I’m always looking for the next M-PESA and eVoucher could be it.”

Through the intense demands of the past few months, it was more than rewarding to hear these affirmations from Stephen O’Brien himself.

Dear team,

While I’m used to crisp fall weather, pumpkin spice lattes and the transition to winter jackets at this time of the air, I’m experiencing quite the opposite this year as the hottest and most humid days are quickly dawning upon Dar es Salaam. I spent the past month becoming a SQL ninja in efforts to turn our project statistics into meaningful numbers, and likewise, turning those numbers into digestible reports. In summary, it was a great month as we hit our December target on November 24. This month was spent making necessary improvements to the eVoucher program, fighting many, many unforeseen fires and beginning to adjust our plans for 2012. Professionally, November was a great month.

Personally, I’ve been thinking about the difference between passion and purpose. We talk a lot about passion. About finding our passions, living life passionately and acting on our passions. We’ve also talked a lot about why being passionate in itself is not enough.

Passion is a creative engine that forumaltes reasonable ideas in your mind and much further than that, it’s the driver of these ideas. Passion is emotional. It keeps you awake at night, wakes you up in the morning and has the potential to provide but joy. Purpose, on the other hand, is practical. It’s built on the foundation of necessity.

Purpose is the milestones achieved as a result of passion. It goes beyond emotion (note: not meaning that purpose is not emtional) and works to fill economic or social voids.

This past month, I turned 25 (side note: for some unknown reason decided to Google ‘top 25 under 25‘ to benchmark myself) and this age bracket, I’ll be putting my efforts towards answering the question of purpose based on my knowledge of my passions. Doing what I love is still only about me. Doing what the community, city, country or world needs from me, that is truly self-less.

Peace & love / kris

SMS vouchers have been used in Zambia and Zimbabwe where the beneficiaries were given vouchers in the form of pre-paid mobile scratch cards, but MEDA Tanzania is pioneering the use of SMS vouchers by going paperless in the implementation of the e-Voucher. Our flow is as follows:

1. A pregnant woman visits a clinic and the clinic worker sends SMS an “Issue voucher” message
2. The system responds with a random and unique Voucher ID
3. The clinic worker writes the Voucher ID on the pregnant woman’s health card
4. The pregnant woman presents the Voucher ID to a nearby retailer
5. The retailer sends a “Redeem voucher” message
6. The system authenticates the message
7. The woman pays 500 TSH and receives the mosquito net

Despite the endless debates for and against aid, there will always be government subsidies and e-Vouchers can be the next progression.

There were several issues we encountered and one, several or all of these factors will also be encountered by all M4D projects, therefore, taking them into consideration during the design process is already a win.

1. Short code

• For the majority of M4D projects, users should not have to incur the costs of sending an SMS to the system and SMS messages can be toll-free with the use of a short code. In Tanzania, short codes take a minimum of 4 weeks to set up through the TCRA or can be available immediately if a shared short code is suffice.

2. Connection

• Network connection varies greatly across each country and there can be a delay of several hours in the message delivery. Network connection is critical for projects in which users require real-time interaction (like eVoucher), therefore, we’ve limited our user group to urban areas. Even within districts of regions in Tanzania, we will experience 5 bars or no signal.

3. Literacy and SMS capabilities

• Literacy and user experience with SMS will vary amongst age groups and demographics. The format of the message should be simple enough for someone will limited experience in sending SMS to use. We’ve found most clinic workers to be proficient in sending SMS but some older workers have limited experience.

4. Power and gender

• Women may be hesitant to participate in the program without the permission of their husband. We’ve experienced cases where retailers would ask us to visit only when their husbands are around.

5. Network stability

• Tanzania has experienced very poor network stability over the past weeks. With cross-carrier SMS taking up to 24h to be delivered due to saturation of the networks.

6. Crime and corruption

• If there are ways that users can benefit from your program beyond intended use, those possibilities may be exploited. We’ve had many attempts at fraudulent activities as well as our vehicles being broken into, laptops/tablets/mobiles being stolen and most recently, a field officer from our project partner was arrested.

Dear team,

What keeps you awake at night?

While at Deloitte, we’d often ask our clients this question in hopes of identifying the company’s most critical problems as well their biggest aspirations. Similarly, this question can also be asked on a personal level. From time to time, thoughts regarding decisions and aspirations have inhibited me from a regular sleeping pattern. The restlessness of ideas such as “Social Consultants” (circa April 2009),decisions such as moving to Tanzania and the excitement of heartwork are all thoughts that kept me awake at night.

This past month, despite my eyelids being heavy from working through my time zone and EST, I haven’t been able to sleep at night due to the following thoughts:

I just launched a national program. It better work.
Oct 17 marked the launch date of the eVoucher program and while the nights leading up to the launch were sleepless due to the preparations, the following nights were sleepless because I realized that this program is mission critical. There’s no room for power outages, network failures, system crashes or functionality errors which we were encountering. For the first 2 weeks, the program was going wonderfully. We met our monthly targets with 4 days to spare and the feeling of watching users use a program which you built was so wonderful. Over 80% of women are redeeming their vouchers for mosquito nets on the same day that they receive the voucher and that’s a great testament to the goals of the project. However, just when I was getting comfortable and satisfied with the system performance, we experienced some major setbacks today. And so continues the loop of celebrating victories and fighting fires. Soon, I hope to translate that loop into one stable, positively sloped line.

If I had a penny for every mHealth pilot, I’d be rich.
It’s well-known that pilotitis is the biggest disease in mHealth. I’ve attended a number of mHealth working group meetings and this month, I attended the mHealth in Tanzania working group meeting where members shared the projects they were working on and almost every “new” project generated a response as “Oh…this [organization, person] is working on something [related, same].” Almost every single project. The lack of communication, duplication of efforts and pilotitis are the plagues of mHealth. These are the realities. Realities that undoubtedly have to be worked at. After working in the micro-level, this month was a reality check at the macro-level of m4d. Through iniatives like Failfaire and through the trend of transparency, these realities are quickly becoming identified but now require work, especially from the top-down. Currently, I’m working with the Tanzania mHealth Community of Practice on the priority of “Transitioning pilots to scale”. Change has to start somewhere.

I’ve found my heartwork. What next?
This question is the one I think about the most which means I will probably write about it the least as I don’t have any answers. In the spirit of transparency, I do see myself living in Toronto in the long-term so I’m hestitant to consider a career in international development. Undoubtedly, there are organizations who do this well (based in a Western city but work internationally), but Toronto also boasts itself of great companies and organizations affecting local change. In addition to the question of finding the intersection between what you do well, what you’re passionate about and what you can be paid to do, I’m now adding a layer of how you can be most efficient and effective to influence a positive impact. Because life is not complex enough as it is.

I am surrounded by people who love me.
I’ve so pleased to have three rounds of visitors willing and wanting to come visit. I lie awake at night thinking about our itineraries: showing my heartwork, eating at my favourite local places, and catching up in Dar’s most beautiful beaches. I’m too spoiled and extremely blessed.

So team, I’ll throw it back to you. What keeps you awake at night? What are the uncertainties, dreams and aspirations that consume your mind?

Peach and love / kris

You can decide where on the spectrum you stand, but results will sway you and people will sway you. Over the past week of the launch, both warnings of caution and encouragements of idealisms have been thrown my way. Over the past 2 months, I’ve been asked if I work for “another NGO” and judged based on the failings of the international development sector.

It’s tiring.

And while it’s easy to tune out the cynicism and scepticism, it’s not so hard to listen. I listen so don’t repeat mistakes that have been made already. I listen because the warnings made are valid. I listen because it’s easy to think that my project is going to be different, that my project will be the outlier, the success; but reality is, it might not be, so I’ll do what I can to prevent the failings.

I listen to the cynicism and scepticism, but don’t join in – I’ve decided to stay on the positive side of the spectrum.

In the spirit of transparency, see FailFaire for a collection of Failings in ICT4D and M4D.

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence.

Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.

Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.

Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.  The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

October 17 marked the official launch of the e-Voucher program. We began rolling out the electronic version of this process which facilitated the complete TNVS workflow using SMS. eVoucher eliminates the need of paper vouchers from the workflow (from printing to delivery to payment), reduces liability, allows powerful insight into voucher location and status.

After 3 days in the field, we’ve received an overwhelmingly positive response, with one woman clapping in excitement of the program and many workers excited at the benefits that come along with this program. It’s been wonderful watching reactions as we announce that paper vouchers will now be SMS vouchers. Our announcement reminds me of that of  Steve Jobs’ announcement of the first iPhone, it’s the introduction of something simple, yet powerful.

SMS messages have quickly been trickling into the system and it was so rewarding to see our first voucher successfully issued by a clinic and redeemed by a retailer. Firsts are always memorable and sentimental. The experience of seeing eVoucher through design, development, testing and  all the way to being operational has been a wonderful journey and a humbling one to be a part of.

The work was endless and tireless leading up to the launch date, only to be doubled once the launch occurred. Going forward, there are a bounty of details to perfect and fires that need fighting with the discoveries of each day but this is heartwork – the space where a need, skills and passion collide.

Easy to Implement
Involves ideas from the product team; considers the developers’ expertise and project budget first; and requires thorough training to ensure scale

At first glance, it seems like a fairly simple decision. However first glances aren’t enough to read the fine print that budget, time and functionalities are finite. With these limitations, a compromise has to be found: How do you build something user-friendly with the existing functionalities? How do you design something that’s easy to implement based on user requirements?

Oct17 is our set launch date, so I’ll see if the compromise tipped too far one way.