Perspectives from the MamaBits Team

Preparations for the Ushahidi .ke Evaluation launch are running full speed ahead. Jennifer Chan, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and I visited Rukia Sebit and Tobias Ouma of MamaBits, the coordinators of Building Bridges deployment. Building Bridges is a project to encourage people to encourage, map and connect people working on peace initiatives in Kenya. Their work was one of the featured deployments for the evaluation.

Highlights:

• OUTREACH: Communication targeting of audiences differed for rural and urban areas and diverse age groups. For example, rural areas were reached by radio rather than newspaper. However, the radio programs were sometimes aired in different vernacular language to accommodate all listeners. The impact was great, even neighbouring countries such as Uganda received the information from the website and created their profile online. This required more intensive report verification based on location. The power of mobile in .ke is amazing. Telco providers like Safaricom will allow short codes to accompany hash-tags which will redirect to a website, like Building Bridges. The campaign was successful due to the SMS program and pervasive use in .ke.