Feature Online Dialogue: Using Mobile Phones for Action
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Using Mobiles | SMS (Short Message Service)
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Intro
Mobile technology is being used by citizens all over the world as the most affordable and massively adopted piece of technology. How can we harness this technology for advancing human rights and civil society participation?
Our outstanding resource practitioners for the November-December tactical discussion shared and discussed many ideas for "Using Mobile Phones for Action". You can still contribute your ideas, questions and experiences!
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Philippe Duhamel - in his interTactica blog - Harnessing new technology for new tactics provides some great examples to get our creative ideas flowing.
- Sending out an SMS -- Supporting human rights work and activism with text messaging, or SMS - Short Messaging Service - functionality
- Organizing demonstrations -- Such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine
- Coup de text -- Like ousting a president, it happened in the Philippines
- Protest Ringtones -- Highlighting corruption, it's being used in the Philippines
Links from the dicussion:
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Building relationships across the divide.
Hi Noel again, I would like to share with you all some of my work experiences that have helped to change and shape my attitude to peace building /building relationships here at Interaction Belfast. At Interaction the foundation of all our work is on three core issues. Process.Results.Relationships. Think of them as a triangle. In any order. But the basis for your Process and the Results you hope to achieve must allways have Relationship Building at its core. We work with community activists from both the Loyalist/Unionist community and the Republican/Nationalist community. Many of of our most committed members are former sworn enemies. The success of our Mobile Phone Network did not happen overnight and we are still working to strengthen relationships. I can easily remember our first meeting with activists from both communities at the Belfast City Hall. It was not an easy meeting to facilitate, both sides sat so far apart we needed microphones, it was a long table! ha ha. Both sides came with a long list of grieviances. Both sides were intent on blaming each other for most of the violence on the Interface. But at the end of the day the most important thing to come out of the meeting was that both sides agreed "it was good to talk". So we got a comitment from them all that they would meet again soon. We met again and made some progress and soon were meeting every Friday. That has grown into what is now the Springfield InterCommunity Forum (S.I.F.) We have had politicians from all over the world visiting S.I.F. including a visit a few years ago from the President of East Timor! There are many reasons for our success, not least of all the committment of our members, all voluntary, but the main reason is good solid relationships. The Mobile Phone Network on its own would not work, it would help reduce tension and incidents of violence, but committed activists working for the benefit of their communities is the real reason we have had success and those relationships built over the past ten years are the mainstay of Interaction Belfast.