Philanthropic multimedia

NetHope’s “Network Relief Kit” fits in a backpack!

This post is also available in: Spanish

Often the nuts and bolts of innovation comes literally through just that – ordinary stuff we already have lying around – like nuts and bolts – or in this case, car batteries! One of the great new innovations at tech non-profit NetHope is called the Network Relief Kit (NRK).

As I understand it, The NRK has a BGAN satellite receiver about the size of a medium-sized textbook. It provides a broadband connection to the Internet, runs off a car battery (or small solar panel) and works almost anywhere on the planet. It has a built-in wireless router for WiFi to support up to ten laptops or Internet phones. So it creates a fast, temporary but crucial voice and data communications hub for a small group of fieldworkers when they need it most immediately – in emergencies.

Here’s more from the interview with Ed Granger-Happ, the innovative founder of NetHope:

Q) Would you tell us more about some of your innovations that have come through the collaboration? One such innovation is called the Network Relief Kit. How does it work?

A) The NRK, as we call it, is a good example of pragmatic collaboration. A number of our member engineers worked together alongside our corporate partners at Cisco and Inmarsat to come up with a solution. That was the collaboration part. It was pragmatic in two ways. First, it fit in a backpack. This was important because the fastest way to get equipment to an emergency site is to carry it with you. Second, we used off-the-shelf components for the satellite receiver, solar power, network routing, etc. The innovation was in combining the pieces.

Q) NetHope is collaborating and reaching out to innovators in the field. One of them – Ushahidi – is changing how information on the ground gets to both relief workers and journalists. How would you describe their innovation and its contribution to NetHope?

A) Ushahidi’s work in Kenya, Haiti, Chile and other places has provided an important new source of emergency relief data: the survivors themselves. When mobile communications are working, citizen input in an emergency situation has the potential of becoming the primary source of assessment data [1]. That may seem like a blinding flash of the obvious, but it has eluded us in the past. We have been pursuing the need for shared assessments among NetHope members, and it’s getting better with each response. Ushahidi brings the promise of taking it to the next level.

[1] Ushahidi software and crowd-sourced volunteers take citizen input from text messages and tweets, interpret, tag, aggregate and then mash the data up on maps for a rich media way to understand the types and scale of needs by location.

Q) What other products and devices are rising to the top in their potential use and benefit to what NetHope is trying to accomplish in terms of connectivity and speed?

A) First, mobile phones are the #1 technology in the emerging world. With 4 billion sold and rising rapidly, the cell phone is the face of the Internet for most of the planet. As the Ushahidi experience just noted, how we take advantage of this with a rich application layer will be telling in addressing the world’s needs. The second is citizen video. YouTube now accounts for over 10% of Internet traffic. And it didn’t exist 5 years ago. Getting the word out about global poverty issues to the next generation means personal videos. I’m not talking about 1:1 marketing here, I’m talking about real, unvarnished person-to-person stories. Just ask Shawn Ahmed of the Uncultured Project:

Q) Do you anticipate other kinds of collaborations in NetHope – such as with media, whether organized with large agencies or with independent journalists?

A) We are always looking to extend our model of collaboration and our NGO membership. Part of our charitable purpose is to share information with others. Education in a variety of forms is part of this. We have built a high level of trust in our organization, partner on projects among members, volunteers, and corporate supporters, and look to the expertise of one to benefit the many. That also takes some history of working together as one, and some humility to look beyond home. I think many professions can learn from this.

Q) What three things are on your To-Do List for NetHope this next year?

A) That’s for others to say. I’m thinking five to ten years out about what success looks like for NetHope and its members. I can tell you about one theme that is front and center; that’s what I’m calling the “relevant IT” initiative. I’d like to see NetHope lead the way in mission moving technology and shared technology services among nonprofits. I’ve talked about this as the “get into” and “get out of” objectives: for non profits to be effective for the next decade I believe we need to shift the IT agenda from “lights-on” technology to “impact” technology.

We will hear more from innovator Shawn Ahmed of the Uncultured Project in two weeks …

Other posts that might interest you:

• Self-named ‘tech nerd’ Shawn Ahmed discusses reasoning behind philanthropic social media cause, The Uncultured Project

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