Educational mobile application for one billion phone users living in poverty

A group of Young Global Leaders will pilot a non-profit initiative this spring, which aims to give the one billion mobile phone users living in poverty access to educational phone applications.

Currently under development, AppBridge which is the brainchild of the Young Global Leaders – a World Economic Forum (WEF) community, is an online platform to encourage talented software developers to link up with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and community organizations to produce apps that will tackle poverty among the “bottom billion”.

The WEF says “about 74% of people living in poverty throughout the world have access to mobile phones. Thus, the platform will allow an ecosystem of people and organizations – NGOs, local partners, software developers and telecommunications companies – to engage and communicate directly with one another in identifying community needs, creating apps to address these needs and distributing apps to the target communities.”

The application is been developed by the group leader Margo Drakos with his fellow colleagues Neeraj Bharadwaj, Pawan Patil, Subhash Dhar, and Members of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers community.

“We are encouraged not only by the vision of these Young Global Leaders to improve the state of the world, but by their ability to translate it into scaled action. We at the Forum are committed to supporting AppBridge and their partners on this remarkable journey,” said Professor Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman and Founder of the World Economic Forum, and Founder of the Forum of Young Global Leaders in a statement copied to ghanabusinessnews.com.

The AppBridge initiative will also include an “Ideas & Apps Global Challenge Competition”, to turn ideas into reality and encourage talented mobile application developers to build creative, powerful tools to improve the lives of those in poverty, the Davos-based Forum said.

By Ekow Quandzie