You and I take it for granted. Need an opinion on the paint color for the living room? Want to know the square footage of Alaska? Trying to figure out organic methods to solve a tree leafhopper infestation? It’s a simple matter of turning to the internet. But when the folks behind WeFarm started formulating its peer-to-peer knowledge sharing network with the idea to connect small farmers in developing countries, they found that 90% of those growers simply didn’t have access to the internet. Enter the mobile phone, something that most of these farmers do have access to.
Using an “innovative application of text-web-text software, including Frontline SMS,” WeFarm connects small-scale farmers from locations across the globe including Kenya, Peru, and Tanzania. The program–piloted by the Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation (CPF)–was recently awarded $260,000 from the Knight Foundation as a winner of the Knight News Challenge.
Even if you can’t grow a silk flower, you can get involved in the WeFarm initiative by lending your tech skills to the farmers who put food on the table in their respective countries.
Are you a socially-conscious coder or a developer who wants to make a difference? Maybe you’re an investor who wants to see a different kind of return, or a grantmaker aiming to achieve real impact? Whatever your talent, if you think you have something to offer WeFarm, contact us for a chat – we’ll bring the coffee.
Sounds like a good collaborator for Envaya (http://envaya.org/) a technology platform for “Civil Society Organizations” (NGOs). They work with web-to-SMS bridging tech as well as machine and human translation to provide parallel versions of posts, articles, whole websites.