CGNet Swara: Voice Portal for Community Media in India
- Communications
- Conflict resolution
- Citizen participation
- Cultural preservation
- Democracy & voting
- Journalism
- Rural
Example: Walk us through a specific example(s) of how this solution makes a difference; include its primary activities.
Marketplace: Who else is addressing the problem outlined here? How does the proposed project differ from these approaches?
Arjun
Venkatraman
CGNet Swara
, DL
, CT
More than 5 years
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
Scaling (the next step will be growing impact on a regional or even global scale)
Operating for 1‐5 years
Shu Choudhary was researching a book in the conflict regions of Central India (Chhattisgarh/Andhra Pradesh/Orissa). While talking to Maoists, tribals and the mainstream population, Shubhranshu realized that the conflict was less because of politics and more because of a gap in communication between people.
Looking for ways to open communication channels, he first explored Community Radio, but realized that restrictive regulations prevented it from being a viable tool for conflict resolution. TV was ruled out, since much of this region barely has electricity. Shu first explored the Internet as an option and started CGNet, an email discussion group that has over 2000 members today. However, this still represented only the areas with Internet penetration. The question was how to get the people not on internet to join the conversation. Shu noticed that even people in the deep interiors carried mobile phones and found ways to use them. On his return to the city, he began talking to technologists about designing a mobile solution. Bill Thies at Microsoft Research and his academic colleagues at MIT stepped up to the task, designed the initial platform and helped Shu set up the pilot.
Since Feb 2010, we have received 58,000+ calls from 7,000+ unique phone numbers and have published about 900 reports. 71% of our calls are from Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, 11% from Jharkhand and Bihar, the rest from Rajasthan, Delhi etc.
Many of these reports have been picked up by the national and international press, some with credit. Moreover, our follow-up network has been proven capable of tracking stories about one individual or issue by multiple sources. E.g. the case of Mr. Pitbasu Bhoi, a labourer who was not paid by the MNREGA scheme was reported by two independent journalists and later picked up by mainstream media
Swara has also helped empower our citizen journalists, by providing training, support and exposure to mainstream media.
We have also carried out training programmes for citizen journalists and moderators, the last one in collaboration with the Indian Ministry of Culture’s Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti.
Over the next 5 years we envision connecting communities across the country using a network of phone and web accessible audio channels, allowing users to create and access audio content from their cellphones, creating a “voice-web”. To this end we plan to develop an open technology platform that can be leveraged by communities everywhere to build their own applications and manage their own content.
We also plan to develop a partnership and training program to get communities started with the platform and how to use it to spark and sustain follow up action on issues raised by the community.
Expand reach by starting 3 regional chanels with training for users and moderators in partnership with like-minded organizations
Set up channels with independent moderators in Jharkhand, Orissa and MP
Set up partnerships with organizations such as GramVani to share content and resources
Host 3 citizen journalism workshops to train contributors, one for each channel
Design & standardize technology/proceses that comunities can use to conect to a netwrk of linkd voice chanels that share content
Work in collaboration with GramVani and others to merge features and design an open, community supported, technology platform
Work with grassroots partners, citizen journalists and activists to develop a training program for citizen journalists, moderato
Raise funds to provide running costs and training and technology support for communities for free or at subsidized rates
1,001 - 10,000
More than 10,000
Undefined
1.Scaling up moderation: Moderation requires time and commitment, often difficult to sustain at no cost. Moderators have to verify news reports with the community and this requires training. We plan to distribute the task by having separate channels per language, each with a paid moderator. To sustain this, communities could eventually contribute to support the moderator.
2. Call costs: To popularize the service, we began calling users back after they leave a missed call. We are reducing this cost by setting up efficient call routing and encouraging users who can afford it to pay for their own calls.
We envision an upsurge in the number of people in India with access to the Internet and that media will evolve to this new consumer model. The primary mode of information consumption and exchange will be the mobile phone. By being well connected to the community at the forefront of the adoption curve in rural and semi-urban India, we feel that we are uniquely positioned to create the maximum impact
Given that smartphone penetration in rural India is set to shoot up, with companies like Micromax and Lava bringing out feature and smartphones at mass market prices. Irrespective of whether voice gains traction, we will be targeting that wave early on to find other applications for the same platform.
By making the project open source, we are ensuring that innovation will continue from the community regardless of our success
We are currently grant and donation funded. However, in the long term, we see a possibility of a revenue stream from a hosting service model, where in communities interested in running an audio platform will be able to sign up for an account and manage their own content from an administration interface. We could also supplement this revenue stream by providing paid training programs in citizen journalism and audio content management. A tertiary revenue stream could be advertising and content syndication, where in mainstream media could sponsor some citizen journalists in an area that they are interested in.
Our core funding is through the Knight International Journalism Felowship Program, managed by the International Center for Journalists. We aditionaly work with other organizations at a program level basis, e.g. Ministry of Culture’s Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti recently hosted one training program with us and we have another lined up at the end of September with another agency
We also have many grasroots partners including Sitara and Prasoon. Our grasroots partners help mobilize citizen journalists and folow up on isues raised by the comunity.
We invite people with a passion for empowering communities through technology to work with us, particularly individuals and organizations interested in partnering with us on technology, to develop new features for the platform, multilingual people who speak at least one language from the region to moderate and translate messages and finally people interested in following up on messages in action.
Investment, Human resources or talent, Marketing or media, Research or information, Collaboration or networking, Pro-bono help (legal, financial, etc.), Innovation or ideas, Mentorship.
Human resources or talent, Research or information, Collaboration or networking, Innovation or ideas, Mentorship.
CGNet Swara: Call 08041137280 and speak to the world in your own voice, from wherever you are, using tools you already have.
Comments
Thank you for your participation in AFI Growth Prize Competition. We have a key question for you: What is your strategy for scaling-up and replicating this service? What is your plan for building a financial base to sustain this growth?
Please post your response as comment here before Dec 15, 2012, to be considered for final evaluation for this competition.
Hello Arjun,
I think this is a great idea and congrats on your success with implementation so far! I was curious if voice calls are being stored somewhere and if there is a cost associated with storing all this data? Can you talk a little about how you leverage all this data to help make an impact?
Ravi
This is a great idea! As a non-profit with similar goals, we are definitely looking at using SMS as a form of communication to reach the masses. Could you tell us a little more about the costs associated with setting up the infrastructure?
It's not expensive to get this going. For the price of a laptop (5000-7000 for a second hand or free if you can get a donation), a GSM gateway (~7000 INR) and some open source software (Free) you can get up and running. Then its a question of what bells and whistles you want to add
Thanks. Is this two way communication or just outgoing?
It's two way..."Press one to record...press two to listen" You can give the service a whirl by calling 08041137282. The number does respond and call you back if you leave a missed call, but we request people who can afford the call to ignore the message at the beginning and call through to the options.
CGNet represents a voice of the people really don't have voice today. Frequently their voice is subdued by middleman, politicians, and society who refuses to look at balanced development for all. Hats off to CGNet that they are exemplary of most needed voice. I would like to review cost model and would love to further scale by reducing cost of implementation for millions of groups around the world. We need more research and development from industry and reduced telecom cost from telecom providers in developing countries. As soon as we have we will start to see participatory democracies around the world.