A toolkit for using mobile phones for campaigning and organising

As mobiles are increasingly widespread they will become a more viable way to reach constituents for advocacy organisations working in the global South. But despite their increasingly popularity, using them for any kind of organised activity or in tandem with other technologies such as the internet is still difficult and overwhelming. Many NGOs still need to go through a steep learning curve in order to take full advantage of this technology.

Tactical Tech is working with a small group of practitioners to develop a toolkit of easily accessible tools and materials about mobile technologies, for use by activists and social justice organisations. This project is carried out in collaboration with the African Human Rights organisation Fahamu.

This toolkit aims to provide solutions and guide advocates and NGOs in using mobiles to:

* Provide access to information such as recorded voice or audio and news updates
* Increase participatory processes and facilitation through polling, voting, surveying and incident reporting
* Enable citizen journalism and remote publishing by using mobiles to blog or create podcasts and to upload photographs
* Conduct awareness raising and outreach through demographically targeted or time based messaging, alerts, ringtones and games or small scale applications
* Coordinate and organise through organising meetings, flash mobilisation and calls to action
* Provide services and coordinate by providing alert/SOS for migrant workers and other communities, early warning systems and emergency response.

The toolkit will contain a range of case studies, interviews with practitioners and practical how-to guides as well as a detailed set of references for additional resources and reviews of web-based services.

This toolkit is due for full release in July 2008. To get a sneak preview of the content and read notes from our development sprint earlier this year take a look here

The Toolkit is developed with the help of the editorial team;

Ken Banks UK/US
Kiwanja.net

Evan Henshaw-Plath (US)
Protest.net

Tad Hirsch (US)
Txtmob

Brenda Burrell (Zimbabwe)
Kubatana

Dorothy Okello (Uganda)
Women of Uganda Network

Trixie Concepcion (Philippines)
TXTPower

Fran Boon (UK)
Oxfam UK

Geoffrey Muthondu (Kenya)
EPROM - Entrepreneurial Programming and Research On Mobiles

Christiana Iyoha (Nigeria)
PolDeC - Center for Policy and Development

Rick Bahague (Philippines)
Computer Professionals' Union

Kevin Nnadi (Nigeria)
International Center for Accelerated Development

Bobby Soriano (Philippines)
Institute for Popular Democracy