The first 72 hours of the SomaliaSpeaks deployment were particularly intense. The purpose of this joint write-up with Al Jazeera and partners is to share some of our early lessons learned in this novel collaboration.  Every deployment teaches us a multitude of lessons, so our partners at Al Jazeera, Souktel and Crowdflower joined us in this effort to share these. We look forward to future collaborations with them as we share this story with you.

This purpose of this pilot project was to let Somalis speak for themselves. For the first time ever, a prominent news organization, Al-jazeera, used crowdsourcing and SMS to let thousands of Somalis express for themselves how the crisis has been effecting their daily lives. More than 4,000 text messages were received within just a few days. Of these, over 1,000 were translated from Somali into English by about 80 translators. The resulting map of Somali voices received over 25,000 page views.

Before reviewing our lessons learned, we first wanted to thank K’naan and Sol for the initial inspiration behind this project. They got in touch with Ushahidi last year because they wanted to use the platform to help amplify Somali voices and show how capable the Somali people are. The initial version of this project was a prototype that was not activated. But thanks to Al- jazeera, Souktel and Crowdflower, we were able to revive the project to help amplify Somali voices in the international media.

Despite being a pilot, the project exemplified valid use cases in the application of pervasive technologies such as the web and mobile phone to news and information gathering. Somalia being a country run down by decades of neglect and war as well being rife with insecurity  provides one of the most challenging operational environments. Within a very short time we were able to curate information traversing through different parts of Somalia. This would have proved futile if not overly expensive or impossible had it been done using traditional news gathering techniques. Furthermore the information collected provides more insight on the realities of life in Somalia.

Projects like this involve a lot of effort and goodwill from the community and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore, building a strong community around the project goes a long way to solving problems and mitigating challenges. The community goes beyond the volunteer translators. We saw lots of support from the Somali blogging community, technology and media enthusiasts as well as innovators or innovation centric minds across the globe who all narrated or reported the Somalia Speaks project in their own ways. Having a strong community and inculcating a community ethos in  project operations and goals goes a long way influencing success. Without the community backing and promoting this project, it would have only been another temporary spotlight on Somalia.

The project worked as follows. Al-jazeera editorial selected the following question for interview:

“Al Jazeera would like to know — how has the Somalia Conflict affected your life? Please also include the name of your hometown in the response. Thanks.”

Our colleagues at Souktel distributed the question via text message to 5,000 of their SMS subscribers across Somalia. The responses were then forwarded from Souktel’s SMS platform to a customized Crowdflower micro-tasking platform. There, Somali-speaking volunteers translated and geo-located the text messages which were then manually uploaded to Al-jazeera’s Ushahidi platform.

There are three points worth highlighting in terms of lessons learned:

1. Messaging

While the question that was posed via SMS in no way asked for individuals to reply with their personal names, a small number of responders still added their names; some even added their full names. So these were deleted as quickly as possible. (Note that the numbers posted in the title of initial reports were not phone numbers but an assigned sequential number generated by the Crowdflower plugin). In hindsight, the SMS sent out with the question should have specifically asked that responders not include personal identifiers in their SMS replies.

2. Volunteer translation

While we had recruited a small number of trusted volunteers to translate the incoming text messages using a Crowdflower plugin, a decision was subsequently made to make the call for volunteers public to cope with the 2,500+ SMS replies received. This means that anonymous volunteers could see the original text messages, some of which initially  included personal identifiers. So we immediately reached out to Crowdflower for guidance to take the plug-in offline. We then began to manually delete several dozen text messages inside the Crowdflower plug-in that contained personal identifiers. Our colleagues at Al-jazeera took over this process and set up their own micro-tasking platform, removing all personal identifiers from the text messages awaiting translation and geo-location.

3. Security

One of Ushahidi’s community members tested the platform and identified a search security issue on Friday, December 9th. We quickly fixed this on the deployment. And, we issued a security patch to all deployers. (http://security.ushahidi.com)

In the future, for this type of “The People Speak” project,  we recommend taking the following steps:

1. On large multi-partner deployments: Global organizations work in multiple timezones, so communications plans need to include 24/7 points of contacts for each organization.
2. Text potential interviewees to ask whether they agree to be interviewed and to have their responses made public before sending out the main question.
3. Text those individuals who have consented to being interviewed with the desired question and ask them to include the name of their town but not their personal names.
4. Recruit trusted translation volunteers well in advance and ensure that the micro-tasking translation platform has no personal identifiers.
5. Stagger the launch of the text messages and the live map. That is, start with the SMS broadcast and spend however many days/weeks doing the bulk of the translation with vetted volunteers. The system that holds the raw text messages should obviously be fully secure. When the majority of text messages are processed, launch the live map and gradually add the already translated text messages to grow the map steadily over a period of days/weeks.

At Ushahidi, we’ve also made some plans to help all deployers in our community:

• We’re building a program for privacy and security education for our users in 2012. (Blog posts, webinars, videos and meet-ups.)
• Best practices for security and privacy will be included as essential documentation on our soon to be re-launched wiki.
• Ushahidi is open source and the community is a large part of what makes it work.  We’ll build a security working group focused on our software, but it’ll take your participation to make it work.
• Alongside our partners within the CrisisMappers community, we will participate in a security and privacy working group. This field is growing and collective lessons can only improve each map action.

Crisis mapping and journalism are both in the nascent stages of collaborating on real-time news connecting diaspora and citizens alike. Al-Jazeera is leading the fray in testing and implementing live maps into their fast-moving news cycle toolkit. We are thankful for all their efforts and look forward to further collaboration.

The Peace Heroes project, which Ushahidi highlighted before as a use of the platform for a non-crisis situation has concluded with the selection of 8 heroes. They represent people who contributed positively to the post election period of early 2008 when there was violence, instability and political stalemate. The heroes were nominated through SMS, phone calls, email and web submissions. It is with admiration that we would like to salute the following heroes.

1. Alfred Sakwa Sabatia (Eastleigh) – Alfred is 21 years and grew up as an orphan. Since 1996 he lived under sponsorship of the St. Teresa’s Catholic Church in Eastleigh. He got hurt while bringing a friend’s child to school. He decided to help others during the crisis. He took food, clothes, and utensils given by friends, churches and organizations to Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps in Mathare, Air Force and Huruma. He organized peace talks, composed peace songs, verses and plays, started a peace self help group to keep the youth engaged named “High hopes”, “The jaws” and “Joapapes”, he joined organizations like Eastleigh Youth Network. Currently, he is recording three new peace songs.

2. Esther Wanza Muisu (Mombasa) – Esther is 42 years old and a Kamba married to a Kikuyu. She lives in Mikoni, Mombasa. During the period December 28th – January 15th she helped people with food and shelter, a total of 25 people slept overnight at her place. She said; “I know what it means to lose”.

3. Family Pabari (Kisumu and Nairobi) – This Asian family has been active in charity work for twenty years. During the post election violence they paid for transport for Kikuyus and Kisii who fled Kisumu. They assisted Luos who returned to Kisumu area with food, seeds, farming equipment and medical support. Mrs. Pabari is the driving force behind their charity work, especially through her organization ‘Ladies in Action’ supporting orphans and elders. Mr. Pabari retired in 2007 and dedicated his time to charity. Son Dipesh Pabari and his wife Elodie Yard actively support their parents and raise online funds for GBP 5,000 through their organization Sukuma Kenya during the post-election violence.

4. Joel Cheruiyot Sigei (Bomet) – Joel is a 48 year old Kipsigis who hid 18 people, 4 Kisii families, for 2 weeks in his compound. He did this secretly to hide them from the community. He gave them maize from his stock and milk from his two dairy cows. Furthermore, he helped children in an IDP camp by bringing them 40 litres of milk every day. When the violence ended, he arranged transport for the 4 families.

5. Freddy Kamakei Ole Sangiriaki (Narok) – ‘Freddy’ is 28 years old Maasai who wanted to protect his Kikuyu friend from an angry group of Maasais looking for ‘enemies’. He got beaten up and decided that this could not be accepted. He and his neighbor friends formed a group called ‘Kenyan Initiative – by Kenyans for Kenyans’ consisting of mostly Maasai together with Kikuyu, Kisii and Luo men. They went out at night to follow and find the angry mob. By talking to them they convinced them to stop the violence and killing after one week. As they went around Narok area, other groups copied their example and set up similar ‘peacekeeping groups’. As a result, (Freddy claims) the violence ended much sooner in Narok area than in the rest of the country.

6. Maureen ‘MKenya’ Auma Obonyo (Kibera-Kisumu Ndogo) – When others were too afraid, ‘Maureen Mkenya’ went out and helped the weak in Kibera. When Kibera started ‘burning’ there was a sudden shortage of food. She witnessed the anger and despair from close by. Uzima Foundation received food donations and Maureen distributed food and food vouchers for them to the sick and the old. Maureen hid her Luo identity by calling herself Maureen MKenya. Some people thought she was a Kikuyu and she was beaten up three times for this reason. She furthermore facilitated peace sessions and organized football tournaments and drama festivals.

7. Ann Wangari ‘Mugeci Damiano’ (Nariobi) – Next to her own three children Ann (39) takes care of 15 orphans in the age 6 to 15 years. During the post-election period she went to Muranga district and found 59 children from a burned children’s homes, children from Molo and Narok who needed help, she chose the youngest and brought them to her home in Kasarani. One is Luo and the rest are Kikuyu. All children are now in school. She receives support from friends, church and family.

8. Paul Omukaya Ayodi (Kawangware) – This 39 years old pastor took immediate action after the election violence broke loose. He took orphans and people who lost their homes to a school for shelter. He helped a total of 20 families of which 5 families are still supported by him, mostly with contributions through the church. One family is Luo, two Kikuyu families, some Luhya and other tribes. Every day he works in a bar in Nairobi from 3pm to late and the rest of his time he dedicates to charity.

The peace heroes project is an initiative of:
Butterfly Works – A social design agency helping people around the world to get a fair deal]

Media Focus on Africa Foundation – Strengthens the capacity for democracy and human development within societies in Africa through exchange of information, and facilitation of dialogue using the media

Executed with the help of:

Nairobits – a Digital Design School that provides education to the Nairobi slum youth

Ushahidi – Platform for aggregation for information from the public for use in crisis response

For additional information on UNSUNG PEACE HEROES see www.peaceheroes.ushahidi.com or contact: Marten Schoonman, Media Focus on Africa Foundation, marten [at] mediafocusonafrica [dot]org, +254 20 3861435/6.

Ushahidi extends its thanks to the above mentioned organizations, and Melissa Tully for writing a use case study on this implementation of Ushahidi.The use case will provide the lessons learned from this implementation, something that will be very useful to future users or testers of the Ushahidi platform. We will distribute that case study as soon as it is completed, so please stay tuned. Thank you.

Rachel Kung’u is an amazing woman, and has been quite a heavy user of Ushahidi. Ory and I had a chance to meet with her while in Nairobi this June, and we talked at length about the violence that happened earlier in the year.

She started the Peace Caravan idea back in 2003:

“the idea to start the PEACE CARAVAN was to encourage the youth to form as many youth groups as possible at there own local community in order to tap the available resources within the area for self –reliance and community development. To emphasize that education is not the only way to success but teamwork, hard work, discovering own talents and turning them to a career into a better future.”

Rachel has been active with the youth of the region for some time, working as a voluntary youth philanthropist for a number of years. When the violence broke out in January, she and her team were particularly well positioned to physically go into areas and promote peace.

Even with the end to the major violence of January and February, there are some big issues with the internally displaced people (IDP) who are trying to return to their homes. Rachel is running another Peace Caravan right now, you can find out more on her blog.

“…the issue of Repatriation of IDPs is still alarming, i will briefly say that it was a rushed repatriation and the returnees have no choice since they are returning in order to be considered for compensation. Even though it is the case Kuresoi in Molo Distrist and Kipkelion in Kericho was a vacated place and the IDPS have not taken risk of going back despite the conditions.”

I would encourage anyone who is interested in seeing actual change happen to contact Rachel. She knows more about involving and engaging youth in proactive ways than almost anyone else I know. Her projects also need funding, and you’d be surprised at how much she can do with so little.

The composition of ther IDP’s is 33 male adults over 18 years, 2 of them fathers to the families, 2 women with nursing babies born during the skirmishes and on transit from Molo, 1 High school boy who needs to go to shool, 11 primary shool children and 3 kids at home based motherly care.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a report on Wednesday following a three week fact-finding mission focussing on the violence that engulfed Kenya in the wake of the disputed Presidential election on 27 December 2007.

The report suggests that greater accountability and an end to impunity will be key to addressing the underlying problems and preventing further outbreaks, thereby reinforcing the ongoing reconciliation process and power-sharing agreement.

The 20-page report by an OHCHR fact-finding team that visited Kenya from 6 to 28 February concludes that, while irregularities in the election process were the primary trigger of the violence, a number of underlying causes – including discrimination, poverty and disenfranchisement – fuelled the crisis.

The team visited 15 of the worst affected locations, and interviewed 188 victims and witnesses of post-electoral violence, as well as members of the Government and opposition parties, law enforcement agencies, members of civil society, NGOs, UN agencies, diplomats and other interested parties.

The report identifies three “distinct but sometimes concurrent patterns of violence – spontaneous, organised and retaliatory.” The first phase began immediately after the announcement of the contested election results, when opposition supporters took to the streets in protest, especially in Kisumu and the Nairobi slum areas; the second wave consisted of organised attacks in the Rift Valley which appear to have targeted non-Kalenjin communities and those perceived as opponents of the opposition ODM party, including the Kikuyu, Kisii and Luyha communities. In retaliation, gangs of Kikuyu youths subsequently attacked non-Kikuyu groups in Naivasha, Nakuru and Mathare

In all, more than 1,200 Kenyans were reported killed, thousands more injured, over 300,000 people displaced and around 42,000 houses and many businesses were looted or destroyed. A significant number of cases of sexual violence were also reported.

Noting that under international law, states bear the primary responsibility for protecting the rights of all individuals within their territory, the OHCHR report indicates that in most districts, the police were unable to maintain and enforce law and order. According to most of the victims and witnesses interviewed, the police were often present but were either overwhelmed or passive during the attacks.

However, the fact-finding team also received detailed information describing how in various places, most notably in the Kibera slum area of Nairobi, Eldoret and Kisumu, the policing of demonstrations and crowds was conducted with excessive use of force resulting in death and injuries of many, including children. According to the Government’s figures, 123 people were killed by the police, although an analysis of hospital reports suggests the actual number may be higher. The OHCHR team notes that, at the time of the mission, only one police officer was under investigation for brutality, and says the disparity sends a clear message to the public of impunity for police abuse.

According to the report, impunity is deeply entrenched in Kenya and is not confined to the police alone. The report concludes that consistent failure to act on the findings and recommendations of various state-commissioned inquiries and studies have distanced the citizens from state institutions. Most of those interviewed identified the failure to prosecute perpetrators (including planners and organisers) of past violence and human rights violations – and the consequent message this gives to perpetrators that they are able to act in total impunity – as “major contributing factors to the violence.”

Noting that the violence had caused massive displacement, the report also stressed the need for the authorities to ensure that displaced people are able to freely decide when or whether to return, resettle or reintegrate through a voluntary and informed choice, free from political considerations or other pressures.

The report welcomed the 28 February power-sharing agreement reached within the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation process, and noted that important commitments have been made in the context of the dialogue to carry out reforms to address long-standing issues, including inequalities and accountability, constitutional and institutional reforms. The accords include an Independent Review Committee to investigate all aspects of the 2007 Presidential electoral process; a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission; a constitutional review process, and a Commission of Inquiry with a mandate to investigate the circumstances surrounding the violence that occurred during the two months following the election.

The OHCHR report makes a number of recommendations related to these processes, laying a strong emphasis on accountability.

Failure to carry out reforms could undermine the fragile improvement in security that has taken hold since the signing of the power-sharing agreement, the report said.

The rest of the itinerary for the convoy includes the following stops:
NAKURU
Tue Mar 11th:
* Msafara travels to Nakuru
* Pastor’s Prayer meeting to confess on behalf of city
* Volunteers work with Nakuru IDP’s
Wed Mar 12th:
* Prayer service/concert to cleanse city
ELDORET
Thur Mar 13th:
* Pastor’s Prayer meeting to confess on behalf of city
* Volunteers work with Eldoret IDP’s
Fri Mar 14th:
* Prayer service/concert to cleanse city
KISUMU
Sat Mar 15th
* Pastor’s Prayer meeting to confess on behalf of city
* Volunteers work with Kisumu IDP’s
Sun Mar 16th
* Prayer service/concert to cleanse city
Mon Mar 17th
* Travel Back to Nairobi
To contribute or participate, the contacts to reach out to are on the Msafara weblog, and if you would like to donate, the bank account information is available on the Msafara website.

The clip was filmed by Slum-tv reporters, who had been reporting on life in Mathare through the eyes of the residents themselves. Slum-tv continued to document the disruption of communities due to post election violence, by featuring first hand reports from Mathare slums in Nairobi. You can find more videos, information and blogposts on the Slum-tv site.