As I’ve mentioned before, your devoted Thistle is now fortunate enough to have a devoted love in her life (besides the love of Gaia, of course). His name is Jacob, and while I won’t be writing about him much in this space, I’m doing so today because he needs your help!
In a nutshell, he’s over in the West Bank, in Ramallah, starting up this nonprofit mobile technology firm that uses SMS (that’s text-messaging) to get people jobs, food, aid, and so on. This is crucial because, in such a politically torn region, barely anyone has access to the Internet and landlines are too expensive. The predominant mode of communication is text-messaging, as it’s cheap and everyone has a cell phone — so now, thanks to Souktel, farmers can request veterinary support without having to pass through checkpoints and drive for hours, while recent graduates can find work without commuting to the city and back every day searching high and low for job postings.
Also, on an environmental level, this service means that hundreds of students, employers, farmers, aid workers and relief volunteers don’t have to drive around trying to find one another.
You can read more about Souktel here; or watch the CBC video here.
Anyway, he’s taking part in this challenge called NetSquared, which is being hosted by USAID. Here are the deets:
- The U.S. Agency for International Development, which delivers economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide on behalf of the American people, is sponsoring a challenge to find the best in mobile innovations for good. Through a community vote, 15 finalists will be chosen. A panel of judges, selected by USAID, will then select the winners. The first place winner will receive a grant of $10,000, the two runner-ups will receive grants of $5,000 each. All three winners will have the opportunity to present their ideas to senior USAID officials, experts and the public in Washington D.C.
So please, please, PLEASE help a Thistle out (and make her eco-minded boyfriend forever grateful for the do-gooding, viral capacities of the blogosphere) by taking a couple seconds to cast your vote online, which can be done here (you unfortunately have to register, then log in, before you can cast a ballot — also note that you must vote for a minimum of three projects… but it’s kind of cool reading about what all these organizations are doing, so maybe take five minutes during your lunch break to poke around the site). Polls are open til Friday.
