Clockwise from top: Evans Wafula, Ken Banks, Ellene Sana, Natasha Dokovska, Noel Large and Katrin Verclas

Each featured resource practitioner brings a wealth of experience, you can review the diverse and interesting biorgraphical information they provided to New Tactics.

Evans Wafula is Director of Africa Interactive in Eastern Africa and coordinates the Voices of Africa project which encourages African journalists to use mobile phones to promote human rights and democracy. He also works as a consultant in human rights and media development.

Evans Wafula has been practicing journalism since 1998. He has other specialty in other fields; including human rights training. He has worked for various media organizations including the West Africa Magazine, Central Africa Journal, Eastern Africa Magazine, Business Week, and the London based Africa Week magazine.

Besides, Wafula has previously served as board members for the Foreign Correspondent Association of East Africa (FCEA)-a media organization that represents the interests of foreign journalists and correspondents working in East Africa region and he is the co-founder of the Africa Journalists Commission on Human Rights (CHARJ)-A media organizations that champions press freedom in Africa.

He edited the first-ever non-profit human rights journal in Kenya, which reports on Kenya’s human rights situation. Dubbed: The Rights Journal published by the Independent Medico Legal Unit (IMLU). Wafula worked as an advocacy officer for the Independent Medico-Legal Unit (IMLU).

Mr. Wafula has presented papers on Africa’s political transition in Africa, human rights, and democracy at various international forums where he has earned recognition.

He has participated as a faculty at the United Nation University-International Leadership Institute (UNU-ILI) in Amman, Jordan. At the UNU-ILI, he trained journalists from the Middle East and Developing countries on the challenges of reporting in conflict areas. He has also presented intellectual papers on topical issues about human rights in Africa and politicization of Religion in Middle East.

Wafula’s main area of interest is market intelligence-including investigative reporting on human rights and global trends, developmental, politics and social development in Africa.

Ken Banks, founder of kiwanja.net, specialises in the application of mobile technology for positive social and environmental change in the developing world. He combines many years experience living and working throughout Africa with a 22-year career in IT. In 1999 he graduated from Sussex University with honours in Social Anthropology with Development Studies.

His vision is to empower others to create social change, and he does this by developing and providing tools to mostly grassroots organisations who seek to better use technology in their work. He recently hit headline news on the BBC when his text messaging application - FrontlineSMS (which is provided free to NGOs) - was used to help monitor the Nigerian Presidential elections. Ken has recently been interviewed by Pambazuka News, the BBC World Service, Nokia, Mongabay.com, White African and the Sussex University Alumni magazine, among others.

He has spoken about the application of mobile technology at a number of conferences, workshops and organisations including Nokia, IDEO, Stanford University, the MacArthur Foundation, Amnesty International and the University of Arizona. He also presented a paper at the W3C Workshop on the Mobile Web in Developing Countries (Bangalore, 2006) and the 16th International World Wide Web Conference (Canada, 2007), where he also sat on a specialist panel discussing web delivery models for emerging markets.

Ken was recently awarded a MacArthur Foundation grant to continue his work, and was shortlisted for a mobile industry award for the development of FrontlineSMS. Between 2006 and 2007 he was based at Stanford University as a Visiting Fellow on the Reuters Digital Vision Program.

For an excellent video overview on "Applying mobile technology in the global conservation and development effort" go to: http://www.kiwanja.net/shareideaskeynote.htm

Ellene A. Sana - A civil engineer who never got to practice it. Currently executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy --a Manila-based migrants' rights advocacy group whose work focuses on policy advocacy for the rights and welfare of the migrant Filipinos and members of their families. This program is complemented with our program to assist distressed migrant workers which we are able to do mainly by referring the case to concerned government agencies in Manila and through the Philippine embassies, consulates and labor offices. We also tap on CMA's wide network of migrant Filipino communities, trade unions, faith-based groups and like-minded NGOs, around the globe.

Since 2006, our programme to assist migrants in distress has been boosted with the activation of the SOS SMS system -- a text-based helpline that runs 24/7. A project conceptualised, developed and supported to date by a network of Filipino migrants in Saudi Arabia. Technical support is also extended by a group of Filipino IT experts in Manila and Australia. A partner NGO in the Philippines hosts the system. Since its activation, the cases of distressed migrants lodged in CAM have increased by more than 500%. Most of the cases came from Saudi Arabia.

In the Philippines, CMA is a member of the Philippine Migrants Rights Network (PMRW) and the network opposed to violence against women migrants. In the region, CMA is part of the Migrant Forum in Asia, and currently its chair in the executive committee.

Mobile technology is quite important in the work of CMA - both in terms of providing an easier and simpler way for migrants, wherever they may be, to access us and report their distressed situation; and conversely for us in touching base directly with concerned individuals in government agencies both in Manila and overseas. of course, it is a lot cheaper especially if overseas.

While the mobile technology facilitates the access and reporting of cases to us, 24 hours, 7 days a week, at the end of the day, the key to its success is CMA's capability to deliver prompt and concrete help and intervention, with much help from the team of committed migrant Filipinos onsite and the receptiveness of government personnel to respond to the situation.

Prior to CMA, I was working as case officer and advocacy officer of another migrant group that works with families and returned migrants. I am also involved in solidarity movements to support struggles of other peoples for freedom and democracy such as in East Timor before and until now, on Burma.

Natasha Dokovska - I am one of the founders of the Journalist Environment Center in 1997 and Journalists for children and women rights and protection of environment in Macedonia , where I’m currently president. In addition, I serve as Chief and Editor in PIAR and Chief and editor in weekly JOURNAL.

Journalists for children and women rights and protection of environment in Macedonia first used the tactic "Sending out an SMS" at the time of the presidential election when Macedonia's ex president died in a plane crash (2004). It was a sensitive time for all macedonian citizens and sending out an SMS message campaign wasn’t accepted well.

However, for our members it was most intersting and something new and we decided to repeat it for the national election last year. In this period we worked on the project to gain the biggest involvement of women in political life in Macedonia.
We used the New Tactics examples and did something similar with the Macedonian mobile operator. We prepared two messages which we sent to women via mobile phone to highlight women and encourage women to vote for women. The project was a great success because Macedonia now has 29 percent women in parliament. Macedonia is now a leader in the region.

As a journalist I have served in many capacities and covered many issues, including my experience as a war correspondant in Vukovar, the war in ex-Yugoslavia (1995); in Valona-Saranda, the civil war in Albania (1997); Kooks, Tropoja, Urosevac – visiting illegal arms camp in Albania and Kosovo (2001); and Reporting from the Macedonian arm conflict. Currently, I'm correspondent for ENS (Environmental News Service) from Macedonia; Leader in BANSA (Balkan Action Network for Small Arms - this is a network for exchange between journalists from the Balkan area who work on this issue); Coordinator on Informative and press center on NGOs who work on the disarmament process; Coordinator on campaign FOR LIFE WITHOUT WEAPONS; Trainer for journalists for sensitizing the public on small arms and the need for disarmament in the Balkan countries; and National Coordinator for Macedonia for the international campaign on CONTROL ARMS which is organized by IANSA, Amnesty International and OXFAM.

Noel Large - I was born and reared in East Belfast in an area known as Ballymacarret. My parents were both hard working, from the Protestant /Unionist tradition. I was the second eldest of five sons. My Father served his apprenticeship as a sail maker, a trade that became defunct in the late fifties or early sixties. As a result, my early school years were punctuated with moves from home to home while my Father searched for work. But generally we were raised under the shadows of the giant cranes and gantries of the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, where the most famous ship in the world “The Titanic” was built in 1912.

At the age of ten my family moved to the Ballybeen Estate, a sprawling working class housing estate in Dundonald, about six miles from the centre of Belfast on the east side. It was a great place for a young boy to grow up, with plenty of green fields and open spaces. I left school having turned sixteen, with no qualifications, and began to serve an apprenticeship as a plumber. My only real interest up to then had been in football and I had high hopes of a professional career, having come to the attention of one or two English League clubs including Arsenal and Portsmouth. My small stature and slight build obviously went against me. But hey what did they know?

At 17 years old I became a member of the junior wing of the Ulster Volunteer Force, a proscribed paramilitary organisation opposed to violent Irish Republicanism. By 19 years of age I had become a sworn member. I was married at 21 years old and a year later became a father to a beautiful daughter, Nichola. In 1981, I became heavily involved in the U.V.F. during the time of the Hunger strikes when there was enormous tension. As a result of my involvement I was charged in November 1982 with a list of crimes including murders, attempted murders, conspiracy to murder, armed robberies, bank robberies, possession of weapons, possession of explosives, basically a whole litany of crime.

In the summer of 1985 I was sentenced to four life sentences, and a total of 357 years for all my other offences combined. I was taken to the H Blocks of Long Kesh, the Maze Prison. I was released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, having spent a total of 16 years in prison. During my sentence I was divorced from my first wife and in 1990 met the girl who would go on to become my second wife, we were married during a ten day parole on Christmas Eve 1996.

In 1999 I took a job working in East Belfast with young people at risk. These young men reminded me of myself at that age and I tried to dissuade them from travelling down the same road as I had trod. In 2000, I secured a job working on the Shankill/Falls/Springfield Roads Interface with “Interaction Belfast” and have been here for seven years now. I love the work I am involved in and I know it is making a difference to the quality of life for people living on the longest Interface in Belfast.

Katrin Verclas - co-founder and editor of MobileActive.org, a global network of practitioners using mobile phones in social change work. She, was until recently, also the Executive Director of NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, the national association of IT professionals in nonprofit organizations in the United States.