Uboja

Our core belief: The most effective way to spread information is through trusted community members. This has been acknowledged by the UN and WHO in tackling pandemics and other healthcare issues.

Problem: How can we identify trusted community members (influencers) in developing areas in Africa and Asia?

Our solution: While Internet and TV are not available in many parts of developing areas, basic cell phones are ubiquitous in the developing world. Thus, we have build an SMS based influencer identification and education system to identify trusted community members and convey important best practices to counteract the spread of a disease.

The solution could improve lives globally, especially for the poorest parts of the world by making knowledge accessible and well-known to parts of the population that get most of their information from a trusted source in their community or family.

We are solving the problem of getting information on hygiene best practices to developing urban and rural populations. The parts of the population without TV and internet access often receive their information from other community members. Such trusted community members, especially if they are a source of information for many people are a key lever to spread information in developing areas. However, it is hard to identify them as they themselves often leave no traces through internet or TV activity. To provide a rough idea of the magnitude of the problem, of the roughly 90 Mio people in the Congo, only 8.3% have internet access, leaving a large space for misinformation and rumors to spread, if those influencing communities can't be identified and educated.

Our solution is simple and consists of a two step process to identify trusted community members.

Step 1: Through our interface, public health officials can send out SMS messages to a demographic of interest (e.g. a village or city quarter) and ask them who in the community influences them most

Step 2: The respective answers from the community to the SMS are analyzed in our back-end and trusted community members are ranked by votes

Step 3: In a first round of education, trusted community members are taught some basic hygiene principles. This can be done via an SMS through our system or in a meeting that has been called by SMS through our system

Step 4: A few days after, we ask the community whether they have learned about certain hygiene principles. Since we know, who voted for which influencer, we can deduct the effectiveness of the community influencers based on the answers of those who voted for the respective influencer.

Our solution helps the children, who look up to their father and imitate his behavior. It helps the farmer who receives his information from the ministers sermon. Part of our team is located in Africa to consistently align our vision and implementation to the needs of the health officials on the ground. While we help intermediaries like the UN and WHO to more effectively spread hygiene information, we don't do it for them. We do it for those who would otherwise not profit from the information.

Key in fighting pandemics and other health care issues is to prevent their spread as effective as possible. This is only possible if information on prevention measures reaches everyone, especially the most vulnerable and poor populations. This goal and the target audience are in our opinion very well aligned with the challenge.

The combination of using highly sophisticated analysis and infrastructure technology that we use to make the jobs of public health officials easier along with low tech elements such as SMS to reach the poorest parts of society in developing areas is unprecedented. Solutions that use basic cell services such as U-report, do not feature the kind of adaptability and dynamic response and analysis that we offer.

Furthermore, we believe that our deliberate choice to use a low-tech delivery implementation (using SMS, and not an app) allows us to reach a much broader audience, and penetrate sections of society in our target market (African subcontinent) that only have access to very basic cellphone services like voice and text messaging. This allows us to effectively implement our solution.

Our technology is built on proven technology building blocks - our server side code is build with Flask for Python and runs on an Apache2 server on an AWS instance. We use MYSQL as database solution, which also runs on an AWS server and is administered through phpmyadmin. For our cloud based SMS communications, we use Twilio, which is an industry standard cloud SMS provider. Our analytics back-end is based on our own code and employs AI libraries such as scikit-learn, pandas, numpy and nltk.

Demo Links: 

How to start a campaign using Uboja - https://youtu.be/gZ6uHtvn8Fo

How to use Uboja analytics to identify trusted community members - https://youtu.be/S6xFJVmc2pY

Twilio is the industry standard for cloud SMS services. 

AWS, Apache2 and MYSQL are industry standards in server hosting, server and database technology respectively.

Additionally, our analytics engine is built using scikit-learn and nltk which are used extensively in industry (used by companies like Spotify, Evernote, booking.com, etc - refer to https://scikit-learn.org/stable/testimonials/testimonials.html)

We expect our solution to have an impact on the problem of mis- and non-information, because our solution helps organizations who fight to spread information and education to identify those people that have the ear of many people. We believe our task of identifying and educating trusted community members as a key puzzle piece. This has been confirmed by the fact the 'identifying influencers and key audiences' is part of the Covid-19 action plan of the United Nations and World Health Organization. U.N. representatives have confirmed to us that while they have realized that finding and educating trusted communities is key to preventing the spread of diseases, they constantly struggle with the identification of these people. In fact, the UN-FPA (United Nations Population Fund) has reached out to us to run a pilot to identify influencers across ten West African countries.

We are about to launch a pilot in 10 West African countries. Thus in one year we would like to serve 1 Mio. people. In 5 years we would like to serve all inhabitants of developing urban and rural areas (slums, etc) in Africa and Asia (>1 Billion people)

Our goal within the next year is to further test and develop our technology in several pilots and tests. In five years, we would like to have partnerships with major public health organizations (like the U.N.) and local governments, helping them identify and iterate on their local community influencer rosters. We hope to enable these entities to be able to provide better education, best practices and information to their populace - not only related to Covid-19, but also on a variety of topics ranging from disease prevention to girl-child education, sanitation etc.

Currently the following barriers exist for us to accomplish our goals in the next year and beyond -

• Financial barriers related to continuously hosting data on AWS, sending and receiving large volumes of text messages using Twilio
• Freelancing UI and UX design financial requirements
• Legal compliance knowledge and expertise to make our solution compliant with all African countries - not only in terms of data isolation, but also privacy
• Legal Incorporation questions, since our team is located across 4 continents
• Legal representation challenges in a contractual setup with us and the UNFPA

We plan to complete our pilot with the UNFPA within the next 2 months, and receive funding to launch in the 10 West African countries within that partnership.

Additionally, we plan on applying for Amazon AWS credits through the MIT Martin Trust Center, and for Sandbox funding to get us through the initial funding challenges. As an MIT student, I will be eligible to apply for these grants.

We also plan on onboarding MIT undergraduate students to intern with us and build out our solution further, including with UI and UX design, and continuing to build out our analytics engine.

The larger challenge will be getting legal and compliance advice/representation, and incorporating our solution. We hope that the Solve network can help us there.

We have 6 members on our team

Steffen Schmidt and I (Aparna Pande), two MBA students at MIT with engineering backgrounds (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science respectively), had originally pitched the idea to the 2000 participants of the MIT Covid-19 Africa Hackathon as part of the team formation process. Shortly after, we added four more members, assembling a diverse team across geographies, combining backgrounds in engineering, healthcare, data science and business - Oluwatosin Ogunsola, a data scientist from the Clinton foundation based in Lagos, Nigeria; Yousif Bunkheila, a BComm student at McGill University from Libya; Utkarsh Uppal, a machine learning researcher from India; and Ritam Priya, who currently serves as VP in a healthcare start-up based in San Francisco.

We believe our team's strong representation across diverse skillsets and backgrounds, and cohesive working style make us incredibly well-positioned to deliver this solution.

We started as a MIT Covid Africa Hackathon winning team, and are currently partnered with them.

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, we are currently in conversation with the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) about launching a pilot within a community in West Africa, with the ultimate goal of running our solution in 10 West African countries.

Audience and Value Proposition: Our business model targets two audiences - public health entities (like local governments, the United Nations, World Health Organization, the Red Cross, etc); and local community members within densely packed urban settings.

To the public health entities, we provide an iterative roster of local community influencers (trusted community members) that can be contacted to spread accurate and reliable public health best practices.

To the local community, we provide incentives (like free text messaging credit, etc) to voting for their most trusted community member. Additionally, we ultimately enable these community members to receive accurate information through their influencer network.

Key Resources: Our key resources are our diverse team and skillsets, our solution's low-tech delivery and high-tech analytics engine, and the MIT resources and network.

Cost Structure: Technology platform, sms-delivery and hosting fees (AWS, Twilio, etc), marketing and direct outreach to public health entities and local governments, staff/intern hiring expenses, business development and incorporation fees.

Partners: Our partners would initially be public health entities (currently in conversation with the UNFPA, and Clinton Health Access Initiative), and Telecom companies in West Africa to mass-deliver the voting messages to local communities. Further, we hope to be able to partner with MIT umbrella organizations like the Legatum Center, Martin Trust Center, etc to get access to legal and knowledge center type resources in order to scale.

Revenue Model: Subscription model for general use and access to dashboards and analytics, plus a per-campaign fee.

Our path to financial sustainability is through long-term sustained partnership with public health entities, with extensive contracts and through our subscription model.

We are applying to solve for four reasons:

(1) As small impact start-up, when dealing with agencies such as the UN or WHO, it is very important that we have an organization behind us that they know and trust. We believe that Solve and MIT can be these institutions.

(2) Some of our team members have gone to MIT and we appreciate the support that MIT provides to its community. As we graduate, we would like to continue to be part of this community, which Solve will enable us to do.

(3) We have been very tech focused since we started Uboja. We will need mentorship on the business and legal side and hope to gain it through Solve.

(4) Initial funding to scale our technology platform

Our potential partners would be public health entities and local governments (we are currently in conversation with the UNFPA, and Clinton Health Access Initiative), and Telecom companies in West Africa to mass-deliver the voting messages to local communities. Further, we hope to be able to partner with MIT umbrella organizations like the Legatum Center, Solve community, Martin Trust Center, etc to get access to legal and knowledge center type resources in order to scale.

Our core belief: The most effective way to spread information is through trusted community members. This has been acknowledged by the UN and WHO in tackling pandemics and other healthcare issues.

Problem: How can we identify trusted community members (influencers) in developing areas in Africa and Asia?

Our solution: While Internet and TV are not available in many parts of developing areas, basic cell phones are ubiquitous in the developing world. Thus, we have build an SMS based influencer identification and education system to identify trusted community members and convey important best practices to counteract the spread of a disease.

The solution could improve lives globally, especially for the poorest parts of the world by making knowledge accessible and well-known to parts of the population that get most of their information from a trusted source in their community or family.

The Elevate Prize eligibility: Our solution enables public health entities to identify the local influencers and thereby disseminate accurate and reliable public health information to communities at large. This has the potential to spread healthcare best practices (for example related to Covid-19) to communities and prevent the further spread of diseases, as local community members follow the guidance of their trusted community member.

Our core belief: The most effective way to spread information is through trusted community members. This has been acknowledged by the UN and WHO in tackling pandemics and other healthcare issues.

Problem: How can we identify trusted community members (influencers) in developing areas in Africa and Asia?

Our solution: While Internet and TV are not available in many parts of developing areas, basic cell phones are ubiquitous in the developing world. Thus, we have build an SMS based influencer identification and education system to identify trusted community members and convey important best practices to educate communities or counteract the spread of a disease.

The solution could improve lives globally, especially for the poorest parts of the world by making knowledge accessible and well-known to parts of the population that get most of their information from a trusted source in their community or family.

The Innovation for Women Prize eligibility: Our solution enables public health entities to identify the local influencers and thereby disseminate accurate and reliable public health information to communities at large. Through our partnership with the UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), we are targeting young girls and women to spread information about reproductive, maternal and child health issues, along with disease prevention, through trusted community members (local influencers). A lot of the young girls in these communities are unable to go to school to get access to vital information and education. The UNFPA and SWEDD (Sahel Women Empowerment and Demographic Dividend) will use our solution to mobilize a network of female influencers in educating young women within their programs.

Our core belief: The most effective way to spread information is through trusted community members. This has been acknowledged by the UN and WHO in tackling pandemics and other healthcare issues.

Problem: How can we identify trusted community members (influencers) in developing areas in Africa and Asia?

Our solution: While Internet and TV are not available in many parts of developing areas, basic cell phones are ubiquitous in the developing world. Thus, we have build an SMS based influencer identification and education system to identify trusted community members and convey important best practices to counteract the spread of a disease.

The solution could improve lives globally, especially for the poorest parts of the world and refugee communities by making knowledge accessible and well-known to parts of the population that get most of their information from a trusted source in their community or family.

Our core belief: The most effective way to spread information is through trusted community members. This has been acknowledged by the UN and WHO in tackling pandemics and other healthcare issues.

Problem: How can we identify trusted community members (influencers) in developing areas in Africa and Asia?

Our solution: While Internet and TV are not available in many parts of developing areas, basic cell phones are ubiquitous in the developing world. Thus, we have build an SMS based influencer identification and education system to identify trusted community members and convey important best practices to counteract the spread of a disease.

The solution could improve lives globally, especially for the poorest parts of the world by making knowledge accessible and well-known to parts of the population that get most of their information from a trusted source in their community or family.

Our core belief: The most effective way to spread information is through trusted community members. This has been acknowledged by the UN and WHO in tackling pandemics and other healthcare issues.

Problem: How can we identify trusted community members (influencers) in developing areas in Africa and Asia?

Our solution: While Internet and TV are not available in many parts of developing areas, basic cell phones are ubiquitous in the developing world. Thus, we have build an SMS based influencer identification and education system to identify trusted community members and convey important best practices to counteract the spread of a disease.

The solution could improve lives globally, especially for the poorest parts of the world by making knowledge accessible and well-known to parts of the population that get most of their information from a trusted source in their community or family.