January is a liminal month for most of us. We stand straddling the calendar, looking back to wrap up the year that's closed while setting our gaze toward the fresh, young year before us. Casting our minds in both directions, we get a chance to build bridges: between the work we've completed and the work we've yet to do.

The successes NetHope has achieved in 2014 confirm our shared commitment to the idea that collaboration between leading NGOs and the technology sector to improve our world through collective impact yields results. Whether it’s training young adults in IT skills or responding to the Ebola outbreak or sharing best practices to improve ICT usage, NetHope and its members remain convinced that together we are stronger, more impactful, and more capable of achieving our respective missions.

With that idea as our anchor, we embraced a number of exciting changes in 2014. Working closely with our members and supporters, we reflected on NetHope’s past and set a course for our future. We added new members to our community, and new staff to our team. We turn to 2015 invigorated and poised to seize new opportunities.

But before we pivot fully toward the challenges of a new year, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the important NetHope highlights from 2014.

NetHope's Ebola Response

Working closely with our member NGOs, the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), the Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC), and other responding organizations, NetHope has helped enable an effective and efficient response to the crisis. A central focus of our work has been to work with local partners to enhance and augment the strained ICT infrastructure in the region. Additionally, we have supported rapid deployment of a variety of communication solutions as an interim step to support immediate high-priority needs of response organizations and local communities, and to help on-the-ground responders better coordinate their work, have access to quality data, and improve their respective efforts.

The commitment and generosity we saw from donors this year was simply remarkable. The Ebola outbreak is a unique crisis – evolving, ongoing, transnational and highly complex – and these realities have made effective response even more challenging. Organizations like The Patterson Foundation and the Paul Allen Family Foundation have been catalytic in elevating the urgency of the emergency and providing generous support at a critical time. Leading technology companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Cisco, and many others have generously provided contributions and expertise to support NetHope, our member NGOs, and other response organizations working in West Africa. Working quickly and in response to most immediate needs, NetHope was able to deploy critically-needed communications materiel and provide much-needed financial support to member organizations in a matter of weeks. Read more >>

NetHope Academy Trains 1000 Youth in IT skills

Earlier this year, the NetHope Academy completed a tremendous milestone: training and employing 1000 IT interns in Latin America and Africa. In doing so, we successfully completed our 2011 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) commitment in three years. Through the NetHope Academy program, NetHope in partnership with Accenture, Accenture Foundation, Cisco, Voila Foundation, and Microsoft have provided IT vocational courses and coordinated in-country six month internship opportunities for youth in emerging markets. The training has created new employment possibilities for graduates and provided much needed technical support in remote parts of the world. Academy Graduates can be found in Haiti, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Rwanda, and India. The program will launch in Egypt in January 2015. Read more >>

Digital Payment Toolkit

Helping members adopt new technologies and approaches is a key benefit of our work, and last summer, NetHope launched a new toolkit focused on assisting non-governmental relief and development organizations in making the transition from cash to electronic payments. “Making the Journey from Cash to Electronic Payments” was created in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Digital Development Team and provides a base from which organizations can build and accelerate their use of e-payments in programs and operations. It aggregates lessons learned and illustrative examples and experiences from both early champions of the movement as well as others who have only recently embarked on the journey. Read more >>

NetHope Solutions Center Refresh

Since the inception of the NetHope Solutions Center, we've strived to make it a comprehensive go-to resource for development organizations to explore technology’s impact in development work. The Solutions Center has focused on building a knowledge base of blogs, case studies, and resources to help inform the development community of how technology can be leveraged for their work. The Solutions Center has grown into a go-to resource across the international development and conservation sector. This winter we unveiled a new look and feel for the site, featuring an improved user experience, more robust communities, and simplified ways to find in-depth content that best matches your interests. Visit the New Solutions Center >>

Visa Innovations Grant Recipients

For the second year in a row, the Visa Innovation Grant program, administered by NetHope, awarded $500,000 in funding to development organizations pushing the boundaries around the innovative use of digital payments in emerging markets. This year two $250,000 grants were awarded to Naya Jeevan and World Vision for projects in Mexico and Tanzania. Both organizations will support Visa's efforts to advance financial inclusion around the globe. Read more >>

Women and the Web

In partnership with USAID, Intel, World Pulse, World Vision, UN Women, and Women in Technology Nigeria, NetHope announced the creation of the Women and the Web Alliance at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit at the White House in August 2014. The alliance will seek to close the Internet gender gap by bringing more than 600,000 young women online in Kenya and Nigeria in the next three years. Through the combined efforts of Alliance partners, the Alliance will introduce Kenyan and Nigerian young women to the Internet and engage them in using it as a tool for social and economic empowerment. Alliance activities will include digital literacy training, relevant curated content, policy work, and online social networks. Read more >>

New NetHope Members in 2014

In 2014, NetHope membership expanded to 42 members. New members added include Ipas, Samaritan's Purse, Mercy Ships, Medical Teams International, and Management Science for Health. Please join us in welcoming our new members! View our full membership >>

New NetHope Board Members in 2014

As a membership organization, the leadership of our organization depends on the active, engaged and attentive participation of the organizations we serve. A key mechanism for this is our Board of Directors, comprised of both members and key stakeholders, which works tirelessly to support the direction, health and vitality of NetHope. Here, too, this year we were fortunate to have strong interest and commitment: the membership elected five new members to the Board, including David Goodman, CIO, International Rescue Committee; Romanus Berg, CIO, Ashoka; Jim Daniel, COO, Oxfam America; Gail Hyde, CIO, Habitat for Humanity; and Laura Frigenti, VP of global development practice, InterAction. We also welcomed a new Chairman of the Board, Vincent Richardson, CIO of Concern International.

NetHope Member Global Summit 2014

A highlight for our members every year, our Annual NetHope Member Global Summit 2014 was a record-setting event this year, drawing more attendees and sponsors than ever. With the warm hospitality of Cisco Systems, over 200 attendees joined us at the company’s headquarters for a busy and productive week. Driven by member interest, 30 breakouts, 8 member showcases, 15 plenary sessions, and 5 workshops provided excellent opportunities for collaboration, sharing, and learning. In addition to these formal working sessions, the birds-of-a-feather dinners, networking receptions, and the gala plenary dinner kept everyone entertained and provided great opportunities for rich networking with familiar – and new – colleagues and friends. Read more >>

NetHope is what we make it, and once again, you have made a tremendous year of impact and growth possible. All of us here at NetHope are grateful for your continued support so that we can grow our collective impact. Thank you.

We invite you to stay engaged with us throughout the year by donating, becoming an official sponsor and joining our community on Twitter and Facebook.

Innovation -- as a term, if not as an idea -- might have reached ironic status. The buzzword for disruptive, creative newness now teeters on the brink of sounding more tired than energetic, more obligatory than surprising.

But that doesn't mean the idea is wearing out along with the word. In a recent survey of CIOs, "Creating an Innovative Culture" remained the top goal when strategy planning for the new year. Innovation as a process is as valuable as its ever been. And finding out how to question long-standing practices, discover improved solutions to problems, and generate the kinds of ideas that will benefit our teams and organizations is still our greatest challenge.

Scott Wayne, founder of the The Frontier Project, suggests there's a simple reason we struggle to develop innovative companies: We don't often shape our personal environments to stimulate innovative thinking.

"Every day we wake up at the same time, stop at the same coffee shop, drive the same route to work, and read the same newspaper. And then we expect that we'll be able to sit in a brainstorming session and see new angles, connect dots in new ways."

But innovative mindsets can't be easily turned on and off. "If we're going to build organizations that have the capacity to be innovative," Wayne says, "we'll have to start by building each of our personal practices of innovation first."

So here's a place to start: a checklist for developing your personal discipline of innovation. Challenging you to diversify your inputs, increase your exposure to difference, and drop old routines in favor of new experiences, it's a first step on the road to creating the environment where innovative thinking has a chance to thrive.

The Personal Discipline of Innovation Checklist:

1. Take a walk each day for a week. Pay attention to your surroundings. Listen.

2. Give up eating meat for one day each week for a month.

3. Read a book that provides a perspective on a political philosophy you do not ascribe to.

4. See a live performance you wouldn't normally choose to see. Talk to a fellow audience member about why they like the genre.

5. Read a holy book from another religion.

6. Sit quietly for 10 minutes each day. Alone. No noise. Breathe.

7. Eat an ethnic cuisine you've never tried before. Pay attention to the spices. The way the food is served. The eating rituals.

8. Take a different route home from work every day for a week.

9. Play a game. Chess, checkers, spades, Jenga, Scattergories. Your choice. Just play.

10. Invite someone from a different department to lunch and pick their brains about something you're working on. Incorporate their perspective.

11. Volunteer for a day in your community. Reflect on what you're learning while you give back.

12. Turn off your TV for one full week.

Like this? Find more practical tools for thinking differently, communicating more dynamically, and leading change more effectively by attending NetHope's Leadership Academy courses, facilitated by The Frontier Project. Contact Tara for more information: tara.donahue@nethope.org

1. Mobile Money

The Brief: Square. Apple Pay. Simple. All recent developments of the online and smartphone payment wave that had everyone rushing to their financial institutions to find out how they can utilize these new services. However, they’re not new; some countries have been using mobile payments for years, and the ones that have might surprise you.

NetHope Take: While mobile payments are a relatively new discovery in the United States, in some areas of the world, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile payment accounts actually outnumber brick and mortar bank accounts. In fact, Kenya has been using mobile money provider, M-Pesa, for over seven years.

M-Pesa, “M” for mobile and “pesa” being the Swahili word for money, is a mobile payment service in Kenya, which allows Kenyans to send money via a text message. In neighboring countries, such as Tanzania, as well as other developing countries, you’ll also find that the basic mobile phone is becoming the foundation for a more integrated and developed financial system through the use of USSD (Unstructed Supplementary Service Data), a data protocol that takes advantage of the text features on mobile networks.

So how did this come about? Landline structures are actually more complex and costly to build versus their mobile phone infrastructure counterparts, leading developing countries to skip the whole traditional landline phase. Furthermore, most citizens of developing countries have never had access to traditional bank accounts, leading them directly to mobile payments accounts in its place.

So how has the mobile payment system increased the livelihood for those using it? Well, for one, it’s created a means for individuals and businesses to exchange goods and services, the foundation of a stable economy. It’s increased payments to governments that allow their citizens to pay using mobile accounts, and it’s also reduced corruption in some governments since officials have reduced contact with the finances. It’s also helped many farmers who have no experience with financial services by auto-enrolling them in a plan for free based on their mobile payment account provider.

As much as the mobile payment system is evolving in developing countries, there are still plenty of obstacles: one being the inability to transfer money across network providers. However, some services are making it easier to do so: Kopo Kopo being one, which allows businesses to easily accept mobile payments and keep track of them online. The Commercial Bank of Africa has also teamed up with M-Pesa, allowing users to move their mobile money into bank accounts and apply for loans.

We face something similar in the United States: different accounts for our iTunes, Google Play, and Kindle, with no way of transferring our balance across accounts. Perhaps there’s a thing or two we can learn from Sub-Saharan Africa about the mobile payment revolution we’ve barely scratched the surface of.

Read more: Quartz, Vox

2. Ebola

The Brief: It's been eradicated from news outlets and has dropped from web search trends, but Ebola is very much still an epidemic in West Africa.

NetHope Take: Turn on CNN and you won’t find breaking news about it. Navigate to the Wall Street Journal or New York Times homepages, and there will be no evidence of it. Turn to NPR or BBC: still nothing. But lack of reporting doesn't mean we should abandon concern.

We are still facing the biggest Ebola epidemic ever, with more than 8,000 deaths and 20,000 cases. And because Ebola is a zoonotic disease (it lives in animals), it will never be eradicated (unless all animals with the virus are completely killed off, a highly unlikely scenario).

So what’s happening and what can we do?

According to the leading Ebola doctors, we’ve passed “peak-Ebola." But there’s still much to do. The three most-affected countries -- Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone -- are still experiencing the transmission of the virus. Liberia had a large drop off in of cases in October and seems to be under control thanks to international intervention. Guinea, on the other hand, sees no upward or downward trend. However, with only a few treatment centers and too few trained health professionals, the outbreak continues to plague the population in Sierra Leone.

The key to decreasing the case count of Ebola is not only an increase in international funding, treatment centers and health professionals, but changing cultural beliefs, behaviors, and norms in the furthest corners of West Africa. The only way to contract the Ebola virus is to have direct contact with body fluids: vomit, blood, sweat, urine, etc. Many cases start when a family member or friend has passed away with the virus and people attempt a traditional burial: washing and burying the body. They do this because they believe if they don’t bury their loved ones properly, their spirits will come back to haunt them. As you can see, it’s very difficult to overcome a cultural norm that would have huge implications on decreasing the Ebola count number.

Communities suffering now are not the only ones who need aid, relief, and supplies. Sites that are prone to contract the virus or those where it's likely to emerge again need appropriate support as well. Dr. Bausch, an associate professor at the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine puts it well: “You can’t put out 98% of a forest fire.”

3. Drones

The Brief: One UAV startup company, Skydio, is using its first round of seed money to build what it thinks will be the defining characteristic of UAVs: its software.

NetHope Take: Despite the FAA still drafting rules and regulations around the operation of UAVs, especially commercial UAVs, many Silicon Valley investors are still putting their eggs in that basket, investing about $95 million into UAV startups in the past two years. Startups aren’t the only ones looking to UAVs as the future; larger companies like Intel are also taking a look at the technology, which was apparent a few weeks ago at CES 2015 when Intel’s CEO, Brian Krzanich, stepped on stage with an obstacle-aware UAV. Investors and larger corporations understand that this piece of technology is redefining the way we transport, deliver and monitor the delivery of goods, and it’s only a matter of time before government and cultural norms catch up with the technology.

One company that’s taken a piece of the Silicon Valley investment pie is Skydio. Former Google Project Wing co-founders and MIT grad students, Adam Bry and Abe Bachrach are out to make UAVs accessible to everyone and anyone with a smartphone through their startup. Rather than investing in the components and hardware that make UAVs, Skydio is working on the software that makes them useful, specifically, making them better at getting around on their own through the use of cameras. Nowadays, most UAVs rely on GPS to get around, but what happens with harder to deter obstacles or when one loses their GPS signal? Skydio strives to fix this.

And while they haven’t created a fool-proof solution, it’s definitely an improvement. With improved and easier piloting, Skydio aims to lower the barriers to entry of piloting a UAV (traditionally done on an RC flight controller with two joysticks). By doing so, not only will anyone be able to see the world from above at a fraction of the cost of a manned aircraft, UAVs can be used in a more extensive range of activities: agriculture, construction and journalism, to name a few.

Piloting not only allows us to see more, it allows us to collect more data. “Vision is going to win the day. It’s an incredibly rich data source, it’s just algorithmically challenging. But computers are getting faster and these algo[rithm]s are coming into place.”

Read more: Wired / The Verge

4. The End of Finger Pricking

Brief: The painful ritual diabetics engage in every day might soon be put to rest with the design of a small wearable patch that extracts and measures blood-sugar levels.

NetHope Take: Diabetes affects nearly 380 million people around the world and results in 150 million deaths a year. The need for better tools that allow for greater ease of use is imperative in the management of an expanding disease. A new invention from a team of nanoengineers at University of California, San Diego, provides a flexible, easy to apply, and inconspicuous patch designed to extract and measure blood-sugar levels. It's a promising step toward noninvasive monitoring of diabetes. About the thickness of a piece of tape, the device consists of a small sensor and patterned electrodes screen-printed on temporary tattoo paper. A mild electrical voltage applied to the skin pulls fluid from the skin, and the sensor, which contains the enzyme specific to glucose, measures the sugar concentration.

This isn't the first noninvasive glucose sensor. In 2002, Cygnus introduced an FDA-approved wristband, dubbed the GlucoWatch, that used a similar process as the UCSD device. But the product was plagued by problems: It didn't eliminate finger-pricking altogether—users still had to calibrate the device with a standard test strip—and most people reported skin irritation. Joseph Wang, one of the authors of the study and the chair of the school's Center for Wearable Sensors, says that the tattoo uses a lower current than the GlucoWatch and therefore doesn't cause discomfort.

There's still more work to be done to make the device suitable for continuous use, he says, and his department is also developing an instrument to display the glucose reading to users, as well as send that information to the patient's doctor in real time via Bluetooth. Once the concept is optimized, it could be a much cheaper, more convenient alternative to glucose strips, which average more than a dollar each. And removing such cost and comfort barriers could encourage millions of diabetics to comply with the treatment they need.

Read more: Bloomberg BusinessWeek

5. Internet in Space

The Brief: Various programs are now in the early stages of planning the launches of a vast network of communication satellites to orbit earth with two goals: 1) speed up the general flow of data on the Internet and 2) deliver high-speed, low-cost Internet services to the three billion-plus people who still have poor access to the Web.

Nethope Take: The Space Internet is the most ambitious move to date and makes the grandest promises. Hundreds of satellites would orbit about 750 miles above earth, much closer than traditional communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit at altitudes of up to 22,000 miles. The lower satellites would make for a speedier Internet service, with less distance for electromagnetic signals to travel. The lag in current satellite systems makes applications such as Skype, online gaming, and other cloud-based services tough to use.

Internet data packets going from, say, Los Angeles to Johannesburg would no longer have to go through dozens of routers and terrestrial networks. Instead, the packets would go to space, bouncing from satellite to satellite until they reach the one nearest their destination, then return to an antenna on earth.

Two recent ventures promise to drive these experiments forward--and swiftly. Elon Musk of Tesla just launched his effort. And Greg Wyler of OneWeb has a similar idea, and has the support of Richard Branson. Both are well-funded, and there's talk of the two pairing up to do the work in tandem. "The speed of light is 40 percent faster in the vacuum of space than it is for fiber,” Musk says. “The long-term potential is to be the primary means of long-distance Internet traffic and to serve people in sparsely populated areas.”

Read more: WSJ. Businessweek.

Internet: A Game Changer In The Fight Against Ebola

Have you ever been inside an Ebola Treatment Unit (ETU)? Neither has 99.999% of the world. You can bet that the Emergency Telecommunications (ET) Cluster team is part of the 0.001% that has.

ET Cluster's job is to provide Internet and radio communications services to aid workers in emergencies. This brings us to an ETU in N’zerekore, Guinea, that used to have no internet connectivity, and now it does.

WFP constructed this ETU managed by the NGO named ALIMA where the ET Cluster provided Internet connectivity. Here’s a 1 minute tour of what daily life is like inside the ETU.

Messages of support to forget the daily racking scenes

Working everyday in an ETU is mentally draining for even the most experienced health workers. How do you cope with the sight of so many lifeless bodies on a daily basis? We are all human and sometimes we need to distract ourselves.

Sitting with a group of health workers on their lunch break this became clear to me; they complained about the referee’s call during the latest football match or listened to their favorite Nicki Minaj song, life must go on. To help ease their minds in the simplest means possible we invited our Facebook and Twitter communities to send messages of support and motivation. We then posted these around the ETU.

Hospital offline

Christine, a doctor here from the USA, explained that "here we were essentially running a hospital with lots of employees, sick patients, a laboratory, and all this without Internet. Imagine running a hospital without Internet, it would be chaos."

Guillame, Director of development and communication, had to drive 3 km every day from the ETU to town so that he could send status of patients to his colleagues in Conakry.

The ET Cluster is helping to resolve this situation across the region so that ETUs can offer the high standards of care needed to save the lives of Ebola victims.

The ETU’s admin room was filled with stacks of papers and sticky notes which lined the walls. All that could be easily organized with simple Internet tools like Dropbox, Google docs, and email accessible through connectivity provided by the ET Cluster.

Health workers in the “red zone” – where Ebola patients are cordoned off from the rest of the camps – had to yell to their colleagues in the “green zone” to ask for supplies and provide updates on patient statuses. In an environment where miscommunication can mean the difference between life and death, bringing in these vital services can reduce fatal errors.

ET Cluster, together with our members NetHope, Ericsson Response, and Emergency.lu have provided both staff and equipment and installed the Internet network that helps health workers do their jobs and save lives.

Higher connectivity = Reduction of the spread of Ebola

When I came back to see Christine a few days later, I asked, "At the end of the day is the connectivity helping you guys do your job?" She responded "Yes, of course, of course it is, it’s helping us reduce the spread of Ebola"

There was an air of euphoria that day, and I asked Christine what the commotion was about: one of the patients had fully recovered. “There is no better feeling on Earth,” Christine told me.

This is what we are here to do. We're on a mission to stop Ebola and the ET Cluster will do whatever it takes to provide humanitarians, health workers, and the Ebola responders with communications services to do their jobs to the best of their ability.

The ET Cluster is a service provider but we also solve complex problems in which no two are ever the same. This requires not only ingenuity, creativity, and close collaboration from our network, but also a whole lot of heart.

ET Cluster, together with our members NetHope, Ericsson Response, and Emergency.lu have provided both staff and equipment and installed the Internet network that helps health workers do their jobs and save lives

This post originally appeared at WFP.org.

When Disaster Strikes, This May Be the Most Crucial Aid of All

While most aid groups were trying to figure out where to send water, food, medical supplies, or tents after Typhoon Haiyan left devastation across multiple islands in the Philippines last November, Gisli Olafsson was looking for places to set up satellite dishes.

That may seem like something that should be low on the list of needs in the immediate aftermath of the strongest hurricane ever to make landfall, but, say those with experience in disaster response, relief organizations can’t effectively deploy their resources until communication has been restored. Olafsson is emergency response director of NetHope, a group that partners with the private sector to deliver information and communications technology to the developing world. After Haiyan, his job was to assess and replace, as quickly as possible, the region’s utterly demolished communications systems.

Since its founding 14 years ago, NetHope has brought together many of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations to use information and communications technology to serve people in remote areas. One of NetHope’s main initiatives is to enable faster, better-coordinated responses in the wake of disaster, whether natural or human-caused.

To that end, it has embraced collaboration and the smarter use of technology: Within 24 hours of Typhoon Haiyan’s hitting Leyte Island, NetHope began coordinating the ICT needs of its 41 member organizations, which include Oxfam, CARE, and Mercy Corps. Twelve had already begun working from bases in and outside the Philippines to assess the situation and identify infrastructure needs.

Help during the first few days after the typhoon was sporadic and uneven. Most international media broadcast from the town of Tacloban, which received help more quickly than other, harder-hit areas.

“The focus of a lot of the response was on where the media was showing things, and that’s because the communication network and the ability to communicate the needs in other places was simply not happening,” said Olafsson, calling it the “CNN effect.” The only airstrip near ground zero was in Tacloban, and with roads and telephone poles destroyed, remote areas were unable to communicate their needs to places where aid was being delivered.

The experience of the first relief team to reach Tacloban after the hurricane, a group from Mammoth Medical Missions (whose experience after Haiyan was documented in a four-part series for TakePart), makes clear the need for communication after a disaster. Once the doctors, nurses, and support staff landed at Tacloban, they were essentially out of contact with anyone who could help them or whom they could help. That condition only got worse once they arrived in Tanauan, a city that took a direct hit from Haiyan and was completely cut off from the world. Faced with hundreds of injured patients, the team realized that it would have to ration anesthetics and antibiotics.

“If we’d just had a line of communication with the relief crews that were coming in to the airport, that would have made a tremendous difference,” said chief medical officer Dr. Sara May, an emergency department physician from Seattle. Instead, the logistics coordinator sent handwritten lists of the team’s needs to anyone who came through its makeshift clinic and might make it to Tacloban. Word of the dire situation made it to the evening news in the U.K., but not to where the supplies were. A team arrived to relieve the Mammoth crew a few days later, after its food and water ran out, but because of the lack of communication, the needed supplies didn’t come with it.

It’s this kind of situation that NetHope and its partners are working to eliminate. The strategy is to take ideas and technologies from the West and apply them to areas where electricity and connectivity aren’t a given even in the best of times, areas in disaster-prone parts of the globe.

One technology NetHope put to use in the Philippines was unmanned aerial vehicles, aka drones. These can inexpensively provide live video of hard-hit areas to people doing relief triage or can scope out locations for a tent camp to house people made homeless after a typhoon or earthquake. They can also function in a search and rescue capacity when aided by infrared technology.

NetHope also uses crowdsourcing to help in disaster relief: Olafsson and his colleagues work closely with what they call digital volunteer groups, which, instead of deploying to the field, use the Internet to uncover information about a situation. Recently, NetHope has been working with a task force on the Ebola outbreak in West Africa; restrictions on movement make ground intelligence hard to come by, but by pulling together all the information sources, the group remotely creates a more comprehensive overview of the situation than can be done on-site.

“A lot of what we look at as our innovation measures are not coming up with brand-new things,” said Olafsson. “We innovate by looking at what innovations are happening around us—cloud computing, crowdsourcing, UAVs, other similar things—and how we can leverage those in the settings we have.”

This article originally appeared in TakePart.com

World Economic Forum

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum happens this week. World leaders, top business people and campaigners will gather in Davos, Switzerland to debate issues from climate change to political instability. NetHope CEO Lauren Woodman will be in attendance, meeting with global influencers to share the impact of the collaborative work NetHope fosters. Prior to the event, Lauren will be writing for the Forum site. Bookmark agenda.weforum.org to read.

Leadership Academy Workshops

NetHope members will have access to two workshop in the next six weeks. The first, a full day workshop on Leading Change, takes place in Barcelona on February 12th. The second is hosted in New York City on March 5th, and tackles the Practice of Innovation. For more information reach out: hello@magazine-nethope.org

Collaborating on The Collaboration

We're delighted at the reception of the first few editions of The Collaboration. Future editions will highlight your stories and profile individuals worthy of attention. Your ideas and suggestions are welcome. Let us know about your organization's work, and connect us with people the larger NetHope community should know about. Simply write us at hello@magazine-nethope.org to get started.

The Catholic Relief Services 2015 Conference

Mark your calendars now for the 2015 CRS ICT4D Conference May 27-29 in Chicago, IL. This year’s Catholic Relief Services ICT4D conference – “Increasing Impact Through Innovation” -- will bring together thought leaders and experienced professionals from around the world to share and explore methods for systematically integrating information and communications technology into relief and development programs.

When: May 27-29, 2015

Where: Chicago, IL USA

Who should attend: NGO staff, donors, educators, government representatives and technology solution providers interested in applying ICT4D solutions to enhance the quality and accountability of development and relief programs.

Apply to be a Speaker Each year, featured speakers share a range of experiences in implementing ICT4D solutions, stimulate discussion concerning the challenges and best practices surrounding their use, and introduce attendees to new ways of doing relief and development work. Click here to learn more about fees, application deadlines and the four conference tracks, or view past presentations from 2014.

Become an Exhibitor Exhibitors have a unique opportunity to share information with leaders and key decision makers across the world that are promoting the use of ICT4D within their own organizations. In 2014, more than 400 such leaders joined CRS in Nairobi, Kenya from a broad spectrum of private businesses, governmental, non-governmental organizations, research and education institutions, and foundations.Find details here.

Become a Sponsor Join sponsors including NetHope, Accenture and USAID in promoting the strategic use of technology innovations to improve development impacts. Sponsorship is a great way to communicate your commitment to relief and development work. More than 400 participants from 58 countries engaged in the 2014 ICT4D Conference. Should your organization choose to sponsor the conference this year, there are three sponsorship levels offered to reach these decision makers and field innovators. Learn more here.

Participate in Challenges Catholic Relief Services will issue challenges that provide an opportunity for individuals to tackle unique problems, demonstrate their creativity, win prizes, and have a positive impact. Challenges will be posted March 1st and winners will be featured at the conference. Click here to view the challenges and winners from last year.

Webinars

In the fifth installation of our webinar series on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in emergency response and international development, we heard from David Gadsden, Esri Nonprofit Program Manager, and Cody Benkelman, Esri’s Technical Product Manager – Imagery, on the use of the ArcGIS platform for data analysis, management and sharing.

We know that UAVs offer “a great new source of data,” but there are still several challenges the use of this data presents. Benkelman listed three that ArcGIS must work with:

1) putting data on a map with appropriate geometric accuracy;

2) keeping maps up to date with the rapid proliferation of different platforms and standards;

3) managing and sharing large volumes of data.

This particular webinar focused on the third challenge with regard to how the ArcGIS platform deals with managing and sharing massive data collection in a way that enables access to all forms of imagery and rasters. The platform includes imagery curated by Esri, imagery providers and ArcGIS users in addition to other data, and also provides advanced imagery tools such as those used for visualization processing and analysis, like the example displayed below.

Benkelman discussed how using “mosaic datasets” for image management workflow enables ArcGIS to deliver large image collections to users in an accessible format (mosaic datasets being the data structures within ArcGIS used to manage, process and share imagery). There are two important mosaic concepts mentioned that translate into application:

1) On-the-fly processing, which allows imagery to be automatically processed when originally accessed.

2) Dynamic mosaicking, meaning imagery can be fused from multiple sources. No data is lost in the overlapping of images to create mosaics, but users are still able to access individual images.

Platform users can centrally manage and share all ArcGIS data in a quick and effective manner via web, desktop or mobile device. In a 3D demonstration with ArcSCENE, Benkelman highlighted the ease and versatility of data accessibility and dissemination. In one example, he illustrated how clients can do calculations “…all on the server, and then simply transmit the resulting answer, as opposed to transmitting large volumes of data and having heavy geoprocessing tools on your remote device.” Click here to listen to the recording and view presentation collateral.

Surveys

Familiar with Mobile Money bulk payments & work at a development organization? Take our survey & be entered to win $500 gift card!

Who should take this survey?

1. Staff working in a development organization based in head office, one country office, or a regional office. They should have knowledge about payment disbursements and/or familiarity with mobile money bulk payments and their organization’ decision whether to use these products or not.

2. Consultants or advisors that advise development organizations on use of mobile money bulk payment products.

Depending upon your experience with these products, this survey may take between 10 and 30 minutes.

What is the purpose of this survey? To understand how development organizations use mobile money bulk payment products to make disbursements in their programs and operations, and if they do not use these products, what are the reasons. NetHope will consolidate feedback from survey respondents on their needs, use, and satisfaction levels with bulk payment products, and provide this aggregated data to mobile money service providers for use in their bulk payment product design and development. Your feedback in this survey will help contribute to industry standards around mobile money bulk payment products, which will better serve the development community and it's program participants and beneficiaries.

What is mobile money? Mobile money is a service that allows financial transactions to be completed over a mobile phone. Mobile money bulk payment products are used when one entity (the payer) transfers funds to multiple recipients’ mobile wallets (the payees) in a single disbursement. For example, payments disbursed from a development organization’s account into the mobile money wallets of staff, program participants, or beneficiaries. Examples include payments of salaries, training and travel per diems, subsidies to health workers, farmers or contractual laborers.

Click here to take the survey.

Conversations

The Role of Faith-Based Communities in Social and Behavior Change Communication Programs for Child Survival

Join the conversation on incorporating faith leaders, religious texts and other faith-based activities into social and behavior change communication (SBCC) programming to improve child survival outcomes. And, if you participated in the highly engaging webinar on January 15, facilitators Kathryn Bertram and Moremi Oladeinde from the Health Communication Capacity Collaborative, as well as the webinar's presenters, will use Springboard to answer the questions that were not addressed.

By Paige Dearing

The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program has been collecting data on population, health and HIV since 1984, from 90 countries and 300 surveys. This USAID program relies on over 56,000 GPS Clusters to gather the information, some of which is collected by mobile technology to reach otherwise isolated locales.

How can you best leverage this data for your work? Select your best-fit persona below for tips on how to best use the DHS data.

The Evidence-Based Decision Maker

Core need: Summary data to make program or policy decisions

DHSprogram.com lists a variety of tools & resources, including toolkits that help organizations design and conduct population-based demographic and health surveys as well as training guides on how to use reports. Access raw data via the survey search, datasets or DHS API.

Use STAT compiler’s customizable tables to visualize data as a column chart, line graph, map or scatterplots. For those on-the-go, the DHS Program Mobile App allows users to compare major indicators – like education, wealth, residence, subnational region and more – on Android, iOS and Microsoft devices. Share maps and charts via SMS, email, Facebook, Twitter, Google and more. Download it here for free.

The Analyst

Core need: Analyzing DHS data in a software package like STATA or SPSS

DHSprogram.com is a core resource, given the downloadable micro-level datasets offered within the survey search as well as the user forums. The forum provides an outlet for analysts to ask questions pertaining to datasets and results. Discussions are sorted into folders around broad topics, geographies, data and dissemination styles. Join the forum here.

For analysts working with women-specific datasets, Integrated Demographic and Health Series is a great resource; it allows for comparative analysis of DHS data “by offering the following: variables are coded consistently across countries and over time; web-based search and discovery tools display variable availability across surveys; documentation is organized on a cross-survey, variable-specific basis; and researchers can merge files and create customized datasets using a web dissemination system, at no cost,” according to the its site. IDHS is modeled off of the IPUMS-International data system.

While IDHS requires an account to access the data, any existing permissions users may have for DHS datasets can be applied to the IDHS system. Users do need to have permission to download data for specific countries; request access to additional datasets by describing a new research project via this form.

The Programmer

Core need: Building a website or app to highlight key DHS data along with your program data

The Indicator Data API allows developers to build apps, websites and tools that leverage the aggregated indicator data on population, health, HIV and nutrition from more than 90 countries. At api.dhsprogram.com, users can find out how to get connected as well as access code samples in JavaScript, ColdFusion, ASP.NET, Python, R and State. Programmers can share their code and applications, in the app gallery.

The Map Maker

Core need: Creating maps or doing a geographical analysis

For those looking for geographic information system (GIS) application, the Spatial Data Repository provides geographically linked health and demographic data in GIS format for mapping. The Boundaries section allows users to download subnational region boundaries for illustration of change over time.

Learn how to use QGIS software and DHS indicator data with the downloadable QGIS Training program, available free here. There are also a handful of video tutorials that demonstrate how to use the Spatial Data Repository here in the Resources section.

New resources and news is always being announced by the DHS Program, so follow them via Facebook and Twitter for updates. Also, listen to our recording of the recent "It's All About Data" Working Group session for insight by Clara Burgert, Technical Specialist and GIS Coordinator at the DHS Program.

Thanks for reading this edition of The Collaboration: A NetHope Magazine! Here's a brief user's guide to help you make the most of the content and community.

Monthly

The NetHope team publishes a new edition of The Collaboration every month.

Email Notifications

The first time you read the magazine, you're prompted to enter an email address (which we'll never share) and a password of your choosing. You'll get a short email notifying you the new issue when it's released.

Interactivity and Social

We're publishing The Collaboration using The Snippet App, a simple platform for publishing content with rich media and social integration. As you read, look for images, audio, and video that will provide further context to the content you're experience. These images will alert you to additional content:

Also look for invitations to continue the conversation on Twitter, using the @NetHope_org handle, and the #NetHope hashtag. Keep an eye out for these:

Reading Experience

The Collaboration is organized into six simple sections:

NetHope Now: A letter from the CEO, highlighting the issue's contents and spotlighting recent efforts by NetHope members and partners

NetBest: Each issue we'll offer a tip, trick, hack, or best practice that will help simplify your life and elevate your performance

NetFive: Five global news stories -- told from a NetHope perspective

NetImpact: Stories worth sharing from the NetHope community, including profiles of member organizations, interview with influences, and stories of success from the frontlines and behind the scenes.

NetNext: News on the future of NetHope and updates on ongoing initiatives.

NetConnect: Invitations to connect with members, respond to requests, provide resources, and take advantage of new opportunities.

NetGo: A single action item inviting you to reflect or engage to make a difference right now.

NetHope Archive

Each edition of The Collaboration will remain available online in our archive, so you can return to favorite articles or editions you missed any time.

Feedback and Submissions

Have idea for stories, news items, opportunities? Want to offer a recommendation for making The Collaboration better? We want to hear from you! Reach out to us at hello@magazine-nethope.org.