Cell Phones for Good

by Michael Bear · 2009-05-19 06:15:00 UTC
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Wanted to take a moment this morning to highlight a few campaigns focused on an object that we - or at least I - seem incapable of living without:

Hope Phones

My social entrepreneurship co-blogger Nathaniel just wrote a phenomenal post on how Your Old Phone Can Change the World:

Every day, more than 450,000 mobile phones find their way into desk drawers or trash cans around the US. But while these discarded phones may mean little to their owners, they can be put to work on the front lines of global health. Hope Phones is a new campaign by FrontlineSMS:Medic to transform your old phone into a tool for developing a more equitable, horizontal global health system.

FrontlineSMS:Medic uses recycled mobile phones, laptops, and the FrontlineSMS software to create health networks which enable rural clinics to provide better, more extensive care.

The campaign works by enabling you to print a barcode, throw your old phone in the mail (shipping is free) to phone refurbisher The Wireless Source. The money that The Wireless Source would have paid you is instead converted to phones that can be used by clinics around the world. The average phone used by FrontlineSMS:Medic only costs $10 and can bring 50 families on the grid.

To learn more and to take action, see here.

[Photo courtesy of ICT4D.at on Flickr]

Michael Bear
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