News
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WawaRed*, Peru: improving health communication to benefit vulnerable mothers and children
Using ICTs and health Information to empower young women, the WawaRed project was launched in 2010 to support the Peruvian government's efforts to improve maternal health by tackling the poor availability and quality of health data. The system was initially piloted in 15 health centres in one district and was of scaled up to include 350 centres countrywide in 2017.The ultimate goal of WawaRed is to improve health services by reaching pregnant women with information designed to prevent unnecessary deaths and complications. Standardising and sharing data through an electronic health record system helps to ensure that the right information and advice can benefit vulnerable mothers and children. For example, the system sends customised text messages in their local language to pregnant women based on their health profile.
Over the course of this project, more than 54,000 pregnant indigenous women were registered in the WawaRed system, more than 100 midwives were trained to use eHealth records and to gather data, and 28 ministry statisticians were trained in data analysis.
Talks are now underway with Peru’s mobile telephone companies to fund the service on a national scale. Eventually, everyone in Peru could have a single eHealth record, leading to better health and healthcare and allowing the government to use its healthcare resources efficiently and effectively.
- View details of the WawaRed project
- Read the summary of the results of an impact assessment.
- Video: English, Spanish
*WawaRed ("wawa" means baby in Quechua; "red" is network in Spanish)
Source: The Communication Initiative, IDRC website and mobilecitizen (YouTube)
Image credit: Iván Reátegui Ismodes
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A Million Stories: an intercultural storytelling project
With the main objective to help refugees socialise and express themselves without necessarily speaking the host country language, ‘A Million Stories (AMS)’ is a project led by four library services - Roskilde Libraries (Denmark), in collaboration with Future Library (Greece) and the public libraries of Malmö (Sweden) and Cologne (Germany)*.The four partners invited refugees and asylum seekers, who had to flee from their homes, family and friends in the hope of living life in safety, to visit the libraries and share their life stories, thereby giving people a voice and support that their voice is heard. As a result, the project created a digital library of human experiences, containing more than 600 stories from refugees who have fled to EU in recent years.
The AMS platform enables refugees to share their experiences, culture and life stories in various formats including film, audio, visual and written forms. By doing so, not only are a wide range of stories included, allowing refugees to tell them regardless of language and storytelling capabilities, but they can also communicate to a wider audience.
The combination of “A Million Stories” range of formats and geographical outreach creates a realistic picture of refugee/asylum seekers’ lives and what they have been through until the present day, enabling communication not only on a social level but also on an educational or even political level. The project has also fostered respect for intercultural diversity in the host populations by creating references everyone can recognize from their own everyday lives.
*co-funded by the European Union's Creative Europe agency.
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Mobile Planetarium, Sri Lanka
Haritha Tharanga, a Sri Lankan independent journalist, living in the town of Horana, has made a mobile planetarium through his own resourcefulness and raising small amounts of funding through assignments. When starting the construction, Tharanga needed a ball projector, but it cost more money and Tharanga could not afford it, so he made his own circuit to show the star patterns. It took 5 days to establish this in place.
The diameter of the theatre is 60 feet and 300 persons can watch the show each performance. Tharanga’s idea is to spread knowledge of astronomy among the rural people, especially amongst rural children. The smiles of the children bring him happiness and pleasure.
Follow details on Mobile Planetarium Facebook.
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“Data4Good” series 2019 celebrating International Women's Day, March 8th
The Data4Good Movement first started in 2011 with Data Kind in New York City and has spread around the world. Meet the "frontierswomen" who use the world's best technology, to bring together top data scientists and local communities from around the globe to work with social change. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation to make tech more accessible and welcoming to women, this is the first instalment of a 2-part series on gender equity in data & technology for 2019 International Women’s Day. View the first piece of the series. Check out the other pieces below on the Rockefeller Foundation’s #data4good series leading up to SXSW 2019.
- How Much Longer Can We Continue to Overlook the “Power of Local”?
- How Do We Ensure “Data for Good” Means Data for All? Consider These Three Principles
- The Gender Gap in Innovation and How to Break the Digital Ceiling
- Fusion: Innovation through Integration
Background
More than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are produced every day. This abundance of data, combined with rapidly advancing analytics capabilities, could improve the lives of billions of people around the world. On 22 January 2019, the Rockefeller Foundation and Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth announced Data Science for Social Impact, a new model for collaborative philanthropy that will build and accelerate the use of data science to solve important social challenges.
With a joint, $50-million commitment over five years, the collaborative investments are focused on three strategic focus areas:
- Capacity & Leadership: Connecting talent to needs and creating data science solutions for common issue areas, such as community health work and inclusive growth, as well as highlighting thought leadership and supporting organizational change.
- Tools & Data: Investing in tools and analytics to give the social and civic sector
actionable insights to enhance their effectiveness. - Policy & Governance: Developing research to help data science and domain experts define problems that data can help solve, and identifying solutions to the challenges of data governance and the responsible use of data.
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Western Balkan Information Literacy Conference (WBIMLC) 2019: Freedom, Accuracy and Truth
June 20-21,
Bihac, Bosnia and Herzegovina Call for papers issued. Conference main themes and topics include:
- Information Literacy in the modern world
- Librarians as support to the lifelong learning process
- Media and Information Literacy – theoretical approaches (standards, assessment, collaboration, etc.)
- New aspects of education/strategic planning, policy, and advocacy for Information Literacy in a digital age
Important dates:
- Abstract submission deadline: 10 April 2019
- Full Paper submission deadline: 10 May 2019
- Notification of acceptance: 25 May 2019
- Dissemination of final programme: by 05 June 2019
Abstracts & papers are to be sent to wbimlc2019@wbimlc.org
Contact: Padraig Kirby M.A., Limerick Institute of Technology, Limerick, Ireland
e-mail: padraig.kirby@lit.ie -
Indonesian Science Project Olympiad 22 – 24 February 2019
The ISPO (Indonesian Science Project Olympiad) aims to encourage a love of science, cultivate scientific thinking, conduct research, and develop and produce scientific products. Involving Indonesian youth who attend school it is also seen to make an important contribution to the community by preparing young people to be creative, innovative, and responsible.Olympiad activities take place in the fields of biology, physics, chemistry, technology, environment, and computers.
This year, 120 finalists were selected. Details in English.
Background to ISPO
In a globalized world, competition between countries is still ongoing in various dimensions. The main factors that cause such competition are matters of science and technology. For development, the ESPO community feels that the important thing is not the problem of the transfer of science and technology, but efforts to produce its own technology. ISPO also aims to cultivate scientific thinking, conduct research, develop and produce scientific products.
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International Open Science Conference, Berlin, 19 to 20 March 2019
Registration is now open for the Open Science Conference 2019. It is the 6th international conference of the Leibniz Research Alliance Science 2.0. and provides a unique forum for researchers, librarians, practitioners, infrastructure provider, decision-makers in politics and science, publisher, and other important stakeholders to discuss the latest and future developments around Open Science.
- Conference website
- Programme
- Twitter Hashtag: #osc2019
- Conference website
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Pragati: using interactive games to examine, discuss and reflect on family planning in Nepal
With thanks to HIP-net Pragati is a package of nine interactive games developed and refined through robust proof of concept and pilot testing in Nepal. Through game-play and critical reflection questions, they sparked challenging conversations in communities around fertility and family planning, side-effects of family planning methods, and social norms that drive birth timing and family size.
The games utilize clear and informative adult learning techniques that challenge negative social norms in non-threatening ways to facilitate change
The Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) has recently collaborated with Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development (GRID) to turn four of the Pragati games into mobile game apps in Nepal. Using these apps, ‘menstrual health management’ (MHM) will be integrated with fertility awareness information onto free mobile phone game platforms. Read more
Extracts below from the introductory video on Pragati (8 mins):
"People came to play for fun, and left with a lot of knowledge"
"The games have made counselling much easier"
"The games inform people of the side effects and which family planning methods are available to use"
"Previously, only women came to the clinic. Now women and men come together"
"I feel pride in what I've learned. I didnt know about condoms, pills, IUCDs etc..."
"We had been blaming women for giving birth to girls because society told us to. We used to think men were responsible for birth of boys and women were responsible for birth of boys. Now we know that's not true"
"Ultimately we hope this information gives people the best opportunity to make decisions for themselves and their families"
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Hand hygiene toolkit and teaching materials in Spanish and English
Developed by Nurses International, who work to resource the world's nursing programs.A hand hygiene toolkit and teaching materials are now available in Spanish and English.
Working with strategic partners Nursing International’s core activity creates nursing educational materials to enhance existing nursing programmes at schools and universities around the world. These educational materials are created to give graduates the necessary tools, knowledge, and relationships to operate nurse-led clinics, act as primary healthcare providers, and lead holistic and positive change in the communities they call home.
N.I. is also building a curriculum to expose students to practical instruction in community development. Through classroom instruction and internships, nurses develop the understanding, the ability, and the networks to improve the health of their communities by addressing basic healthcare needs in practical and sustainable ways.
Register for: Additional resources for Students or Educators
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Trust in Science and Changing Landscapes of Communication
Published today by ALLEA (the All European Academies) this discussion paper examines how the increasing use of #socialmedia and other digital transformations affect and challenge #trust relations between #science, #media and #society.The technological, political and social changes underlying transformations imply a whole new set of processes and mechanisms that need to be dealt with in order to understand and tackle the challenges they pose to trust in social institutions and ultimately democracy in a digital society.
The paper concluded that without a supportive political backing that values scientific methods and standards of research integrity, and effectively protects science and society from the threats identified “all well-meaning efforts might come to naught”
Trust in Science and Changing Landscapes of Communication. Full text download.
The findings of the ALLEA Working Group Truth, Trust and Expertise were discussed in an international forum “Democracy in a Digital Society – Trust, Evidence and Public Discourse in a Changing Media Environment", that took place on 24 January, at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.