It was great being back in Keur Samba Laube, our inaugural test village. The little urban community on the edge of Mbour welcomed us back for a two day follow-up to our initial visit just over a month ago. It was great getting to reconnect, work, and hang out again with the villagers and our hosts.
Having demonstrated and set up the initial group for KSL during our first visit, we wanted to check back in with them, see how it was being used, clarify any confusions in the system, and see what advice they had for improvements. From Dakar we were able to identify two main problems we were hoping to address: a low volume of messages and slow growth of the network’s size.
Discussions with the villagers gave valuable insight. We quickly confirmed what we had been weary of following our experiences in Ouonk and Badioure, that we had been too restrictive in our initial implementation effort. Instead of limiting system use to large-sized community development activities, we decided to broaden the scope of accepted and encouraged messages to include social events like weddings and baptisms as well as any community-wide discussion that villagers felt was appropriate. In essence we want the system to be used not just as an event notification tool, but as a veritable community forum, free to be used as the villagers deem appropriate.
We are additionally hoping that this increased message volume will help address the problem of slow network growth. More volume will give villagers more interest in joining the network and in recruiting their friends. It will also get them more comfortable with the technology and give them more opportunities to practice their literacy skills.
Youth in particular continued to face the problem of lack of credit and also made clear that they had not been comfortable contributing to a full community discussion. The former remains a problem we would like to resolve with the phone company. The latter we addressed by creating a unique group for the KSL youth or “ksl jeunes”. Hopefully, this will serve as a safe space for KSL youth and they will feel more motivated to use and grow the system.
We also identified and trained two local community leaders, one for the youth and the other for the adult group, to be in charge of helping people join and serving as the first line of problem solving in the village. The local Imam
was placed in charge of the adult group while Awa Diop, a 17-year-old college student was handed the reigns of the youth group. As we set up the youth group, Awa took us on a tour of KSL. We were all impressed as she explained to each group of people we encountered how the system works and its benefits in convincing them to join.
Finally, two Tostan facilitators in Mbour were extremely excited by the forum system. While they do not serve in insular “villages” like most Tostan classes, they were excited to use the system as a community discussion tool for their women’s groups. It will be interesting observing how their systems progress with almost nonexistent help in direct implementation from Tostan Dakar staff… stay tuned…
It was clear when we left that the people of KSL and Mbour understood the SMS system much more thoroughly than after our initial visit and that they were more motivated to use it. We’ll be eagerly following their progress.
Pictures: Awa Diop (bottom, in red hat) and the Imam, Ousseinou (top), our two local replicators in KSL
- SH
Guillaume goes over some notes with Awa (in black) and her friends Khoudjia and Binta.
The SMS team, led by its newly named local leader, Awa, meet with village members while taking a walking tour of KSL and explaining the SMS Forum program.
Tostan class members met to better understand the SMS Forum program and the potential for its use in promoting their community activities.
Another house visit with Awa.
It was great being back in Keur Samba Laube, our inaugural test village. The little urban community on the edge of Mbour welcomed us back for a two day follow-up to our initial visit just over a month ago. It was great getting to reconnect, work, and hang out again with the villagers and our hosts.
was placed in charge of the adult group while Awa Diop, a 17-year-old college student was handed the reigns of the youth group. As we set up the youth group, Awa took us on a tour of KSL. We were all impressed as she explained to each group of people we encountered how the system works and its benefits in convincing them to join.
System users are not prisoners! For those who leave a given community or no longer wish to remain in the virtual forum, leaving the system is simple. The message again starts with "123" followed by the word "leave" in any of the system's languages (Wolof, Pulaar, Diola, English, or French). Including the community name will tell the system which community you would like to leave (if you belong to more than one), but is ultimately unnecessary.
Once someone has entered into a community they are ready to send and receive messages with the other users. Now, Fatou only has to write a message and send it to the "magic number" for it to then be distributed to all of the other registered users (represented in green). She pays only the cost of the initial message, while the message replication remains free. Those who have not registered in the system will not receive the message. This serves as a powerful community-wide forum that can be used to notify community members of important events or to engage a broader audience in community dialogue and discussion.
The only source of power in the village: the Orange phone tower. A guy is there full time to look after the phones.
Unoken = « enter » in Diola. The hut represents the SMS community. The stick figures represent the participants… Together they represent our attempt to reduce two months of work into a children’s picture.
The first attempt to use the system by Ouonck’s women’s association.
Guillaume’s telephone broke the system! Luckily, Jeff saves the day and repares it without too much complaining.
A quick review of the necessary commands to open an SMS message.
Here’s a glimpse of the community SMS service we’re developing…The basic idea for the project is to reinforce the “organized diffusion” social mobilization approach, used to spread development initiatives led by Senegalese communities. The project aims to increase awareness about activities and, consequently, increase their impact.
Quick video camera training of one youth by Guillaume. The videos will soon be posted, incha’allah!
Sountou Ndiaye (a Tostan supervisor) and Mamoudou Ba (community trainer or “facilitator” in Tostanese), at a meeting where participants gathered to try to come up with the best methods for the system’s introduction into an urban environment.
Keur Samba Laubé youth during the training.
Terra conducts a participant interview (here, with the Imam of KSL), in order to better understand the behavior of our target group when it comes to cell phone use.
Same, here with Annette and a teacher from the community.
Sylvan facilitates a discussion with more advanced users on system usage.
It’s a learning experience for all… Even for the programmers, who learn that the system doesn’t like accents and other irregular characters. That’s a problem when you’re working with Wolof, Pulaar and Diolaa!
Ibrahima Ndiaye, host of the local Tostan radio show, which began in Mbour and aims to combine two approaches to social mobilization.
