In 2010 it was noted on the Ushahidi blog that when running a full Ushahidi campaign, installing the software was only 10% of the work. The Toolkit we have just launched aims to cover the other 90% including a ‘How To’ and a Case Study, plus guidelines for evaluating the efficiency and impact of your campaign. Also the visual graphics we used in our campaigns are in the Kit.
We hope it will inspire and assist others in their campaign design processes.

Toolkit pdf Cover

The contents are based on our experiences running two peace campaigns using Ushahidi, to name: ‘Unsung Peace Heroes‘  which was run in the aftermath of the post election violence in Kenya, 2008 with early Ushahidi software and later the Building Bridges Peace campaign in 2010. This again was rung with Ushahidi only this time incorporated into a Joomla! Site. In both campaigns we partnered with Media Focus on Africa and NairoBits.

The Toolkit, called Butterfly Toolkit No. 1: Designing social change campaigns also includes the zipped software to run Ushahidi in a Joomla! site and the necessary documentation.


Who’s it for?

Joomla! Developers, Social Change activists, researchers and perhaps you.

Joomla! Developers who want to have the Ushahidi mapping tool incorporated into their Joomal! Sites.
You can see how we combined it here in the Building Bridges site, the advantage to us was that we had more control over the visual styling and could add the functionality, that a project could be updated over time. If you install community builder component swell you can easily expand) you your Ushahidi mapping site with profile functionality for all your users. In the software section can download the software, the documentations and see a demo version.

Toolkit website

Social Change activists who want to know more about how a crossmedia campaign can help their cause. In the How To section of the toolkit there are steps to follow in order to focus, design, run and evaluate your campaign. And for the non-designers out there, we have shared all the graphics, logo, t-shirt designs and poster designs from the Building bridges campaign, for others to use as they please.

Images and designs for download

Researchers, in the Case Study, based on our and Media Focus on Africas’ experiences and the research done by a Kenyan research team we share the lessons learned. We sought answers to questions such as:
- what motivated folk to take part, (was it the competition element or the chance to interact with like minded peacemakers) and
- was it meaningful to their peace work to take part in such a mapping campaign.

We were pleasantly surprised by the engagement expressed by participants and their wish to continue to invest in a sustainable peace movement. On the other hand the prevailing gap between rural and city in patterns of new media usage was confirmed. Despite our best efforts, for example engaging more than 12 rural radio stations and working with Peacenet local counterparts throughout the country, and making it posible to engage with the campaign using only sms or voice, the campaign strategies still favoured an urban public.

Case Study contents



Relevant Links

Butterfly Toolkit No.1: Designing social change campaigns

Building Bridges Peace campaign (website)

Unsung Peace Heroes campaign, (website)

Download the Case study PDF, about Building Bridges campaign

Download the ‘How To’ PDF, Design a Social Change campaign


You, for whatever causes or plans one has, we hope the Toolkit will find many applications. Our partner in Cambodia is using the Toolkit (amongst other strategies) to run a country wide two year fair elections campaign there, in Mexico an underground music group are starting to map and connect the upcoming music scene and in Pakistan a partner is looking into mapping school quality in relation to cases of teacher absenteeism and other indicators.

If you have suggestions we’ll be glad to hear, the software has some known issues which could be improved and if you have plans for social change campaigns we’ll be glad to connect and support if possible. Of course mainly we hope this toolkit will inspire and help other to do social change campaigns for a better world.

[Guest blog post by Irene Guijt based on work with Marc Maxson, John Hecklinger, Zipporah Sangiluh and Dave Snowden]

What is SenseMaker?

“Creating security. Many people leaving in slums have lived in fear due to lackof peace and lack of criminal cases many have been raped but to day we can havesomething to enjoy and although there is still little to be said to be add on it. Thereis a certain group in our community called “vijana amani pamoja” (VAP) who havereally provided security among the community they have held different workshop educating people to leave in peace and respect each others property they havealso advise the youths to involve in various money generating activities which will keep them busy and get money to cater for their instead of stealing other people property.”- Original story shared by 16-20 male in Nairobi for SenseMaker pilot project

Imagine collecting thousands of stories like the one above from citizens, community organizers, and NGO staff about what really matters to them … and where change is showing. Now imagine looking through a prism at these stories to find patterns and compare and contrast patterns between community efforts, organisations, burning issues, locations, citizens of different ages, and more. And imagine getting a continuous flow of stories that allows people to see needs as they emerge and act on them. In 2010, GlobalGiving (GG) undertook a pilot in Kenya to see if this was possible.

The GG experience, funded by Rockefeller Foundation was based on SenseMaker , an approach and software developed by Cognitive Edge. It allows organisations to collect andanalyse large numbers of stories, to discuss and act on these, on a continuous basis. This first experience in the development sector suggests that much is possible, in particular to overcome the lack of quick feedback that hinders social justice. Understanding change as it emerges, seeking surprises and making real-time adjustments is key to meeting people’s needs efficiently.

We know that people learn by sharing experiences in many conversations – and they ac ton them. Ushahidi exemplifies this idea. SenseMaker is based on the same idea – that people’s stories matter. Large numbers of lived stories are collected to show a wide diversity of perspectives and their commonalities and differences. In the GlobalGiving pilot, almost 3000 stories of people’s experiences were collected by volunteers over only 10 weeks. For GlobalGiving, an important feature of the approach is that the story owners code their ownstories, but within a shared question framework. The questions that GlobalGiving askedsought to find out if communities efforts were meeting local needs and who was benefitting. The SenseMaker software then allows patterns to be found in the thousands of stories.And then people return to clusters of stories related to intriguing patterns to discuss, make sense and plan actions.

Stories can be collected in different ways from people. In Kenya, we used basic pen and paper with community volunteers of projects on the GlobalGiving web platform.

But stories are also collected through dedicated web sites and trials with smart pens or mobile phoneapplications are underway. But… and it is a significant ‘but’… stories, if not used, are just static. To make the storiesfuel action requires sharing and discussing them. It is also about How can people who took the time to share their stories have access to them? This is where the Ushahidi platform becomes useful. GG has put all its stories on an Ushahidi platform (http://www.globalgivingcommunity.com/kenya). Over 2500 voices from Nairobi slums and rural Kenya can no longer be ignored. Stories for specific locations, about specific topics, concerning specific organizations can be read by anyone. These anonymous stories markthe beginning of a conversation over time of need and change.

Once collected, stories can be shared as they keep coming in. In 2010, we had a one-offround of story collecting but GG is experimenting with ways to keep stories flowing in.Stories have the power to shape actions when, over time, patterns are compared andchanges are revealed.

There is much more to be told about SenseMaker and the GlobalGiving work. And much more remains to be tested. How can stories not only become a record of need and effort butbe used to challenge and refine resource allocation and prioritise activities? How can theybe used for advocacy? 2011 will see more work on these and other questions.The best place for information on GG’s work with SenseMaker is: http://www.globalgiving.org/story-tools, especially the online document ‘The Real Book’ (PDF). For more information, contact Marc Maxson (mmaxson@globalgiving.org) or Irene Guijt (iguijt@learningbydesign.org).

Since then it has been a crazy ride…from producing an incredible open source platform and working towards scale, to building and working with an incredibly talented team, to seeing multiple uses of Ushahidi around the world, to numerous awards and press mentions.

For me, what has always been the most important aspect of the work we do has remained simple, building a tool that makes it easy for individuals and groups to tell their stories, and making it easy for these stories to be mapped/visualized.

Ushahidi has grown to be that and much more, thanks especially to the wider community – which saw potential uses beyond crisis reporting and who largely shaped our growth and direction to date be it through translation efforts (Ushahidi now available in 10 languages!), or custom themes, or pushing for a hosted version (Crowdmap), or challenging us to address the shortcomings of the platform (through tools like SwiftRiver and our community resources page).

Beyond the growth of Ushahidi as a platform and an organization, I always tell people that I am most proud of the fact that the Ushahidi story has provided an inspiration to other techies in Kenya and Africa – an example of the kind of talent the continent holds, but also a reminder that we have just scratched the surface. And so after 3 years, I feel it is time for me to take on the next challenge. Those of you who know me well know I’ve got a 1001 ideas floating in my head that I need to get out☺

Where I am headed? I will be joining Google in the new year as the Policy Manager for Africa. The role will involve developing policy /strategies on a number of areas of relevance to Google and the Internet in Africa and will involve working with different parties including government leaders, policy makers, regulators, industry groups and so on. It is a huge opportunity to bring Google’s resources to bear as far as the growth and development of the internet in Africa (and hopefully a reminder of why I went to law school in the first place!). I’m very excited about the move and I hope I can continue to lean on your support and insight in my new role.

To my co-founders – the ride continues! To the most amazing team, I am watching this space! To our Board of Directors, thank you for your insight and guidance! To our partners, especially those who took a risk on us in the early days, most grateful! To the wonderful readers of Kenyan Pundit, whose stories and willingness to share in those dark days of 2007-8 – you were my inspiration, thank you! To the wonderful wider community of Ushahidi – volunteers, translators, crowdmappers, critics (yes I love you too!), journalists, people who supported us in the early days when people asked Usha-what?, THANK YOU THANK YOU.

Need to reach me….you all know I live on the internets right…find me @kenyanpundit or kenyanpundit-at-gmail

- O

We’re midway through the main day for Uchaguzi, and all is going well. The tech team is working hard on fixing a couple bugs (we had issues with the Twitter feed and email reports earlier), but we’re now moving on that. We’ve got hundreds of incoming SMS messages and the election monitoring group we’re partnered with (CRECO) is doing a fantastic job of getting those incoming reports verified.

There are 50+ volunteers in the iHub right now. They’re being masterfully organized by Ushahidi Jessica Heinzelman, doing all sorts of things from verifying and approving incoming reports to scanning different media sources for information.

• Total Reports: 577, Verified: 80.07% at 1:38pm Kenya time.
• If you’re interested in technicalities, you can check out our Situation Room.
• If you want to find pictures, there’s a new Uchaguzi Flickr group. Anyone can add their referendum pictures to it as well.

How to Report:

1. By sending a message to 3018
2. By sending an email to reports.uchaguzi@gmail.com
3. By sending a tweet with the hashtag/s #uchaguzi
4. By filling this form

• We’ll be updating our Situation Room with reports and updates during the deployment.
• More information in our last blog post on the Uchaguzi deployment.

Here’s our press release on Uchaguzi in Kenya.

News Release:

Contact name: Erik Hersman
Phone: 0729 157 257
Contact email: info@ushahidi.com

TEXT #3018 via PERSONAL CELL PHONES to REPORT FRAUD, VIOLENCE, OR PEACE DURING KENYA’s CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM VOTE

NAIROBI, Kenya (August 3, 2010) —The crowdsourcing platform Ushahidi announces a short code to monitor Kenya’s constitutional referendum on August 4, 2010. This will be the second attempt to give Kenya a new constitution. The first was in 2005, and the motion was defeated. It has been noted that the failure to adopt a constitution was one of the causes of the post election violence in 2008 that killed thousands, displaced 300,000 and affected all Kenyans. The first instance of the crowdsourcing platform Ushahidi was created in the midst of the 2008 post election violence as a tool to map violence and react to the crisis.

The Ushahidi platform is able to accept SMS text messages from the “crowd” or any person with a cell phone or computer to record events happening at any location instantly. People are also able to call in reports by voice or via email and Twitter. However, the SMS feature remains one of the most powerful communication tools for developing countries. In Haiti, it was reported that the first thing people would do when they regained power or found a battery was to charge their cell phones.

This election is emotional for many Kenyans as the “Yes” and “No” camps have been parading their colors of green and red respectively at rallies, demonstrations for the last few months.

Since the first deployment of Ushahidi in Kenya, the platform has been used as a crisis map after the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, as an election monitoring service in places like India, Burundi, Mexico and Afghanistan, and by major news services such as Al Jazeera and the Washington Post.

Uchaguzi (“decision” in Kiswahili) is a customized version of the Ushahidi platform to monitor incidences of electoral offences, violence and even peace activities during the August 4th Constitutional Referendum vote. The Constitution & Reform Education Consortium (CRECO) is providing 500 monitors located at various polling stations around the country as well as administrative support. The Social Development Network (SODNET) is offering Uchaguzi its total partnership and the shortcode #3018 that is being used for SMS messages countrywide. With the support of Uraia, HIVOS and Twaweza; Uchaguzi is the most collaborative deployment of the Ushahidi platform to date.

The short code for Uchaguzi has been advertised on the cover of the Kenyan Daily Nation Newspaper, on monitors in grocery stores, on TV and radio. In addition to these media outlets, 20,000 text messages were sent to cell phones around the country alerting the users to their ability to SMS voting concerns to Uchaguzi.

The hope is that the Kenyan referendum vote will be peaceful, but if there is any violence the 600+ Uchaguzi volunteers will be ready to map concerns and fears sourced in the most democratic way possible for this 21st century: personal cell phones.

About Ushahidi
Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world. For more information: http://ushahidi.com.

###

The Ushahidi platform was born out of the 2007-2008 post-election violence.  While the organizational mission is to keep improving the technology behind Ushahidi, the team is also invested in its continued use in Kenya.  Because of this, Ushahidi has launched Uchaguzi.co.ke (which means “elections” in Swahili) with 3 Kenyan partner organizations to monitor the August 4^th Constitutional Referendum vote. 

This Wednesday Kenyans will go to the polls to vote on a proposed Constitution.  There has been active campaigning on both the “yes” and “no” sides of the debate.  As the day grows closer, so do security concerns.  Kenyans are remembering the conflicts of January 2008 when many Kenyans were killed and half a million displaced and, even more recently, on June 13^th of this year when 6 people were killed by grenade blasts at a “NO” Rally in Nairobi’s central Uruhu Park.

Like with the original Ushahidi deployment, Uchaguzi provides an outlet for participation for citizens and civil society to report on electoral offenses such as intimidation, hate speech, vote buying, electoral offenses, misinformation, as well as alert authorities to raising tensions and acts of violence.  Through Uchaguzi’s partnerships, reports will be sent to response actors on ground including the electoral authorities, security personnel and community-based peace organizations.

There have been newspaper ads, radio and in-store displays about the 3018 shortcode and Uchaguzi as the place to submit information in about the vote.

Uchaguzi newspaper advertisement

Uchaguzi in-store display advertising

At this point it’s hard to anticipate the number of reports that will be sent in via SMS (text) to the 3018 Uchaguzi short code, so we have recruited over 80 Kenya-based volunteers to translate, map and triage incoming SMS.

Watch uchaguzi.co.ke on August 4^th to see the Referendum unfold.

Uchaguzi Partners

Constitution & Reform Education Consortium (CRECO) has a mission is to promote constitutionalism, democratic governance and institutional development, through coordination and capacity building of the civil society.

Ushahidi is a non-profit software development company. Our software is used for collecting, aggregating and visualizing information from communities around the world.

The Social Development Network (SODNET) through its INFONET Programme that aims at strengthening the role of citizen’s and civil society in the strategic use of technology.

Uraia is Kenya’s National Civic Education Programme, whose mission is to facilitate the provision of quality civic education and practical mechanisms for citizen engagement in public affairs.

Uchaguzi is also made possible with the generous financial and in-kind support of HIVOS and Twaweza. A big thank you goes out to the NDI Kenya office and the World Bank for sharing of geographic data for use in this deployment.

Random Hacks of Kindness Nairobi Kenya RHoK

Welcome to the iHub. This place was created for hackers to come together and make cool stuff. As you can tell, it’s brand new with construction still under way. However, we’ve had a fair number of events happen here.

I can say that I’ve never been so proud as to hold an event here as I am of this one. You represent the spirit of everything that the iHub and Ushahidi stand for.

Jessica Colaco and Linda Kamau lead the Ushahidi and iHub teams for this event. They, along with David, Joshua, Lillian and Angie put this together and will be available to you over the weekend for any questions.

Thank you for coming.

Pothole theory

Think of this when you build: you care about the pothole on your street, not the one 3 streets over. What fits your needs? What makes sense? What would you and your friends use?

That’s what we did right here in Kenya 2 years ago with Ushahidi. Ushahidi, as we all know means “testimony” in Swahili. It’s a simple web-based platform that allows anyone with a phone, email or the web to send in messages about what’s going on around them in a time. We call this crowdsourcing crisis information.

Here’s a video of how it worked in Haiti recently.

Ushahidi Haiti from Ushahidi on Vimeo.

There’s a problem definition for Random Hacks about human sensing. If everything else looks too simple, take a look at it, and then at SwiftRiver, built to solve some of these same issues.

What is RHoK?

Some of you don’t know quite what to expect today, tonight and tomorrow. It kind of sounds cool, but really, what is this whole thing about?

Let me tell you.

It’s not just you. We’re just the Nairobi pod of this global event that brings together almost 1000 programmers, designers and geeks from 6 nations: Australia, England, Indonesia, Brasil, America and of course Kenya.

It’s not just you. You’ll be teaming up with others in this room to come up with simple solutions to complex problems. A lot can be done in 48 hours, imagine what you can do with a few other people just as dedicated as you are.

It’s not just you. The problems you’re solving are for the world. The best apps and hacks are those that effect millions of people. Because, at the end of the day, Random Hacks is about solving big global crisis and disaster problems, using the power of technology.

You might think that you’re just laying down a simple line of code. This isn’t the case.

You are building applications that saves lives, speed recovery and something that just might make the world a better place.

Problem Definitions:

• WeHaveWeNeed Application
• Information Sharing/Situational Awareness Application
• Haiti AMP
• Coordinated Response/Diaspora
• People-Finder
• Credibility of the Human Sensor
• Near Real-Time UAV Imagery Processing
• CERTS
• The money tracker

Limo Taboi (aka @Bankelele), is joining the Ushahidi team to help with the increasingly complicated area of finance.

As many of you know, he’s a long-time blogger and his popular Bankelele blog on banking and business in Kenya has been a perennial favorite for many years. Like many other Ushahidi members, Limo was a TED Africa fellow, and he has a strong background in banking and finance. His role will be to help us manage incoming funds, work on processes to make it easier to operate the organization and to help with the Kenya-side payroll management.

Linda Kamau (@LKamau) joined us last month, in time for the Ushahidi Annual Strategy Meeting. She’s a pure coder and has been involved with the extended dev community since the end of last year. Linda caught our eye due to her commitment and energy. She’s already proven to be a road warrior, having hit Burundi, the US and Tanzania in just the first month on the job…

Both Limo and Linda will be joining me in Nairobi, so there are now a few of us working out of the iHub and doing our best to keep this train on the tracks in East Africa. Personally, I’m thrilled to have two people with so much energy and experience to work side-by-side with.

One of the ideas that hit me was the need for a toolbox of technical tools that could be used by election monitoring groups and citizens both before, during and after the elections.

Understanding the Framework

Most of us think of an election as an event, I did too. Koki Muli provided us a with a great framework to understand the election process as a whole, using this visualization for everyone to see that it is indeed a long-term process, not an event.

The Election Cycle

Throughout the days of talk, a lot of information was given about elections, and specifically election monitoring as a practice and how it actually goes down in the real world. I’m not an expert in election monitoring, so there was a lot of education for me, but putting on my technology hat I (and the other tech guys present) were able to come up with some ideas for tactical-level solutions that might be useful to these election monitoring groups.

Starting with the Issues

I don’t have time to run through all of the issues, but here are a couple that have a technology component that could be created to help with them.

Legal Framework
The legal framework for elections starts many years before an election happens, but might be the most important element in an election (in a law-abiding state). These are high-brow activities, where law professors and legal experts write in a format that isn’t easily understood by ordinary people.

The question then is, how could this legalese be translated into a format that is digestable by normal citizens, and how could they then give feedback on what they think of these new laws? I’m already thinking of a tool that can be built for this, having a lot in common with (oddly enough) digital Bibles and how they allow multiple levels of commentary by readers and scholars.

Election Monitors
Registration of election monitors is not rocket science. Many times, the election monitoring groups get funds at the last minute and they go out and recruit anyone above a certain education level within the different constituencies. There is little vetting, some training, and no understanding of their values and ethics for when election day actually arrives. It’s no surprise then that when election day comes, many of these election monitors turn out to be little more than party infiltrators, sometimes abusing the system worse than normal citizens.

What tool can we build to support creation of a database of known election monitors, with full information about them, so that when irregularities or criminal activities are done by or with them that it can be tracked. Having a historical database of election monitors will allow for pattern mapping and even a blacklist for the civil society groups when they go out to find monitors for the next elections.

Real-time Data Collection
During the campaigning and the election day itself, it’s possible to collect information on irregularities from both trusted/known sources (including media, government and civil society), but also from ordinary citizens in the Ushahidi-style of crowdsourcing from citizenry. This includes media monitoring as well as gathering of historical and demographic data so that real-time analysis can happen.

Tools like Ushahidi and Managing News can be utilized here, this is what they are built for. The different types of news sources are complimentary, allowing layering of new, real-time data on top of demographic and historical election data.

Onto the Toolbox

These issues and challenges throughout the election cycle cannot be set up and deployed in the last few weeks or months if they are to be effective. We all need to sit down now, come up with the tactical and strategic-level tools that are needed and deploy them within the organizations who can best utilize them in the election process.

• What tools can be built?
• What tools exist already?
• How can we create a toolbox that election monitoring groups, and citizens, can choose tech tools from and deploy?
• Has this already been started somewhere else?

Add your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

Let’s see if we can come up with some ideas, as technologists especially, of tools that can work in conjunction with one another to strengthen the election monitoring and the election cycle as a whole.

Reinier Battenberg had a good slideshow with examples of where tools are needed at different parts of the election cycle. I’m including that here as well as food for discussion. (click the image to download his Powerpoint presentation)

10 applications for use in election monitoring

Finally, here’s a list of election monitoring-specific tools we could think of, what would you add to it?

• Ushahidi
• FrontlineSMS
• Managing News
• OpenStreetMap
• SlingshotSMS
• RapidSMS
• SMS Reception Center
• Budget Tracking (app by SODNET)
• International SMS gateways (Clickatell, Intellisms, etc)
• Swift River
• SMS Turks
• Pentaho
• MySociety.org
• NDI‘s election monitoring tool (ASP based)
• CiviCRM
• WordPress
• CMS tools (Drupal, Joomla, etc.)
• Freedom Fone

KANCO provides leadership in community systems strengthening (CSS) and policy and advocacy activities across the country. KANCO has extensive experience leading workshops and training for organizations in the field of HIV/AIDS and TB, and these standards for providing CSS were utilized to develop a workshop curriculum, based on the customized Ushahidi platform. In November, two workshops were conducted with 16 participants to gather feedback on platform’s usability. This feedback informed the final customization and last week, Feb. 9-11, a further 23 participants were trained at the KANCO offices in Nairobi. The workshops introduced the three partner organizations, provided background on the project, website demonstration, and user training. Participants were given an hour and a half to browse the website. In particular, they were instructed to search for organizations on the map, learn who’s doing what, where in Kenya, submit their organization’s profile and subscribe to the alerts feature on the map.

User Testing Guidelines

Overall, the 3 days of training were a great success. Participants responded positively to the project and enjoyed using the site, especially adding and updating their profiles. Generally participants thought the site was a good tool for networking and partnering, knowledge building, promotion and marketing, advocacy and information sharing. One participant described her experience as, “I have confidence and now I can do it for myself because I have been delegating rather than doing it myself. Others can find us online and may be interested in working with us.”

Workshop Participants adding Organization Profiles

Currently the KANCO instance does not have a mobile component, but participants liked idea of adding SMS to the site. They thought SMS would be beneficial to them, especially for keeping up-to-date with KANCO and their constituents, particularly in regards to referrals. Participants commented that people are more likely to check SMS than email on a regular basis and that people are comfortable communicating via SMS.

Established in 1990, KANCO is a networking organization with a cumulative membership of over 1000 CSOs. The partnership between KANCO, Ushahidi, and AIDSPortal was established in early 2009 and the pilot project was supported by a Geochallenge Grant, awarded to the team in August 2009. For updates on the project, keep an eye on the KANCO blog.

Post compiled with Jamie Lundine, Health and Social Geography Consultant/KANCO Map Project Manager. Follow her on Twitter @jlundine.