Source community
-Establishment of programmer and user forums
-50 partner organizations set-up with Question Box systems and supported on as-needed basis. At least 15 women’s organizations. Larger and international partners now supported.
-Standardized menu of Question Box systems now available on website. Both a “self-serve” free option and a “consulting &/or purchase QB hardware” version available.
Year 3: Large-Scale Partnerships; Local Center of Excellence
-3 significant partnerships with government, INGOs, and/or UN organizations
-More Question Box sites founded without our help than with our help – sustainable momentum
-200 partner organizations using Open Question in the Cloud to host their data. At least 50 women’s organizations.
-Question Box center of excellence certified in Sub-Saharan Africa – local group capable of providing locally-built Question Box systems and teaching best practice to local organizations
How many people will your project serve annually?
> 10.000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Less than $50
Does your innovation seek to have an impact on public policy?
Não
If your innovation seeks to impact public policy, how?
Approximately 150 words left (1200 characters).
SUSTENTABILIDADE
Em que estágio está seu projeto?
Em execução entre 1 e 5 anos
Does your organization have a board of directors or an advisory board?
Sim
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Sim
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with businesses?
Sim
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with government?
Não
Please tell us more about how partnerships could be critical to the success of your innovation
In terms of the individual Question Box services, sustainability rests in the organizations that are implementing. This in essence diversifies our bets; some organizations will succeed wildly with Question Box, while others may go out of operation. By relying on an external ecosystem, we are ensuring that Question Box systems survive with or without us.
Similarly, by making the software open source and the hardware simple, we have encouraged sustainability. Organizations are free to download, modify, and borrow our Open Source innovations. It is our objective that organizations increasingly establish Question Box systems independently. Once the Question Box platform is fully developed over the next three years, Question Box’s success will be semi-independent of Open Mind, and more dependent on our partners using and innovating our Question Box system.
We would like to learn more about how your initiative is financially supported. Please explain your business plan/revenue model
From our survey of analogous organizations, we predict at maturity that Open Mind will be sustained by three sources. We expect support to be one-third foundation partners; one-third implementation contracts; and one-third implementation partner consultation fees. We are confident that Open Mind - Question Box can continuously attract sufficient support and partners over the long term.
A História
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
(From Rose Shuman) I have always been interested in tools that let people make their own choices. I wanted to bring some of the open-ended power of the Internet to people who won’t get online anytime soon; perhaps not in their lifetime. Mobile phones have exploded across the world. However, the Internet is not spreading in the developing world for various reasons – the low literacy rates in adults and beyond that, language barriers, lack of constant electricity, difficultly in retaining people who are computer literate, dust and weather, lack of Internet connection, etc. To reach people you need to use the concept of the mobile phone, because technologically, it’s really just TV, radio, and mobile voice for much of the developing world, and definitely for women. Question Box was designed for people who are used to phones, placing a heavy emphasis on comfort of users. We & our partners run the systems, do all of the work, and they just need to call in and get their critical answers. There’s no point in scaring people with technology, when the point is to be a tool of service.
Tell us about the person—the social innovator—behind this idea.
Rose Shuman is Founder & CEO of Open Mind – Question Box.
“I spent time every year for several years going to villages and observing. I wanted to understand the reality before trying to change it. It was difficult. I got sick, actually malnourished, while living in an orphanage in Tamil Nadu. Gunmen chased me in Honduras. In northern Uganda, I sat with refugees who lived 20 years in a camp, forbidden to farm or work.
The hard answers require slow digging, and a lot of humility. We make our best attempts to reshape a world that was in place long before we came along. To do it right, we need to do the work, not the people our initiatives are designed to help. Sometimes, it’s easy to confuse the ends and means when technology is concerned. But it is our job to help people, with interventions that make them feel empowered.”
Rose also consults on social enterprise and business development in the developing world. Previously, she was Head of Marketing for Adlens Ltd, an Oxford, UK social enterprise startup, and Senior Programme Manager for Adaptive Eyewear, a nonprofit dedicated to correcting vision in the developing world. Prior, Rose was Corporate and Foundation Relations Manager at Direct Relief International. She has lived and worked in villages in Nicaragua, India, Honduras, and Uganda. Rose holds a BA and Masters from Brown University in International Development, as well as a BA in Visual Arts. Rose is a TEDIndia Fellow and the only non-Indian DASRA–Social Impact Fellow.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Personal contact at Changemakers
If through another source, please provide the information
ICRW
Does your project address any of the following barriers to women’s technology access and use?
Women’s time poverty, Social norms, Economic or institutional constraints, Women’s lack of involvement in the technology development process.
If you checked any of the boxes above, please explain how.
Women face significant challenges in our targeted communities which can be alleviated by the Question Box. As stated previously, a vast majority of the world’s illiterate population are women. Many of these women face social stigma over seeking information, especially about sensitive issues. Our goal is to contribute toward a fundamental shift in how information is made accessible to women. How women take advantage of this information is directed by them. They choose what they want to know, and when they want to know it, rather than someone else deciding what is important for them. It turns usual development dynamics on its head, allowing the beneficiaries to lead.
Question Box also greatly reduces the cost, and increases the impact and reach of women’s organizations. Right now, getting to the field is generally expensive. Transit time, petrol costs, and the limitations of being one person who can only be in one place at one time limits efficiency. Question Box extends that relationship once the field visit is over. When an issue is time-sensitive, that can be critically important.
Does your project involve women in one or more of the following stages of the technology lifecycle? Identification of the problem the technology will solve:
Technology design, Market research, Technology introduction, Technology training, Technology supply and distribution, Creation and maintenance of market linkages for women's economic outputs, Assessment and evaluation.
If you checked any of the boxes above, please explain how you will ensure women’s involvement in each relevant phase of the technology lifecycle.
Our organization was founded and is led by a woman; female team members and interns, as well as the CEO herself, are heavily involved in the Question Box technology design, market research, technology introduction and training, and assessment of the success of the project. Extensive partnerships with women’s organizations, as well as with other organizations run by women, ensure that the supply and distribution of the Question Box involves women, and market linkages are created for women’s economic outputs.
If women are a focus of your project, how did this focus evolve?
The project was adapted to focus on women as a response to this challenge..
Which type of women will your project reach directly?
Rural, Peri-urban, Urban, Low income, Middle income, High income.
In what ways does your project team/leadership involve women?
It is led by a woman/women., The core project team includes women., The core project team includes women from developing countries..
Has your organization formed any new partnerships in response to this challenge? If so, with what type/s of organization/s?
Has your project leadership had prior experience with the following?
Working with women, Working with technologies, Working on innovation.
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 | rshuman said: Hi Sarah, Thanks for your comment. Of course - we currently use female Operators whenever we can, in order to ensure that all callers ... about this Competition Entry. - 688 dias atrás leia mais > |
| rshuman said: Hi Sarah, Thanks for your comment. Of course - we currently use female Operators whenever we can, in order to ensure that all callers ... about this Competition Entry. - 688 dias atrás leia mais > |
| rshuman said: Hi Sarah, Thanks for your comment. Of course - we currently use female Operators whenever we can, in order to ensure that all callers ... about this Competition Entry. - 688 dias atrás leia mais > |
| Sarah Mintz said: Hi Rose - I love this entry. Question Box is a great idea, and I especially like the idea of the womens' booth. Just wondering, is it ... about this Competition Entry. - 689 dias atrás leia mais > |
| rshuman updated this Competition Entry. - 706 dias atrás |
| rshuman enviou esta idéia. - 706 dias atrás |
