AppBridge - Opportunity and Education for All Through Mobile from Mobile Movement on Vimeo.
A pilot project gets underway soon to test whether mobile phones can be used to help educate the poor. Its estimated three quarters of the worlds poor have access to mobile phones. Voice of America reports.
The project announced at the recent World Economic Forum will use an app called AppBridge to help alleviate poverty and improve education.
The idea is to link software developers with communities and non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. The pilot project is led by a WEF community called Young Global Leaders. Its made up of about 700 people under age 40 from business, civil society, government and academia.
The early apps are expected to provide skills training.
In some cases,Margo Drakos, founder of AppBridge said, these are going to be very much technically oriented skills, like learning simple automotive or simple electrical or simple plumbing.
Apps could also be used to link entrepreneurs with micro-credit lenders or with markets. In some cases, women are not able to go and sell their goods from their home unless they know that the store is open and the stores dont open at a consistent time. So, something as simple and basic as having an alert when the store is open for them to be able to leave their home and go sell their goods, she said.
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