Back to the future: 17 things you might not know about FrontlineSMS

In late October 2005, an early beta - "proof-of-concept" - version of FrontlineSMS was released to the world. It took just ten months for the idea to shape itself into the early stages of what you see today. In this, the second and last of our sixth birthday celebration posts (you can read the first here), we dig deep into our email archives and reveal some of the more interesting early - and perhaps surprising - moments of the project. The idea for FrontlineSMS was conceived in early 2005 with the help of several field trips to South Africa and Mozambique, a bottle of beer and "Match of the Day". All is revealed in this fun, short National Geographic video:

The very first email which specifically references FrontlineSMS was sent on 6th March, 2005 at 0853 to register the domain name.

Prior to that the working title was "Project SMS". The first email to reference "Project SMS" was sent on Wednesday 26th January, 2005 at 12:02. In it, the entire concept was described in just 963 words with an initial estimated budget of just £2,000 ($3,000).

Factoring in equipment and other costs, personal gifts totaling £10,000 were secured on 16th March, 2005 from two former Vodafone directors.

"The potential for FrontlineSMS is very exciting, and I am very much looking forward to working on the project. The potential impact for conservation and development is considerable." - Email to one of the supporters, 3rd May, 2005.

Preparation for the project officially got underway with the purchase of equipment totaling £1,476.09 on 22nd May, 2005:

One month later the timeline for the project was laid out. FrontlineSMS was delivered bang on schedule. From an email on 22nd June, 2005:

"I will begin working on the specification over the next couple of weeks, and will then get stuck into the initial programming phase during August. I have allocated that whole month to FrontlineSMS. As per the original timeline, July will be preparation, and August to September development time, so by October we should have something to trial."

News of FrontlineSMS was first revealed to the media in an interview with the Charity Times in August, 2005. Software development was briefly paused on 26th August so that the first FrontlineSMS website could be hastily put together ahead of the article's release.

"I have very high hopes that FrontlineSMS is really going to open the door to SMS technology to the wider NGO community" - Email to World Wildlife Fund, who were interested in trailing the software. 2nd September, 2005.

On 29th September, 2005 FrontlineSMS was presented for the first time at an internal event at Fauna & Flora International in Cambridge, UK:

On 5th October, 2005, to celebrate its imminent launch, FrontlineSMS buys up 200 pixels on the Million Dollar Homepage, a site which has since gone down in Internet folklore. (Read more on this here).

Email, 6th October, 2005: "Google now gives us around 80 results when searching for FrontlineSMS". Today the number is well over 100,000.

Email to supporters, 31st October, 2005: "The FrontlineSMS texting system is now ready for trial". These nine words signaled our official launch exactly six years ago today.

Email dated 14th November, 2005 from the MacArthur Foundation: "The MacArthur Foundation's Technology Grants Committee is always looking for innovative applications of technology for the NGO sector. I'd love to have a chat with you about your application if you have the time". Two years later MacArthur would become the first donor to make an investment in FrontlineSMS with a $200,000 grant. This funded a major rewrite and a new website.

14th November, 2005: 160 Characters are the first mobile-focused news site to announce the release of FrontlineSMS.

15th November, 2005: We receive an email enquiry from Kubatana, a Zimbabwean civil society organisation. Days later FrontlineSMS had its first official implementation. Kubatana still use FrontlineSMS today.

Today, with fifteen staff over three continents, users in over 70 countries across 20 different non-profit sectors, and approaching 20,000 downloads, the rest - as they say - is history...

FrontlineSMS introduced to youth group in Kenya

The FrontlineSMS team is always keen to engage with those using FrontlineSMS for social change projects across the world. It is really valuable for us to hear user’s stories, and find out the advantages and challenges of using our software in action. This summer, Tufts University student and FrontlineSMS intern Emily Wyner visited Nairobi, with support from Groupshot and the Institute for Global Leadership, to find out more about FrontlineSMS users in this buzzing city. Here she shares her experiences of helping a youth project get started using FrontlineSMS software.

Throughout my time with FrontlineSMS, one thing has become very clear: effective program design is crucial to successfully integrating mobile software into social change initiatives. I was delighted when given the opportunity to help Plan Kenya (part of Plan International) in piloting their use of FrontlineSMS to help support their local partners.  This was my chance to observe and assist the process of getting started with FrontlineSMS from initial thoughts, plans, and assumptions to final implementation. I have discovered some interesting things along the way, and it’s great to be able to share the beginning of this journey.

My initial visit with Plan Kenya was really exciting. I first spoke with Aggrey and Irumu, members of the Plan team, to give them a thorough run-down of what FrontlineSMS software is and does. They asked some brilliant questions about cost and requirements, and were keen to lay the groundwork for a sustainable project. We brainstormed smart ways to pilot the software on a small scale, such as using it for internal office communication and management or setting up one Nairobi-based youth group with FrontlineSMS to determine if it improves relations with their members.  Soon enough, I was sent onward to meet with Purity and Bernard,  Plan Kenya’s ICT experts. They too were very enthusiastic about the software, and promised to be in touch regarding some of the pilot prospects.

Following this they arranged for me to meet with some representatives from Jipange, an umbrella organization of 16 youth groups in the Embakasi area, and one of the organizations Plan Kenya supports. I went to meet with Jipange accompanied by Purity and Aggrey, as well as Adam from Groupshot and Jordan from TechChange, too. Plan Kenya had set up the meeting in order to discuss and arrange for Jipange to pilot FrontlineSMS in their programming.

Jordan, Adam and I began by giving the members of Jipange an overview of FrontlineSMS.  Along the way, there were certain reactions that really stood out and some really insightful  questions. I particularly remember a young woman named Wanjiru, founder of The Change Initiative, asking whether or not FrontlineSMS would allow her to send text messages to certain groups of people at a time, such as all the leaders of the 16 groups or all the members of one particular group. This led us to explain the suitability of the FrontlineSMS contact groups function for this project. This is the kind of question that is great to hear when introducing a new technology tool.  It asks if FrontlineSMS has the capacity to do what Jipange already does (or needs to do) in a cleaner, faster, and easier way.

This is key;  when a preexisting organization adopts the use of FrontlineSMS, the software should not necessarily fundamentally alter their programming; rather, it is a tool by which the programming can be made more efficient and effective.  For all new users of FrontlineSMS it is necessary to know your target audience, why you are going to reach them, and how you intend on presenting yourself as a reliable, trustworthy communicator.

One eye on technology and the other on program design, the discussion with Jipange continued on with both eyes focused.  More and more Jipange members joined in with questions and comments. People were chiming in with ideas about how FrontlineSMS could be used in good governance initiatives or the formation of a Jipange-run business. It became clear that everyone was set on starting to use the software.

Going forward, Jipange members (and the Plan Kenya staff who work with them) will now be in control of when and how they begin to use FrontlineSMS. They know the basics, there is support from FrontlineSMS if needed,  yet most importantly they have a clear vision of how they intend on using FrontlineSMS for fundamental communication that is essential to their programming.

It will be great to keep in touch with Jipange and their progress with integrating FrontlineSMS into their daily activities. The members I met were enthusiastic and innovative, and it will be exciting to hear about the ways they go on to use FrontlineSMS in future.

Good luck, Jipange and all new FrontlineSMS users out there!  Don’t forget to keep in touch.  One of the best resources we have is each others’ stories.

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If you're interested in using FrontlineSMS for your work:

You can download FrontlineSMS for free here on our website.

You can connect with other FrontlineSMS users and the team by joining our community forum here.

Find out how others are using the software by reading user guest posts on our blog here.

Using Radio to Promote Peace: The Tea Garden Tamils

In an interview with Francis Rolt from Radio for Peace Building, Hussain Abdullah reflects on how radio can be used for promoting peace. To read the full article on the FrontlineSMS:Radio website click here

"Radio for Peace Building is an organisation which provides advice and training on using radio for behaviour change communication, in particular for the peaceful transformation of conflicts in pre-, current or post conflict contexts. In this post, Francis describes Radio for Peace Building’s most recent support on an SFCG project working with the Tea Garden Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Francis told us about his recent work with Search for Common Ground. “SFCG is working with the Tea Garden Tamils, who are quite distinct from the Tamils in the North – a different sort of demographic – who came to Sri Lanka at a different time. As part of an inclusive citizenship project, we are helping to organise a series of radio talk shows and audio dramas.” The drama narratives and topics of the talk shows would be guided by the use of mobile to make it a truly inclusive project."

To read the full article on the FrontlineSMS:Radio website click here

MediaShift Idea Lab: FrontlineSMS Gives Radio Listeners a Voice Through Text Messages

By Amy O'Donnell, FrontlineSMS

Reflections on the development of FrontlineSMS:Radio in a post originally published by MediaShift Idea Lab. Read and extract of the post below, and check it out in full here on the MediaShift Idea Lab website.

"Almost everyone who has listened to the radio within the last few years has heard a DJ call for the audience to send in a text message -- whether to request the next song, respond to the latest news or to comment on the needs of their communities. Media outlets everywhere are using SMS to engage audiences in innovative and creative ways, especially as they are increasingly reliant on audiences to be their eyes and ears. The combination of broadcast and interactive, text-driven response is being used to affect a wide range of reporting and audience engagement practices.

FrontlineSMS, which allows people to set up a hub for text messaging to inform and engage rural communities, is in the final stages of pilot testing a version of our software that's customized to meet the needs of radio broadcasters. The FrontlineSMS:Radio project, which serves as the foundation of our Knight News Challenge project, has given us insight into both the priorities and challenges facing community radio stations in low-resource communities."

To read more visit MediaShift Idea Lab's blog here.

FrontlineSMS and Technological Responsibility

FrontlineSMS team members Amy O'Donnell and Flo Scialom are currently helping moderate TechChange's online learning course on Mobiles for International Development (m4d). In addition, FrontlineSMS's Sean McDonald will be a guest speaker on this course in the coming weeks. Our involvement in the course is providing us with a great opportunity to engage with a new group of people who are either working in, or are strongly interested in the m4d sector. The 40 course participants are based over 15 countries and have a rich variety of experience, so there is an exciting range of perspectives to be shared. Whilst helping with this TechChange course it seems like ideal timing to share the below TechChange post on a FrontlineSMS training course held earlier this year:

When an innovator is struck with a new idea for a technology, his or her first thought isn’t necessarily “How can this be used for a humanitarian, development, or peace-building cause?” Rather, it is more often “How can I sell millions of copies of this in the Apple App Store?” or “How soon will I be able to sell this to a venture capitalist and use the money to buy my I Am Rich app".

In early 2011 TechChange organized a training with FrontlineSMS that not only taught people how to use the software, but forced them to confront the issue of priorities. Against our tendency to think of ways to use the technology to benefit ourselves, we designed our own projects that used FrontlineSMS to enable social change. There was a spark of awareness that lying dormant in our creativity and innovative thinking is the capacity to use technology in a more responsible way.

Led by FrontlineSMS gurus Sean McDonald and Laura Walker Hudson, we were introduced to FrontlineSMS as a powerful and simple technology, which uses a computer, a mobile phone, and text messaging to easily communicate with groups of people. The potential uses for this technology are boundless, as evidenced by FrontlineSMS’s sector-specific projects that reach “specific fields such as finance, education, law, and media”. While one organization can use it as mobile healthcare for expectant mothers, another can use it to stabilize markets by providing local fishermen with real time price information. We were presented with numerous case studies all validating the fact that open source technology can help bridge the gap between vulnerable populations and the information and tools they need.

We were then split into groups, given a modem connected to FrontlineSMS, and asked to think of a real world problem to confront. It’s interesting to think that every day we sit in front of a computer or play with our iPhones and all of these technologies have the possibility of answering some sort of global need but it very often doesn’t even cross our minds. It’s not an automatic motive. But at the FrontlineSMS training, we were forced to think of others before self, since that was the assignment.

Thus, we trained a room of FrontlineSMS ninjas – compassionate, philanthropic ninjas. They came up with strategies to connect LGBT populations to service providers and to improve parent-teacher relations, and in the process learned about the technical and more importantly contextual issues that must be resolved to bring about real change. TechChange is planning to host more tech trainings throughout the year. We want to get creative people armed with emerging technologies and collaborating on the hardest problems facing our generation. And of course, one of the best parts of open source is the social and community aspect – there was a very nerdy happy hour afterwards which I wasn’t legally allowed to attend but I hear it gets pretty wild.

The above has been re-posted from TechChange blog with permission. Post by Mariel Bartolome, Technical Coordinator at TechChange and a computer science major at the University of Maryland College Park.

Six years On: Reinforcing Our Core Values

It's hard to believe, but six years ago this month FrontlineSMS was quietly released into the world. There was no press release, no fuss, no fanfare and certainly no funding. "Project SMS" was conceived earlier that year, renamed "FrontlineSMS" a few weeks later, and then cobbled together on a kitchen table in Finland over the summer. For a long time promoting and supporting it was simply a hobby as I continued my life as an ICT consultant. It's an understatement to say that I'm surprised at where we are today. Over fifteen staff across three continents, thousands of users in over 70 countries around the world, and a tool which has found a home for itself in almost all fields of international development. None of that was ever part of the plan back in October 2005.

I'm equally as proud of the roots of FrontlineSMS as I am of the tool itself. I've been involved in international development in one form or another for the past 18 years, and have seen at first hand things that have worked, and things that haven't. There's much that's wrong in the sector, but also a lot that's right, and for me personally FrontlineSMS embodies how appropriate and respectful ICT4D initiatives can be run, both on a personal and professional level. There's very little I'd do differently if I started it all over again.

As I wrote earlier this month after news of our Curry Stone Design Prize broke:

Over the past few years FrontlineSMS has become so much more than just a piece of software. Our core values are hard-coded into how the software works, how it’s deployed, the things it can do, how users connect, and the way it allows all this to happen. We’ve worked hard to build a tool which anyone can take and, without us needing to get involved, be applied to any problem anywhere. How this is done is entirely up to the user, and it’s this flexibility that sits at the core of the platform. It’s also arguably at the heart of it’s success.

These core values, built up over six years, remain central to our work. Here's just a few:

Each and every one is important to us: Putting users ahead - and at the heart - of everything we do, striving for a positive interaction with anyone who comes into contact with our work, aiming to inspire others whilst respecting a diversity of views, always reaching for better, fostering a positive "anything is possible" attitude, making sure we continue to put people - and their needs - ahead of the aspirations of the tech community, managing expectations both internally and for our users, and finally - constantly reminding ourselves why we do what we do.

As we continue to grow as an organisation, maintaining and reinforcing these values will be an increasingly important part of not only who we are, but who we become.

NYT: "A Quest for Hybrid Companies That Profit, but Can Tap Charity"

FrontlineSMS was featured in an article in the New York Times this week! You can find an extract of the article below, and the full piece can be found on the New York Times website here. "A new type of company intended to put social goals ahead of making profits is taking root around the country, as more states adopt laws to bridge the divide between nonprofits and businesses...

Charities seeking ways to reduce their reliance on donated dollars are increasingly developing programs that could be mistaken for businesses, and for them, such a structure solves a number of headaches. It gives them access to the capital markets, allows them to pay higher compensation levels and provides potential exit strategies, all unavailable to nonprofits...

Frontline SMS ... organized as a community interest company, or C.I.C.’s, the British corporate designation that has inspired many of the new hybrid in corporation laws passed in the United States. C.I.C.’s are required to have a social purpose like health care and their assets are locked, limiting what can be distributed to shareholders, employees and others.

FrontlineSMS was spun out of Kiwanja.net, a California nonprofit whose mission is to develop technology to help nonprofit groups deliver services. 'The value proposition is inherently defined in terms of social benefit,' said Sean Martin McDonald, of FrontlineSMS. 'That reduces a lot of concerns you might normally have from traditional financial investors by making it clear that your mission is primarily social, not primarily about making profits.'"

To read more check out the full article on the New York Times website here.

FrontlineSMS used for Inclusive Arts Project in UK

FrontlineSMS really is used all across the world. It is not only used in economically developing countries, but can be used as a tool to connect people in many different contexts. An example of this is the use of our software by interactive arts trio, Invisible Flock. Here Ben Eaton, lead creative at Invisible Flock discusses the way FrontlineSMS is used:

Here at Invisible Flock we make large scale interactive work that ranges from public art, to games, to digital work. We are based in the UK, and at the heart of all that we do is the desire to empower our audiences through participation.

In a way it feels peculiar to be using a platform that is designed and well-documented in its use for some very serious real world applications, however FrontlineSMS has quickly become a central tool in our work.

The reasons we use SMS messages as a platform are, from a design perspective, likely not that different from why the other organisations and NGOs employ them.  Our work seeks to engage our participants in a direct and intimate manner, allowing them interactions outside of the traditional space and time of art consumption.  This means you don’t have to be in a gallery on a Friday evening for you to take part in the work we create.  Using SMS permits us to interweave what we do into the daily lives of our participants in a manner that is both very personal and unobtrusive.

We have been using FrontlineSMS for a year or so and very heavily in the last four to five months. In our most recent piece entitled Your Government Has Gone To Sleep (YGHGTS), we waged a game of revolution in the Chapeltown area of UK city Leeds.  We invited residents to sign up to our game and, over the course of a week, we allowed them to become part of a revolutionary movement orchestrated by text message—in which they communicated with each other and took part in a series of small acts of peaceful revolution that re-examined the makeup of that community.

FrontlineSMS enabled us to quickly and easily create a reactive platform to manage and filter our conversations with players in our game.  We are always conscious, working in the field of interactive art, of the risk of exclusion due to a potential player’s inability to access the technology, and, as such, we shy away from using smart phones and platforms that are likely to actively isolate.  SMS messaging is ubiquitous and cheap and, as such, presents an easy manner for players to enter into our games and for them to continue with it.

We create interaction with FrontlineSMS by making heavy use of the keyword function, grouping participants into subgroups that represent either their progression in a piece’s story or their response to specific questions of tasks.  We allocate codenames to players that also serve as keywords that allow our FrontlineSMS setup to serve as a hub for players to communicate with each other whilst still remaining anonymous.

Perhaps most interestingly for us however is the integration of HTTP trigger commands into FrontlineSMS, as it enables us to create complex interactive responses to participants messages.  In YGHGTS, we used the keyword MANIFESTO to enable participants to input their own political manifestos to a website which updated every few seconds—allowing them to submit content and see it appear almost instantly on the monitor in front of them.  The beauty of FrontlineSMS is that with a keyword, an HTTP command, a simple five-line PHP script and a MySQL database at the other end, we can quickly set up an effective interactive environment.

The ability to use SMS messages to communicate out from FrontlineSMS to a wide variety of applications including physical objects in the real world makes it an invaluable platform in our work.  In the next few weeks, we are creating a series of autonomous interactive explorations of the city of Bradford.  We are using text messages to trigger and orchestrate journeys that take participants to multiple locations, receive phone calls and trigger events in the real world.

We use a software platform called VVVV to run our complicated multimedia environments and we use the inbuilt HTTP command capabilities of FrontlineSMS to integrate VVVV perfectly.  Above is an image showing the simplest setup, using a HTTP command sent from FrontlineSMS to VVVV to trigger playback of an audio file. The same process can then be reversed to control responses and trigger SMS messages from events monitored in the real world by the computer or hardware platforms such as Arduinos.

With this setup, FrontlineSMS becomes almost infinitely extendable, and surpasses its own inbuilt capabilities.  We are currently gearing up to launch a series of interactive journeys across a UK city, which will be our most ambitious project involving FrontlineSMS to date. At the height of the experience we are creating participants will be able to trigger content on a city centre big screen by sending a text message — a very real physical impact from a simple SMS, and all run through FrontlineSMS.

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Here at FrontlineSMS look forward to staying in touch with the Invisible Flock team as they continue to use FrontlineSMS in new and exciting ways! To find out more about Invisible Flock’s work visit www.invisibleflock.co.uk. You can also watch a video about some of their recent work here.

Rethinking socially responsible design in a mobile world

"The Curry Stone Design Prize was created to champion designers as a force for social change. Now in its fourth year, the Prize recognizes innovators who address critical issues involving clean air, food and water, shelter, health care, energy, education, social justice or peace". Yesterday was an exciting day for us as we announced FrontlineSMS had won the prestigious 2011 Curry Stone Design Prize. This award follows closely on the heels of the 2011 Pizzigati Prize, an honourable mention at the Buckminster Fuller Challenge and our National Geographic "Explorer" Award last summer. It goes without saying these are exciting times not just for FrontlineSMS but for our growing user base and the rapidly expanding team behind it. When I think back to the roots of our work in the spring of 2005, FrontlineSMS almost comes across as "the little piece of software that dared to dream big".

With the exception of the Pizzigati Prize - which specifically focuses on open source software for public good - our other recent awards are particularly revealing. Last summer we began something of a trend by being awarded things which weren't traditionally won by socially-focused mobile technology organisations.

Being named a 2010 National Geographic Emerging Explorer is a case in point, and last summer while I was in Washington DC collecting the prize I wrote down my thoughts in a blog post:

On reflection, it was a very bold move by the Selection Committee. Almost all of the other Emerging Explorers are either climbing, diving, scaling, digging or building, and what I do hardly fits into your typical adventurer job description. But in a way it does. As mobile technology continues its global advance, figuring out ways of applying the technology in socially and environmentally meaningful ways is a kind of 21st century exploring. The public reaction to the Award has been incredible, and once people see the connection they tend to think differently about tools like FrontlineSMS and their place in the world.

More recently we've begun receiving recognition from more traditional socially-responsible design organisations - Buckminster Fuller and Clifford Curry/Delight Stone. If you ask the man or woman on the street what "socially responsible design" meant to them, most would associate it with physical design - the building or construction of things, more-to-the-point. Water containers, purifiers, prefabricated buildings, emergency shelters, storage containers and so on. Design is so much easier to recognise, explain and appreciate if you can see it. Software is a different beast altogether, and that's what makes our Curry Stone Design Prize most interesting. As the prize website itself puts it:

Design has always been concerned with built environment and the place of people within it, but too often has limited its effective reach to narrow segments of society. The Curry Stone Design Prize is intended to support the expansion of the reach of designers to a wider segment of humanity around the globe, making talents of leading designers available to broader sections of society.

Over the past few years FrontlineSMS has become so much more than just a piece of software. Our core values are hard-coded into how the software works, how it's deployed, the things it can do, how users connect, and the way it allows all this to happen. We've worked hard to build a tool which anyone can take and, without us needing to get involved, applied to any problem anywhere. How this is done is entirely up to the user, and it's this flexibility that sits at the core of the platform. It's also arguably at the heart of it's success:

We trust our users - rely on them, in fact - to be imaginative and innovative with the platform. If they succeed, we succeed. If they fail, we fail. We're all very much in this together. We focus on the people and not the technology because it's people who own the problems, and by default they're often the ones best-placed to solve them. When you lead with people, technology is relegated to the position of being a tool. Our approach to empowering our users isn't rocket science. As I've written many times before, it's usually quite subtle, but it works:

My belief is that users don’t want access to tools – they want to be given the tools. There’s a subtle but significant difference. They want to have their own system, something which works with them to solve their problem. They want to see it, to have it there with them, not in some "cloud". This may sound petty – people wanting something of their own – but I believe that this is one way that works.

What recognition from the likes of the Curry Stone Design Prize tells us is that socially responsible design can be increasingly applied to the solutions, people and ecosystems built around lines of code - but only if those solutions are user-focused, sensitive to their needs, deploy appropriate technologies and allow communities to influence how these tools are applied to the problems they own.

Further reading FrontlineSMS is featured in the upcoming book "Design Like You Give a Damn 2: Building Change From The Ground Up", available now on pre-order from Amazon.

FrontlineSMS 2011 Curry Stone Design Prize Winners

FrontlineSMS is excited to announce that we have been awarded the Curry Stone Design Prize, a prestigious award which recognizes the valuable contributions of social design pioneers across the world. The award "was created in the belief that designers can be an instrumental force for improving people’s lives and the state of the world". The FrontlineSMS team is honoured to be recognised as one of the prize winners. According to Ken Banks, FrontlineSMS Founder:

We're honoured, surprised and excited to win this Prize, particularly when you consider most Curry Stone winners over the years have concentrated on physical design. This Prize, combined with our recent Buckminster Fuller Challenge "honourable mention" and last year's National Geographic "Explorer" award, see us taking FrontlineSMS - and the mobile-for-development sector in general - into new territory.

There's a growing realisation that socially-focused mobile tools can be part of the socially responsible design world, particularly if they are user-focused, and built around appropriate technologies which allow communities to build and design their own solutions to their own problems. This is an approach we have been championing for years, and it is wonderful to receive such recognition.

Warm congratulations to Hsieh Ying-Chun, the Grand Prize Winner, as well as Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), also winners of the prize along with FrontlineSMS - we are honored to be recognized alongside them.

For further details about the Prize, and the other winners please see below press release, published today on the Curry Stone website:

The 2011 Curry Stone Design Prize Winners were announced today with an official presentation ceremony to follow on November 7th at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Hsieh Ying-Chun is the Grand Prize Winner; he will receive $100,000 from the foundation with no strings attached. Hsieh is a leading Taiwanese architect who for over a decade has deployed his talents in rural areas decimated by natural disaster. Hsieh works throughout Asia, training villagers to build locally appropriate dwellings in response to devastation such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the 1999 Nantou earthquake, and the 2009 Morakot typhoon in Taiwan. Through Hsieh’s hands-on education process, villagers reconstruct their own community foundation, knowing they will live in buildings with greater safety, structural integrity, and sustainability.

Two additional 2011 Winner Prizes, of $10,000 each, will be awarded to Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA) and FrontlineSMS.

Atelier d'Architecture Autogérée is a collective of architects, designers and social scientists who transform urban spaces through collaborative endeavors. Based in Paris and founded by Romanian architects Constatin Petcou and Doina Petrescu in 2001, AAA has become an engine for engaging citizens in shaping their own cities through building, farming, and artistic intervention. AAA acts as a creative instigator, empowering local communities to carry out and sustain their own ideas for urban regeneration.

FrontlineSMS was founded in London by Ken Banks in 2005 to enable effective communications channels for communities in the developing world. FrontlineSMS leverages the ubiquity of mobile phones and familiarity of text messaging to turn an offline laptop into a communication hub. The simple innovation empowers villagers, aid agencies, and news services to exchange information easily among groups.

The Curry Stone Design Prize was created to champion designers as a force for social change. Now in its fourth year, the Prize recognizes innovators who address critical issues involving clean air, food and water, shelter, health care, energy, education, social justice or peace. Nominees for the Curry Stone Design Prize are selected by an anonymous, rotating group of leaders representing broad fields of design, as well as humanitarian advocates from related disciplines. A jury reviews the nominations to choose one Grand Prize Winner and two Prize Winners. Emphasis is placed on emerging projects and ideas that may not have yet been taken to scale. The Curry Stone Design Prize was founded by Clifford Curry, an architect and recognized pioneer in senior housing, and Delight Stone, a historic archaeologist and social justice activist. Dr. Louisa Silva and Gary Feuerstein serve as board members.

Grand Prize Winner, Hsieh Ying-Chun establishes a cooperative network of designers, contractors, and residents that supports local needs. His simple designs ensure that every villager can have a hand in building their own home. His work has generated job opportunities and environmental awareness, while protecting local diversities and cultural traditions. After completion, he makes the design plans available in creative commons. Hsieh’s work has helped thousands of people. http://bit.ly/qH6FqA

Prize Winners:

Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), Paris, France Collective Urban Architecture http://bit.ly/nnSbii

FrontlineSMS, London, England Community Solutions Through Mobile Technology http://bit.ly/qiXnQz

CURRY STONE DESIGN PRIZE FESTIVAL, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Prize Ceremony & Presentation: Monday, November 7th, 2011 6:30-8:00pm Harvard GSD, 48 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA RSVP [email protected]

Three Workshops at the GSD: Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 12pm-2:00pm, CSDP Prize winners Hsieh Ying-Chun, Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu, and Ken Banks will each lead a workshop.

The Curry Stone Design Prize Festival is presented in partnership with the Loeb Fellowship and the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard Graduate School of Design. For more information on the Curry Stone Design Prize, Events and Winners, see: www.currystonedesignprize.com or Twitter @currystoneprize.

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“Africa’s quiet digital revolution” FrontlineSMS:Radio featured on BBC

FrontlineSMS:Radio was recently featured in an article written by Jane Wakefield for the BBC’s technology page. Below is an extract and you can find the full article here. “For many in Africa, getting information still comes from a very low-tech device – the radio.

Ken Banks hopes to unite the power of radio with his already well-known FrontLineSMS, a text service that has provided key information to people caught up in emergencies such as the earthquake in Haiti.

Now he wants to see the project more embedded into daily lives, offering listeners to radio stations in Kenya and Zambia the chance to really engage with the topics discussed on their favourite radio stations.

'Clearly rural radio and mobile technology are a potent mix. Independently, both are making significant contributions – both directly and indirectly – to the communities they seek to serve. Together there is every chance they could achieve yet more,' he said.

Listeners will be able to text in to radio shows, allowing stations to aggregate content, identify the trends that are concerning people and build shows around specific topics.

Ida Jooste, who works for Internews, a non-governmental organisation that trains many of the DJs who run such radio stations, thinks it will be an invaluable tool.

'When texts are read on air they may not be representative. SMS Radio will aggregate material around themes such as poverty or cholera and allow the DJ to know what the concern of the day is,' she said.”

To read the full article on the BBC News website please click here.

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