Dipak Basu, Class of 2005, continues to develop and grow his project Linkage India, now known as Anudip. On May 8th, 2006 Anudip inaugurated its first rural entrepreneur development center in Namkhana Island in the south Sunderbands. Read the rest of this entry »
2004 Fellow Brij Kothari was feature in The Times of India for Google’s aid to his literacy project, PlanetRead. Kothari said the support from the world’s most preferred search engine on the Internet “lends tremendous credibility and visibility” to the project and “allows us to dream about its implementation in all languages in India and in other countries too” Read the rest of this entry »
With the advancement in the technology, it is now crucial for any individual to have access to the latest communication technologies to face the challenges of the modern world.
To equip better of the semi-urban and rural population with the modern communication amenities, BRACNet has started operating with an aim to bring Internet and data connectivity to the masses by building “digital business centres,” says a press release. Read the rest of this entry »
DVP Alumni Njideka Harry ‘04, Rajendra Nimje ‘04, and Rajeswari Pingalo ‘02 have been selected as finalists in the 2006 Stockholm Challenge Event for the world’s best ICT projects. Read the rest of this entry »
2004 DV Fellow Rajendra Nimje received two e-Governance Awards in the category of “Innovative Operations and Best Practices” for e-Immunization [Silver Icon Award] and Rural Health Call [Bronze Icon Award]. Awards were presented to both projects at the 9th National e-Governance Conference in Kochi on February 2, 2006. Read the rest of this entry »
Dipak Basu’s project, Ganges Delta Network, has evolved into a newly established NGO in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) called Linkage India. Linkage’s mission is to to create livelihood opportunities for unemployed and marginalized poor. Linkage will fulfill its mission through computerized resource centers for rural entrepreneurs, to train and empower them with access to markets and capital. Read the rest of this entry »
Moulaye Ely Diarra recently presented his project, Virtual Agricultural Product Market (VAPM), to Mali’s National Agricultural Committee. VAPM is a virtual agricultural information center that connects farmers and traders. Moulaye will be conducting special training with a sample of eight enumerators during the next few months. Read the rest of this entry »
Paul Rankin has been working on ‘Voices in Your Hand’, an economically-sustainable humanitarian project to create a simple, voice-email handset and cheap audio services to help urban shantytowns and isolated rural areas in the developing world, overcoming illiteracy or minority languages. The pilot will be completed during 2005. Read the rest of this entry »
e-Mobilizer, a Stanford Digital Vision social entrepreneurship project bringing under-privileged micro-entrepreneurs access to the larger public market, made it to the second round of the BASES Entrepreneurship Challenge – one of the world’s most prestigious business plan competition. Read the rest of this entry »
Arriving at Stanford in the fall of 2003, Joe McCannon took on a daunting challenge: devising a way to connect the care providers treating millions of HIV/AIDS patients in sub-Saharan Africa.
Undeterred by the region’s limited infrastructure, he started out with an ambitious idea driven by cutting-edge technology. When this proved impractical, however, he stepped back and realized that a relatively low-tech approach might actually address the problem more effectively after all.
Heather Ford came to the Digital Vision Program with a bold vision of how information technology tools might be employed to help end the recurring conflicts in Africa’s Great Lakes region.
However, not long after beginning the program, she changed tack dramatically and began working on issues of intellectual property and copyright law. Though these fields may seem quite different, Heather maintains that her final project was simply a more effective way of working towards fulfilling her original goal.
As one of Paypal’s founding employees, Sanjay Bhargava knows how much people appreciate fair, secure transactions. During his 2002-2003 fellowship year with Stanford’s Digital Vision Program, Sanjay tackled trade again. But this time, instead of streamlining payments for online retailers, Sanjay wanted to create a Community Friendly Movement (CFM) that would be as profitable for the developing world’s artisans and their communities as it was for entrepreneurs.
Shuji Yamaguchi came to the Digital Vision Program with an innovative plan to lower the language barriers dividing humanitarian workers around the globe. He soon changed focus, however, as he discovered that a lack of access to news reports was a far more pressing need for his constituents. But rather than derail his vision, this realization actually served to expand his notion of how he might help aid workers overcome linguistic hurdles in the future.
Njideka Ugwuegbu Harry knows a simple, timeless truth. No matter how much success Nigerians have when leaving rural homes for cities or even for other countries, they’ll still long to stay connected to family and friends back home. Her SpokesYouth project will make it easier to establish these connections –along the way empowering youth in rural Nigeria to gain valuable technology skills.
After 15 years programming applications for Palo Alto-based Reuters Innovation Studios, Steve Wilhelm happened to visit a Stanford graduate course that broadened his horizons all the way to Cape Town, South Africa. The course, taught by Stanford Communications Professor Clifford Naas, charged students with creating culturally appropriate products for developing countries. Inspired, Steve applied to the Digital Vision Program and was soon dreaming up a project of his own.
Khalid Quadir’s computer programming skills and understanding of building dynamic databases are minimal, but that didn’t stop him from using those concepts to solve the problem of public access to documents in developing countries.
“Government documents and business documents are difficult to access even for urban dwellers. In the developing world, people have to wait in a long line for a simple application,” said the Bangladesh native.