April 9, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
More than 50 organizations and activists are competing for $50,000 in prize money in the fourth annual NetSquared Challenge.
A project of TechSoup Global, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that helps charities use technology, NetSquared promotes the use of cutting-edge technology for social change.
This year’s contest focuses on ways to use cellphones for social good.
Visitors to the NetSquared Web site the week of April 6 will be able to vote for their favorite projects.
The 14 organizations whose submissions receive the most votes will then present their ideas at the NetSquared Conference, which is scheduled for May 26-27 in San Jose, Calif. Voters at the meeting will determine which three organizations share the $50,000 in prize money.
Many of the projects have an international focus.
Three graduate students at the Johns Hopkins University have proposed a text-message system that would help licensed chemical sellers in rural Ghana — often the only source of health care available in remote parts of the country — to diagnose and treat their customers’ illnesses.
Text to Change, which is based in Amsterdam and Kampala, Uganda, is starting a project in Uganda that uses text-message quizzes on cellphones to provide information about how to prevent HIV infection.
NiJeL, a charity in Tempe, Ariz., is building a service that uses text messages to provide flood warnings to remote villages. The group plans to test the idea in two river basins near the border between India and Nepal.
For more information: Go to http://www.netsquared.org/conference/n2y4.
