SAfm Question Box interview

Question Box’s writeup is excerpted below. We encourage you to download the informative booklet available on FES’s website.

This Way Up, a program from Radio New Zealand, features an interview with Question Box founder Rose Shuman. This Way Up is a weekly two-hour show that explores the things we use and consume.  18 Jun, 2011 (11′29″) Check it out!

Idealist has just added Question Box and Open Question to their Idea File. Check out the complete article!  Here’s an excerpt:

Why we’re adding it to the Idea File

• Circumvents the limitations of the web. If you’re like me and speak one of the top ten languages on the internet, then you probably take for granted that we have access to an incredible wealth of information with just one click. But the world has 1,000+ languages, and Google is available in “nearly 40″ of them.
• Gives most everyone access. Reaches people on the margins: the illiterate, women who are excluded from communication, the visually impaired, and those who are too poor to even have a mobile phone.
• Provides employment. Operators have the opportunity to use their language skills, and make some money while they’re at it.
• Utilizes local knowledge. In many villages, knowledge is passed down from generation to generation, or neighbor to neighbor. Question Box not only places values on its importance, but helps capture it for future use.

About Open Question:

Open Question, an initiative of Question Box, provides open-source tools combining custom software and printable how-to guidebooks that allow most any community organization to start their own local phone hotline.

Community organizations around the world have a lot of valuable information. However, right now it is difficult to get that information to the people who need it, in a timely manner. With Open Question, the organization can share their knowledge by setting up a simple hotline. People in the community can now call in during working hours, and benefit from the organization’s knowledge, even if there are no workers in the field available.

Using Open Question, most organizations that have a phone and a computer can set up a basic hotline  to locally share their knowledge using existing staff in the central office. Having this simple hotline invites beneficiaries and community volunteers to call the organization which allows people can to  get the answers they need, when they need it.

Open Question tools works well for all organizations across multiple sectors. The knowledge may be previously a day’s drive away, but with Open Question, it can now be accessed by a short phone call. Open Question tools will be available to everyone and distributed free of charge via Question Box website.

We are seeking community organizations to test out Open Question! Please Contact Us if you are interested.

About The Indigo Trust:

The Indigo Trust is a grant making foundation that funds technology-driven projects to bring about social change, largely in African countries.  The Trust focuses mainly on innovation, transparency and citizen empowerment.  The Indigo Trust makes grants to African projects or programmes, or to organisations who operate at least partly in African countries. We believe that access to information for all empowers people to change their own lives and communities. The Indigo Trust is one of the 18 Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts (SFCT). The Trusts work and fund autonomously across many different sectors and geographic regions but share offices and administration. For more information see our blog: http://indigotrust.wordpress.com

Question Box: Bringing the Power of the Internet to People Without Computers

Alex Goldmark

Google is great. Ask basic questions, get instant answers. You do it every day, and are more efficient for it. That access to information can be a matter of life or death or business survival in rural villages in the developing world, but the people who need basic information the most often don’t have internet access or computers. They may not even be able to read or write. So Rose Shuman, of the nonprofit Open Mind, came up with a plan to bring the value of a Google-type search to even the most remote parts of the globe.

Question Box is like a “fairy Godmother internet librarian for the village,” Shuman explained to the Guardian’s Activate conference in New York. It’s a powerful idea, but Shuman’s willingness to change course when it wasn’t working also provides a lesson for development aid organizations, as she explained to GOOD.

Read full article on GOOD.is