Frontline Projects

Over the past few years, a family of sector-specific projects has grown up around the core FrontlineSMS platform. These projects are adapting and extending our expertise and our software across specific sectors such as finance, education, community radio and legal services. Through incubating entrepreneurship, enterprise and ingenuity, these organizations support, extend and nurture the Social Impact Lab mission of empowering people to create social change through mobile technology.

FrontlineSMS:Credit enables organizations to easily manage mobile money. By connecting with local mobile payment systems via SMS, users are able to send and receive mobile payments from the FrontlineSMS platform, manage transaction data for accounting purposes, and bring the use of mobile payments into their work. Mobile payments can enable efficiency, expansion, and innovation in the delivery of critical products and services to the base of the pyramid, in financial services, health, agriculture and more.

FrontlineSMS:Legal helps our partners bridge the distance between communities and the legal services they need most, using low-cost mobile tools. FrontlineSMS:Legal develops and implements technologies that improve the delivery, reach, and efficiency of legal services by connecting formal systems with community based dispute resolution mechanisms. Our partners, including government agencies, not-for profit organizations, university law clinics, and other legal institutions, provide critical legal and dispute resolution services to marginalized communities. By bridging these systems, FrontlineSMS:Legal helps our partners reduce costs, reach new clients, and manage workflows, increasing access to justice.

FrontlineSMS:Radiois a tailored version of the core software optimised for radio DJs. Radio represents the dominant media source for many people worldwide and it represents a vital outreach particularly for rural communities; however this type of communication has been mostly one way. By capturing, organizing and smartly representing incoming data from listeners—live—FrontlineSMS:Radio is fostering two-way dialogue in a way that is immediate and relevant.

FrontlineSMS:Learn seeks to improve the relationships between educators, parents, and students by integrating mobile engagement practices and tools into formal and informal education systems in Kenya. The relationships between stakeholders in education is one of the most determinative aspects of the learning experience, with disproportionate effects on transition and retention rates between education levels, especially amongst vulnerable populations. By working with last-mile education systems to design and pilot education-focused mobile engagement tools, FrontlineSMS will use the most popular communication platform in the world to strengthen the bond between educators and the communities that need them most. In addition, FrontlineSMS will release this tool for free to everyone, extending the benefits to education systems all over the world.

Newsroom: The Newsroom project assists journalists and media outlets with digital tools to gather, track and share news. It will also give people the ability to participate and shape the news in their communities by expanding their opportunities for two-way communication. The tools work as a plugin to enhance the FrontlineSMS core platform.

Governance: Our Governance Project promotes and supports the use of FrontlineSMS by IGOs, NGOs, and political institutions working to strengthen good governance.

To find out how to contact any of our sister projects directly visit our contact page.