The arrival of COVID-19 in Africa promised to claw back gains made in the education sector, as schools remained closed and curriculum interrupted. To keep learning happening during the lockdown, stakeholders in the industry have come up with numerous policies and guidance, such as rolling out online-based courses, and use of television and radio broadcasts. More than often, the majority of the students are left out as their households cannot afford these platforms. We interviewed Ellen Carney, Geneva Global’s Associate Program Director in Uganda and Ethiopia, on the Frontline+Education platform that offers possibilities of addressing these challenges.
The SMS Paradox: An Argument for Dumb Pipes
As it turns out - most of human infrastructure is built on (arguably) secure, dumb pipes. It’s what enables us to rely on infrastructure without constantly worrying that it’s being used against us. Confidence in the security of dumb pipes is why we drink water from taps (or bottles), trust pharmacists, and express some of our most personal things to our loved ones, over the phone. In fact, one of the things that makes Signal such a growingly popular app is that its lack of commercial motivation means that it doesn’t have to make the revenue-driven turn to user exploitation. Signal can stay smart about being intelligently secure, dumb (wilfully ignorant, really) pipes.
Frontline Works in a Multichannel World
Build a Better Campaign
Frontline Powered by APIs
Here at Frontline, we recognize that each user has specific needs, operating on a wide variety of platforms. That’s why, over the last decade, we’ve tried to makeFrontline as configurable as possible to meet these needs, wherever you are. With our new APIs, you can push messages and information in and out of FrontlineCloud – letting you keep data where it’s most useful to you. To get things started, we’ve preconfigured an integration into one of our favourite digital campaigning and management platforms, Nationbuilder. You can use Nationbuilder and Frontline together to RSVP to events and to update contact records inside your nation.
The Cost of SMS (is a feature, not a bug)
A Day Well Spent at FrontlineSMS
Given the incredible growth in mobile usage in the last decade, it comes as no surprise that many organisations are embracing the use of mobile technology to expand their reach and engage with communities. This has come with its fair share of challenges, given some of the limitations of technology such as poor mobile connectivity in some areas, SMS has become the more reliable and inexpensive option.
Happy 2013: user survey, the release of Version 2.2, and other news!
The development and growth of FrontlineSMS has been driven by feedback we receive from our active user community. Each year we give our users the opportunity to share their use and vision of FrontlineSMS through our annual user survey. This year is no different! We would like to hear from you through our 2013 User Survey - tell us how you're using the software, how we can make it better, and help us show how FrontlineSMS is making a difference. The survey takes less then 10 minutes!
Cooking up a menu of services: Responding to user needs for mobile engagement support
The FrontlineSMS team is pleased to announce a new level of premium support and consultancy services to help users design mobile engagement strategies, build capacity for professional adoption and automate communication workflows. Engaging people on new platforms can be a complex process and it can be a challenge to find a recipe for success. New technologies mean new communication patterns which are inherently personal and constantly changing.