Kiwanja

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have today announced a major grant in support of kiwanja's ongoing activities. The grant, worth a total of $400,000 over two years, will see the ongoing support and development of FrontlineSMS, the creation of an MMS (multimedia messaging) version of the platform, FrontlineSMS outreach, the creation of a non-profit online text messaging aggregator, and the scaling of the nGOmobile competition

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation makes grants to address the most serious social and environmental problems facing society, where risk capital, responsibly invested, may make a difference over time. The Foundation places a high value on sustaining and improving institutions that make positive contributions to society

In September last year, I blogged about the very innovative nGOmobile competition - well, it seems it was a resounding success! I received an email today from Ken announcing that the winners have been chosen and profiled yesterday at the Mobile World Congress 2008 in Barcelona. (Sokari blogged earlier about Ken's encounter there with a $20 screenless mobile phone!)

More info, links and photos to come soon on the nGOmobile website, but in the meantime - congratulations to the winners! According to the website, there were over 70 applications, from which the following four winners were selected by a panel of judges:

Participatory rapid response forest management system (Kenya)
This project is working with local communities to promote the protection and sustainable use of environmental resources. They plan to implement messaging services to help with reporting, field communications and to provide an early warning system to help combat poaching and illegal logging

Ask NETWAS a water, sanitation and hygiene question and get an answer (Uganda)
This NGO plans to launch an SMS-based service for rural communities allowing them to ask a range of water-based questions on topics such as sanitation, hygiene, water harvesting, and water technologies

Ken Banks, founder of Frontline SMS and Kiwanja.net is attending the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Ken is the kind of guy that always manages to find or build something special around mobile phone technology wherever he goes. On this occasion he discovers a mobile phone without a screen. Whats the big deal?