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.

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.

Mobile language preferences by users on MXit

One of the projects that we are collaborating with is the Red MXit information service offering HIV info to users in different languages. This project is currently be managed by Cell-Life and the idea is to give access to information on the MXit platform. The user have to add the service on the MXit profile as a buddy and can view information in 4 of the official South African languages (SA have 11 official languages - See table on the right for language distribution during 2001 census) and in the text (mobile) language. It was interesting to see (High level observations) which of these languages are the most popular amongst our users using this service. Red gave the user the following language options:

- English
- MXit Chat
- Afrikaans
- Sesotho
- Zulu

The number of subscribers to this service is 22,003 of which 62% is male subscribers. The age groups for this service support the MXit demographics with 76% of the subscribers being between the ages of 15-25. The same content was available in all the language options for the user and the following was the language preferences (estimates based on overview of available users count) ranked:

1) English was the most popular choice with approximately 60% of users accessing content
2) Chat Language (MXi Chat) had approximately 25% of users
3) Afrikaans had approximately 10% of the users accessing content
4) Zulu content was accessed by approximately 3% of users
5 Sesotho content was accessed by approximately 2% of users

Although Zulu has the highest number of home language speakers in South Africa in only managed 4th on the list of available languages with the English language proving to be the most popular with the current group of subscribers. Interesting observation in the above list is the MXit chat or chat language that was more popular than Afrikaans, Zulu, Sesotho combined (These languages presenting more than 45% of the South African population).

Perhaps more should be done to see how the chat language can be integrated as part of mobile service delivery with the increase of mobile users being comfortable communicating using it as its language of choice.

To add this contact on MXit:
- Go to Tradepost
- Select MXit Mix
- Select My Culture option
- Select Red
- Add Contact

This service is available 24 hours a day. Your feedback would be welcomed.

National AIDS Helpline Mobile Chat service growing

The collaboration with Cell-Life and National AIDS Helpline (managed by Lifeline) ,using our Advice Support Network (ASN) software, offering mobile counselling in the area of HIV/AIDS is clearly showing signs of growth during the "Pre-pilot". Thursday the counsellors had conversations with 16 people and supported 635 messages during their 2 hour session. We are looking forward to see how this project grow as the Lifeline counsellors become more comfortable using the mobile phone medium as a means to support those in need of HIV/AIDS support.

BBC Interview - Drug Advice Support

Tuesday afternoon (25 August 2009) we had the privilege to share our experiences on how we using mobile phones to support people impacted by the problem of drugs. I had an interview on the BBC World Service and you can listen to it online. The interview about Drug Advice Support (DAS) starts at 42:32 (See image for guidance) on the BBC iPlayer.

Drug Advice Support - Interview with Advisors

Drug Advice Support featured in Business Week

Yesterday the Drug Advice Support (Our mobile counselling drug support service) was featured in US publication BusinessWeek, The article "MXit Mixes Mobile Networks with Social Conscience" was the second major publication the project featured in this week. MXit being more than just a Mobile Instant Messenger but moving towards becoming more of a Mobile Social Network have become one the big African Mobile Innovations that will continue to grow in Africa and in parts of Asia according to Herman Heunis, CEO of MXit Lifestyle. He also added in the Business Week article that MXit has an advantage over telecoms in understanding social behavior because that's "the core" of their business. With this perspective towards their product and their innovation we should see a greater increase of MXit type technologies being deployed in the area to support Social Good.

The full article featured in BusinessWeek can be read here.

Launch National AIDS Helpline Mobile Instant Messaging service

Today will be the launch of our hard labour over the past few weeks providing National AIDS Helpline with the technology to offer mobile counselling service to thousands accross South Africa. Why this is such wodnerful opportunity? Interesting facts about South Africa:

1. Highest number of HIV+ people in the world
2. Most unequal countries in the world
3. Best technical infrastructure in Africa, especially cellphones

"Massive potential to use cellphones to provide communication & info services to millions infected or affected by HIV"


We salute the world's first HIV/AIDS Mobile Counsellors as we looking forward seeing how communities will be reconstructed through the use of technology.

National AIDS Helpline counsellors are available Mondays to Thursdays 3-5pm. Add the contact redchatzone@gmail.com (Jabber) or redchatzone (Google Talk) and nickname: Red Chat Zone.

National AIDS Help Line on MXit

Today we started a world's first by offering training to the National AIDS Help Line using our Advice Support technology to offer counselling via Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM). This Pilot is managed by Cell-Life, supported by HIV organisation Right To Care and PEPFAR which will allow for this service to be fully funded for the duration of the Pilot. What this mean for the National AIDS Helpline is that it would be now the only organisation in the world to offer counselling with regard to HIV/AIDS using Mobile Instant Messaging using the technology (see image below)that was developed by a community on the Cape Flats in the Athlone Living Lab.

The first day went well as we introduced the future mobile counselors to "The Art of Mobile Counselling" and "Mobile Phones for Social Good". The training is being done by myself and Craig Ross, member of the Reconstructed Team, and will keep you updated on the progress of the week. Also look out for a post on the "Art of Mobile Counselling". To add the National AIDS Help Line on MXit you do the following:

1) Add Contacts
2) Got to Jabber or Google Talk option
3) ID: redchatzone@gmail.com (Jabber) or redchatzone (Google Talk) and Nickname: Red Chat Zone
4) Accept Contact

This service will be live Mondays to Thursdays between 3pm and 5pm.

MXit response to Media

Over the past few days MXit was again in the media in connection with a young girl who went missing. Fortunately the young lady was found and back home safely. The response from MXit to its 14 million users can be found below:

"(1:42:02 PM) Info: NOTICE: MXit SAYS NO TO POOR JOURNALISM! We condemn the unprofessional and sensation seeking journalism displayed by e-TV and The Star newspaper this last week. Both news channels in some way blame MXit for the disappearance of the Parktown girl. E-TV ran this story Wednesday night, displaying a pornographic website on the backdrop - totally unacceptable as we will never promote pornography. The Star also ran articles that left readers with only MXit to blame. MXit is not responsible for the disappearance of this girl. We want to warn all users again to enjoy our technology with the necessary responsibility and level of maturity; and never to reveal personal information. We challenge both media owners to get these simple facts accurate, and to properly understand our technology. Can we trust what is reported?"

Please find our previous post about advice for parents and users with regard to use of MXit here

A year of Drugs, Sex & Mobile Phones

One year has passed and so many things has happened since we "officially" launched Drug Advice Support (previously known as idmtalk). Drug Advice Support (DAS) is one of our large projects, part of our Living Lab activity, and it emerged out of a need in a community that were experiencing the scourge of drug addiction and violence. Using men and women from the community we started a journey that will change our lives and thousands others forever. This service uses mobile phones as a medium to connect with people all across South Africa offering advice and support to those in need (Mobile Active description of DAS).

Since then we've been in more than 50 articles (that we are aware of!!), 3 television appearances, more than 20 radio interviews and we still believe that we have so much to offer of how technology can be used to make a difference in the lives of many. We've had our server crash, got a team from UWC (Wesley and Paul) using the Chisimba platform as a basis for DAS to co-develop with the community a system that could support the large number of requests. With 19 registered advisors (4 Full time)who all come from the local community of Bridgetown, Cape Town, South Africa the following are some indication of what was achieved during 250 hours online (31 July 2009):

- Number of Subscribers: 9,193
- Number of Messages: 746,440
- Number of Conversations : 30,685
- Number of Conversations related to drugs: 18,963
- Average number of conversations per session: 30,685 / 250 hours = 122.5 per hour or 245 per session
- Maximum number of conversations 473 and the Minimum 21
- Average number of Messages = 1422 per session (Max 3678, Min 234)
- Average number of conversations per Advisor in a session = 24 (Min 4, Maximum 56)

Other interesting statistics were:

- TiK (Crystal Meth) was the most popular drug with 6637 related conversations followed by Heroin with 3223.
- 13% [1211] of subscribers were using this service to get support for a family member.
- 4% [403] of Subscribers are getting offline help/support or counselling after using the service (This is known cases through feedback conversations).




This clearly shows us an example of where mobile phones can be used for social good and make the difference in the lives of literally thousands in a nation. Bare in mind that all this was done with very little resources bu a group of extraordinary individuals passionate about reconstructing their communities.
So through all of this we cried and laughed together, celebrated when DAS subscribers were victorious and saddened when they were struggling, but we've made it and we are still standing. So what makes this year so special that others want to read or hear about it? Simple it is about people caring about other people and giving the little that they have to see lives being Reconstructed. A special thanks to the team of DAS who makes this more than a project of Drugs, Sex and Mobile Phones, but one of where we united can make a difference in our communities and nation.

Red HIV Zone on MXit

Today we launch another exciting inititiave a collaboration with Cell-Life. South Africa has 5.7 million people living with HIV of which and estimated 3 million between the ages of 12 and 35. This is also the age group that has the most mobile and mobile chat (e.g. MXit) users. To ensure that people in this age group are reached with information and advice about HIV on a communications platform that they use daily MXit proved to be an ideal medium.

This is the Cell-Life Red project that will provide users FREE access to information and advice to information about HIV and AIDS. This service is available 24 hours a day and is easily accessible. This new service will offer people opportunity to be part of a community that will support those in need.

Information about HIV will be available in 5 languages (including a chat language)and will also have competitions, contact details and much more as part of reaching the 14 million users on MXit.

If you want to go Red on MXit then you can do the following:

- Go to Tradepost
- Select MXit Mix
- Select My Culture option
- Select Red
- Add Contact



Our goal is to reach at least 250,000 users who will use this contact for information and advice relating to HIV and AIDS. The Red revolution has surely begun. Follow Red also on twitter @RedMXit for more information and updates about the service

Debt Breaker on Angel

With the increase number of people looking for assistance on how to get out of debt and the number of MXit subscribers increasing we've added our Debt Breaker service to our MXit Angel Portal.

This service will give consumers an opportunity to add our MXit contact and they will be able to access FREE information about debt and debt counselling over their mobile phone.

MXit is a Mobile Instant Messenger that is available for most handsets and PCs. MXit Lifestyle also launched an application for the iPhone. It can be downloaded here

You can add our Angel service on your MXit application as follows
- Go to Menu
- Contacts
- Add Contacts
- MXit Services
- Add the following (Service Name: Angel, Nickname: Angel)
- Accept Contact

For more information about our Debt Breaker Service you can go here

Add us to MXit: New Times

To add us on your MXit you can do the following:

1) Go to contacts
2) Add contact
3) Go to Jabber or Google Talk (depending on your version of MXit)
4) Jabber or Google Talk ID: idmtalk@gmail.com
Nickname: DAS
5) Accept contact

This service runs Mondays to Thursdays between 4 and 6pm. Join us as we reconstruct our communities.

Angels and Mobiles

Thanks to Nick Booth for recording this quick video displaying our MXit Angel project.

Angel service for Drug Addicts in South Africa from Podnosh on Vimeo.

Read his post about the Reconstructed project here

Mind Your Language

The above episode reminded me of how important language and community is. Trying to get people who are foreign to the language to understand it is a struggle but always leads to interesting interpretations. This is not so much different to what we are currently experiencing with people trying to understand the Chat or MXit language.

On the Advice Support Network (ASN) service we speak to thousands of youth and it is interesting to see their interpretations of the chat language. Having conversations such as:

Me: Hi. Welcome to DAS how r u doing?
@mxit: hi. gd thx u?
Me. Well thanx. What r u up 2?
@mxit: libl2mnjc

With conversations containing chat acronyms such as libl2mnjc (laying in bed listening to music and just chilling) and wuu2n (what are you up to now) does cause us to mind our language. With many parents who see their children on MXit and even when they do see the conversations they still need an interpreter to try and understand what the conversation is about. We could easily have a Mind Your Language back but this time instead of teaching the international language of English we could be teaching "Chat language" to the millions out there who would like to get a better understanding of it.

Drug Advice Support: Service stats

Today we've achieved 201 subscribers through the Drug Advice Support (DAS) system and served 2314 messages.

Below is an extract of a paper we are writing about the DAS system which will give you an idea of the number of subscribers we currently servicing:

"The results extracted from DAS solution shows that such a system can be useful for relieving tension. Advisors have the capacity to help more people (n=27) in a 2 hour session than that of help-lines (n=4) (Impact Direct Ministries, 2009). Since its inception and at the end of April 2009 DAS served approximately 87,624 messages amongst its 6,377 subscribers. A total of 16,609 conversations between persons in need and advisors took place over a period of 186 hours of being online and available.

During a DAS session, 2 hours duration, the average number of conversations is 178 which equates to an average of 943 messages. This is normally managed on average by 5 advisors using the DAS system. The maximum number of conversations achieved was 471 and this was the week after the appearance on national television. The least number of conversations was 21 and this was due to running the service on a public holiday. The most messages exchanged in a DAS session were 3678 with a minimum of 234 messages.

Majority of the conversations (62.3%) was related to substance abuse issues. (See Figure 1) shows the distribution related to substance types with the most popular drug query being “Tik” or “Crystal Meth”. General drug queries were where subscribers just needed generic information about the services and general substance abuse queries."

The above stats is a clear indication of how technology can be used to support communities in tension.

Net Prophet the perfect wake-up call

Alarm went off at 6am and it was my wake up call to attend the First Net Prophet Event in Pinelands, Cape Town. With winter weather outside and still tired I was hesitant and very close to not attending but with such an interesting line up and having the "Prophets", "Gurus" and peers of Web, Social and Mobile Media all in the same room, that was enough reason for me to at least take time to learn from their experiences.

Upon arrival hundreds were gathered at the Old Mutual Business Park in Pinelands, Cape Town and it seemed as if an interesting day was lying ahead by seeing the fellow attendees present. Platform was well set by Rob Gilmour from RAMP Foundation and with Arthur Goldstuck, Peter Flynn, Herman Heunis, Henk Kleynhans, Dave Duarte, Mike Stopforth, Hannes van Rensburg, Andrew Smith and Charl Norman in the wings it was an event that I am glad I didn't miss.

My specific focus was around how the social web can be used to not just be monetised but also sustain and support social initiatives. With many of the speakers emphasizing the importance of mobile in a South African Context and more specifically the increased number of possibilities this provides for a developing country.

Highlights of the conference was that "The digital revolution levels the playing field and that the Internet should be taken to the masses", with "Mobile, blogs, video content, social networking and Podcasts having huge media revenue growth" this opens the doors for organisations to also explore the platforms where huge corporations are placing their investments. Software would also become more service oriented according to the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. This offers businesses more an operating expenses budget allocation than capital expenditure. Herman Heunis shared how MXit applied the philosophy 'We do not compete, we create' and how the right mix with motivation allowed them to become giants in the Mobile Instant Messaging space in Africa. How to approach Venture Capitalist (VC) and harnessing the Social Web were other highlights to this great Net Prophet event.

Well all in all from a social change perspective I do believe that Net Prophet was the perfect wake up call.

MXit Information for parents

Due to many parents asking for advice about what they should do for their children who are on MXit I've listed a post from the MXit Website that serves as advice for parents:

"INFORMATION FOR PARENTS

The Internet has brought with it the proverbial good, the bad and the ugly and since MXit uses a small part of the Internet, we would like you to be aware of the following:

Long before MXit appeared on the horizon in May 2005, most mobile phones had the ability to search the web via the default browser on the phone. This gives your child access to basically everything and anything that is available on the Internet. Unlike the PC world, where a myriad of software products are available to protect minors, the mobile phone world has yet to implement such safety nets.

Internet dangers include access to highly undesirable material, access to chat rooms, mobile phone viruses, etc.
If you do not have the technological knowledge to alert your children to these dangers, and feel that they are too young to cope with them, perhaps it is not a good idea to give your children mobile phones until you know exactly how the phones operate.

SO WHERE DOES MXit FIT IN?

* MXit is an instant messaging (IM) program that allows all our registered users to communicate with each other inexpensively, if they give consent.
* MXit is not a web browser and as such cannot be used to access pornographic or other adult sites, or adult chat rooms.
* The majority of our traffic is person-to-person where a user needs to add a contact before he/she can send a message or receive a message from a person - very similar to SMS.
* As part of community building, we have created a number of chat rooms where we have given our registered users the ability to meet other people. We continually strive to make the chat rooms safer and more user-friendly, but any chat room has an element of risk associated and safety is dependent on the conduct of the user.
* If you are of the opinion that your child needs his/her mobile phone for safety reasons, then it is a good idea to disable the default web browser or GPRS or 3G via a request to your service provider to ensure Internet surfing is not possible.
* Can you disable GPRS (or 3G) on the phone and still use MXit? Unfortunately not - so the choice is yours.



SAFETY FEATURES

In order to try and minimize the inherent risks, we have put the following precautions in place

* All teenagers' chat rooms (Like TeenZone) have profanity filters (this means that swear words are replaced by ##### symbols).
* A network of MXit and community moderators assiduously monitors the rooms on an ad hoc basis.
* No user profiles, which normally include personal details and photographs, are stored. There are many chat rooms on the Internet that do store user profiles.
* To further ensure that you have a safe online experience in the chat rooms, MXit has created dynamic chat zones - which allows a user to create his/ her own private chat room, and invite friends to participate in a private chat. Such rooms are password protected and only those in possession of the password can enter the rooms. Our chat rooms are age restricted. When you register on MXit you are asked to log your age. This age will allow you entrance to only certain of the chat rooms - which are restricted to protect our younger users.
* The MXit chat room acts as a cocoon. The user remains completely anonymous while in the chat room, and as long as he/she does not puncture this cocoon by revealing any personal information (including information about friends and family), he/she remains safe in his/her anonymity.
* Conversation in public chat rooms is viewed by the community - every person can see every message and can respond.
* Users can at any time leave a chat room or type the .ignore command to ignore someone who is abusive.
* If a user wants to report abusive behaviour he/she can type .rat and then the last 30 lines of conversation will be sent to a MXit moderator to act upon.
* Every time users enter the chat rooms we remind them to keep their personal information confidential.
* None of our chat room names or descriptions has any sexual slant and we strongly discourage any form of discrimination and/or explicit sexual chat.
* By using our website, users can report abuse.
* We publish safe chatting tips in a number of places on our website and forum.
* A shorter version of safe chatting tips is built into the MXit phone application and users are constantly reminded to view it.



10 BASIC SAFETY TIPS

1. Keep your MXit password (PIN) secret and ensure it is at least 8 digits long and not an obvious choice.
2. Change your password immediately if you suspect someone is using your account.
3. Never reveal or send your password to anyone – MXit will never ask for your password.
4. Do not let your phone be used by someone else without you being present.
5. Never reveal any personal information such as your phone number, MXit pin, residential address or school address while in a chat room. This also goes for revealing personal information about your friends and family to strangers.
6. Never accept an invitation from a stranger on MXit – simply deny the invitation if it is someone you don’t know.
7. Always be aware the people you are talking to on MXit, or in any internet chat room, may not be who they say they are.
8. Keep your online relationships online! Even if you think you know your contacts well enough, we still strongly advise that you DO NOT physically meet with strangers. Pedophiles and other offenders are clever; they sometimes spend months gaining their victims’ trust before asking them to meet with them.
9. Let the MXit support team know of any suspicious behavior. Send an e-mail to support@mxit.com or post it on the MXit forum at http://forum.mxit.com.
10. Do not download any fake versions of MXit. To download MXit for your mobile, go to http://www.mxit.com/wap and for your PC go to http://www.mxit.com/mxitpc.

MEETING SOMEONE IN REAL LIFE:
* Always tell a loved one where you are going, who you are meeting, and when you will be back.
* Meet in a public place.
* Ideally, take a friend with you and have the other person do the same.
* Do not invite anyone to your home or go to their home. Keep your distance until you feel you know them well enough.
* Take your mobile phone along, and make sure it's fully charged and has airtime. Get someone to call you at a pre-arranged time to check that everything is OK. This person can also act as your alibi, giving you an excuse to leave if necessary.

We, at MXit, will continually strive to make the MXit world a safer place" Source:(MXit Lifestyle Team)

Debt Breaker offers debt counselling online

The article below appeared in the Athlone News, Wednesday 8 April 2009 titled "IT Guru offers debt counselling online" introducing Debt Breaker for the first time to the media. Click on the picture to have it enlarged.