National AIDS Helpline: Pilot training

After a long day of travelling in Johannesburg it is so exciting to be part of the rollout of the world's first HIV/AIDS Mobile Instant Messaging counselling service by the National AIDS Helpline. This week it will be further training with the counsellors and training with the supervisors of National AIDS Helpline who will be managing the services locally. This initiative has been made possible by Cell-Life and their partners who are sponsoring this service.

To add the HIV/AIDS mobile counselling service do the following:

- Add redchatzone@gmail.com on your mobile chat service and accept the contact.
- This service is currently available Monday to Thursday 4 - 6pm.

Vlogging with the Reconstructed

This morning I had the privilege to facilitate the Reconstructed session at the Reconstructed Living Lab (RLabs) space. Video blogging or "Vlogging" was the area we focused on and it was amazing to see how the team managed to video blog with ease. A short background about what video blogging was and how others have been using it (like the "From the Couch" site) was explained.

The team had to go out and shoot a short 30 second video which they had to upload to YouTube and post to their blog. Within a few minutes we had the video shoot, some even posted to YouTube and embedded into their blog. You can view some of the videos on the Reconstructed blog. Many of the team will be using video as a medium to explore the rich and colorful stories of their communities sharing that message of hope.

Social Media for Teens

Over the past few weeks we've seen some of our young people coming to the Impact Centre on a Friday afternoon for Social Media and Life skills training. This idea was the brain child of Craig Ross, Clinton Liederman and Brent Williams who saw the need in the community where young people are being lured into gang activity and drug related activities. The Friday sessions include social networking, micro-blogging, blogging, sharing sites and other social media tools that can be used as a medium to share Life Skills with these youth. Expect much more from this initiative and we can expect much more developments from the team who are currently facilitating these sessions.

Support Group celebrates success

Today an article appeared in the Weekend Post by Yolande Stander "Support group celebrates success" featuring the work we've been doing over the past year using mobile technology to support people in need:



"THE South African group who conceptualised using social media like MXit to address social problems affecting young people has celebrated one year of success – and sealed a deal with a Bay company to further their progress.

The success story began a year ago with 12 men and women who called themselves The Reconstructed. All had experience of either drug addiction and dealing as well as gangsterism but, fully rehabilitated and trained to council people, they began using MXit to reach out to those at risk.

The brainchild behind the principle is social entrepreneur and information technology lecturer Marlon Parker.

Parker was in Port Elizabeth this week to introduce non-profit organisations, NGOs, community-based organisations and charities to social media and help them use these technologies as strategic tools for engagement, relationship building with stakeholders, networking and fundraising....."

My first WAP mobile phone

Ten years ago I acquired my first WAP enabled phone the NOKIA 7110. Just amazed at how technology has changed. Post your first WAP enabled mobile phone as a comment to this post.

Youth Marketing for Non profits

With the increased number of organisations especially non-profits looking at how they can engage with young people the video below, by Graham Brown of Mobile Youth, gives an insightful overview of what these organisations can do to reach their youth target market. The Reconstructed Project also featured in this video as we continue spreading the message of hope amongst our young people in South Africa.