(Photo courtesy of gopal1035 on Flickr, CC BY 2.0.)

Back in November, I wrote about an ambitious BBC World Service Trust project in Bangladesh which encouraged the learning of English via mobile phone handsets. Since then, examples of mobile technology bringing together traditionally remote communities have been cropping up on my radar on a weekly basis.

The application of mobile technology in the sub-continent goes beyond education as villagers in the Uttar Pradesh region of India are now beginning to use cheap voice calls as a platform for basic news delivery.

Widespread illiteracy makes newspapers and SMS alerts inadequate as news delivery systems, and irregular electricity makes television and radio unreliable. Voice calls are also very inexpensive in India, with per-second billing and a downward price-war among the main operators. Voice calls over mobile phones are an easy way for villagers to stay informed.

Gaon Ki Awaaz, which means “Village Voice” in the Avhadi language, sends out twice-daily news calls to subscribers directly over their mobile phones. Launched in December 2009, the project recently expanded to 250 subscribers spread over 20 villages.

The goals of Gaon Ki Awaaz are:

• Create a local-language news broadcast that is accessible to non-literate villagers
• Create a means of getting information from villagers and re-broadcasting it
• Develop a self-sustaining business model through ad revenue

Here’s where I point out that all this was set-up for with a budget of just $1,000 (over 4 months)!

How does it work?

Gaon Ki Awaaz has two local reporters from the village of Rampur-Mathura, Divyakar Pratap Singh and Priya Gupta, who produce twice-daily news reports (broadcast at noon and 5 p.m.) by recording 30-to 60-second voice notes on their phones. These files are then sent via MMS to local editor Satyenda Pratap who converts the audio files and sends them on to the project coordinator at the International Media Institute of India for final review.

Subject matter for the broadcasts can include alerts such as when health camps are coming to a nearby area, farm tips, events happening in the village such as religious and/or community-oriented celebrations, or local-centric government announcements.

The initial feedback from the village is very heartening.  Villagers gather around mobiles, whose speaker phones are turned on  to listen to the bulletin.   A local merchant even released an advertisement that was broadcast on March 5, showing the supplementary economic potential of such services.

Further south of the region, a similar project is operating among the members of the Adivassi tribe in India. Like Gaon Ki Awaaz, it allows villagers to share and receive news over their mobile phones in their native language (in this case, Gondi). Launched by Shubhranshu Choudhary of the International Center for Journalists, the project focuses on citizen reports with dozens of citizen journalists reporting throughout the region.

View the video below for more information on how the set-up works:

These two projects highlight the true potential of mobile phone ubiquity within targeted communities to deliver cheap, reliable access to hyper-local news that may be more independent than government-controlled media.

As mobiles become more common in rural areas, similar projects can provide a way to keep citizens connected.

To find out more about these and other projects, visit the following links:

http://gaonkiawaaz.wordpress.com/about/

http://mobileactive.org/case-studies/gaon-ki-awaaz-news-alerts-rural-villagers

http://mobileactive.org/survey-voice-based-mobile-tech

http://www.psfk.com/2010/03/using-mobile-phones-to-broadcast-news.html