DigiActive.org

Using social networking tools in to combat drug abuse in South Africa

Description: A group of former drug users and gangsters have teamed up with Mr Marlon Parker, a PhD candidate and lecturer on IT at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, to offer an online platform for people to combat their own drug use and find support on their road to wellness.

The network is a response to the increased violence and drug abuse that has occurred in Cape Town in the past several years, a trend that is causing much restlessness in society.  By providing young members of the society who may be caught up in drug use or gang activity a place where they feel comfortable, they can begin opening up and receiving help from counselors.

Tools: Mxit

How they use the tools: Mxit is a mobile service that is used by 8.6 million people in Africa, and offers an easy way to send and receive text messages via mobile phone or internet.  Parker partners with school districts to offer a counseling service through Mxit to students, who can text in or use the platform’s chat capabilities via General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) as opposed to SMS.

For his PhD thesis, Mr Parker has been researching how technology can be used for community change.

Related articles by Zemanta

• MobileActive08: Using Mobile Web for Social Action

Tactic: Mapping Xenophobic Attacks in South Africa

Description: United for Africa is a South African web site that records reports of violence sent by SMS and e-mail on a Google Earth map. It provides living testimony to the atrocities committed during the xenophobic riots of May 2008 in South Africa. United for Africa is build upon the engine of Kenyan riot-tracking site Ushahidi.

Organizer: Quirk, a web marketing agency in Cape Town is leading this charge. Quirk will act as administrators on this build, and the Ushahidi team will step away from it as soon as the build is done.

Purpose of Action: To create a visual map of human rights abuses.

Organizing Tools: SMS, Google Earth, web site

Outcome: The xenophobic riots in South Africa are still continuing.

Ease of Replication: It is rather difficult to replicate the Ushahidi map, but their authors offer help to interested activists. United for Africa is actually the second rip-off build upon the Ushahidi engine after Sokwanele from Zimbabwe. The initiators of Ushahidi are developing their project as a free and open source tool for crowdsourcing crisis information and then visualizing that on a map. They hope that they will soon be able to provide this tool for any national or international conflict. To reach that goal they are still seeking for more developers.

via White African