here's some brief background on what I'd like to discuss/present at the Workshop. Despite increasing interest in the potential for mobile technologies to help combat issues such as poverty, disease, illiteracy and the abuse of human rights, many non-profit organisations are missing out due to a lack of tools, and a lack of focus on their specific needs. Many mobile-based ICT solutions are either out of reach due to cost or complexity. When we read about advances in the use of mobile technology at the bottom of the pyramid, we usually do it from a top-down perspective - through new developments in the manufacture of mobile devices, or the launch of mega-platforms which seek to build Africa-wide marketplaces. Rarely are the grassroots organisations working on the ground heard, this despite them perhaps being best placed to help develop solutions to their specific needs and problems, and those of the communities they work with. As a topic I recently blogged about (see http://www.blogspot.kiwanja.net/2008/01/social-mobile-and-long-tail.html), I believe that there is currently too much focus on the high end of solutions development, and not enough in the long tail. At the Workshop I propose to talk about my approach to developing tools for the long tail. FrontlineSMS, a text messaging hub which I developed in 2005 specifically for grassroots NGOs in the developing world, has been used by grassroots NGOs in over forty countries for a range of activities, including blood donor recruitment and assisting human rights workers, to promoting government accountability, keeping medical students informed about education options, providing security alerts to field workers, election monitoring, the capture and exchange of vegetable (and coffee) price information, the distribution of weather forecasts, the co-ordination of healthcare workers, the organising of political demonstrations, the carrying out of surveys and the reporting and monitoring of disease outbreaks. Its use has been reported on the BBC News website, on the BBC World Service, in the Nokia industry magazine and more recently in The Economist. Late last year, I also ran a competition aimed, again, at grassroots NGOs. nGOmobile is a text message-based competition aimed exclusively and unashamedly at grassroots non-profit organisations working for positive social and environmental change throughout the developing world. These people don’t lack passion and commitment, simply the tools and resources. Every year, nGOmobile aims to help a number of these NGOs leapfrog the mobile technology barrier by encouraging them to think more about how mobile technology could be applied in their work. NGOs are encouraged to submit project ideas based on what they're going to do, rather than what they've done, and the best projects win laptops, phones, modems, software and cash to enable them to carry out the work. 2007 winners came from Kenya, Uganda, Azerbaijan and Mexico. If this is of interest then I would happy to make a presentation, and to also cover some of the wider issues I come across, including the need to appreciate the cultural, geographical and financial landscape when seeking to provide information to people living in rural areas in developing countries. My work is not academic, but a first hand account of the problems as I see them. Many thanks. Ken www.kiwanja.net