Ushahidi was initially set up to mainly document incidents of violence, looting etc. during the post-election crisis in Kenya. Over time the website began document peace efforts and ways to help.

The impetus behind the website was a belief that the number of deaths being reported by the government, police, and media is grossly underreported. We also were of the view that we don't have a true picture of what is really happened/is happening- reports that all have us have heard from family and friends in affected areas suggests that things are were worse than what we have heard in the media. Beyond trying to present are fuller picture of what happened based on citizen reported information, we also want to create an archive of events that occured after the election results were announced.

Once we are done with the mapping of incidents, we also hope that we can begin to put names and faces to the people who have lost their lives and create a memorial of sorts.

What’s the point of all this you might ask?

Well, Kenyans have demonstrated their capacity for selective amnesia time and time again. When this crisis comes to an end, we don’t want what happened to be swept under the rug in the name of “moving forward” - for us to truly move forward, the full story of what happened needs to be told - Ushahidiis our small way of contributing to that.

Ushahidi will change in the world in the following ways:

1. There will be more awareness about incidents of violence of looting in post-election Kenya, these incidents may not have neccessarily been covered by mainstream media. There will also be a visual timeline of the events post Dec 27, allowing people to track points of escalation and cooling down.
2. More information about efforts to promote peace by Kenyan citizens on the ground and information on how people can help.
3. There will be a digital archive or "memorial" of sorts for the events that have happened in Kenya so that we can never forget.
4. There will be a documentation of information that can be used in any future peace and reconciliation efforts.
5. There will be an opportunity of the hitherto unnamed and unseen victims of the violence to tell their stories.
6. There will be a model that can be replicated in other future crisis events.

Why Mosomo-health?

Development experts have long pointed out that corruption at local level is a major impediment to development and poverty reduction. The consequences of embezzlement, sub-standard, overpriced work, cronyism and bribery are particularly devastating with regard to local health projects. Buildings remain unfinished or are in dilapidated conditions, doctors and nurses do not turn up for work, citizens have to pay bribes to get services they should get for free, local powerbrokers pocket health funds or collude with corrupt contractors (for details see Global Corruption Report 2006: Corruption and Health). The consequences are devastating for the health and livelihoods of entire communities, thus directly affecting MDGs 4 and 5, as well as indirectly also the MDGs on poverty reduction, primary education and gender equality. Local residents stand little chance to stem the corruption tide. They are often ill-informed about what facilities and services they are entitled to or how much money has been allocated to their local clinic. Complaints at local level to the very bureaucrats that benefit from the corrupt system are likely to fail, while getting heard by the central government is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for many victims of corruption.

What is Mosomo-health and how will it work?

A wave of new mobile applications empowers citizen journalists or social monitors to report on emergencies, track the integrity of elections or comment on the quality of services. Mosomo - health builds on these successes and brings social monitoring via mobile phones to an area of crucial importance to development and poverty reduction in many countries. It will harness the power of mobile phones to enable citizens to monitor their local health services more effectively.
In a nutshell, it will consist of two main activities:

1. the compilation of a basic information database on local health projects and services in a pilot country  (e.g. easily understandable, meta-tagged and geo-coded information on rural health facilities under construction and in operation with details on planned facilities, completion timetable, number of doctors and nurses, related budget allocations);
2. the design and establishment of a mobile information hub that makes it possible to narrowcast by sms targeted information from the health database to citizens at local level who  have registered as social monitors and also tp give these social monitors the option to retrieve information on specific health facilities or projects on demand from the database .

The rapidly evolving tools for mobile social media provide a wide range of additional functionalities that could be considered for the Mosomo testbed. Such functions include multimedia capabilities (project information available as voice recordings, photos, video snippets in addition to text), automated targeted retrieval and narrowcast with the help of geo-coding and geo-identification, time-programmed narrowcasts as sms alert systems, peer-to-peer alert systems and coordination of monitoring activities, voice controlled information retrieval etc. Specific design and implementation features will be decided in close consultation with the technology partners and the national chapters of Transparency International that commit to pilot the tool.

What is the expected impact?

The immediate outcome of Mosomo-health will be that social monitoring of local health projects by citizens at local level will be much more informed, targeted, effective and accessible.  Once citizens know that their new local health clinic under construction is meant to be completed at a certain date or that existing facilities have received money for  a certain number of doctors and services available they will find it much easier to document and report discrepancies and shortcomings. In turn, this will make it more difficult to misappropriate and embezzle money for local health projects, skimp on implementation or service quality or extort bribes from vulnerable clients.

In the medium term, however, the impact of the Mosomo pilot will be much broader and deeper.

Once fully operational the Mosomo system provides an extremely flexible, scalable and replicable information hub that can be expanded from monitoring health projects to other local development challenges and that can be flexibly tailored to the context of specific countries.

Moreover,  Mosomo-health is envisioned to be a self-standing building bloc of a broader social accountability ecosystem that Transparency International, the project sponsor, is developing. It is envisaged that this comprehensive system will also provide a collaborative information clearing-house in the form of a wiki website. This site will compile and map the observations and tracking reports (voice, text, images, video footage) submitted by local citizens. It will present these reports alongside project plans, service specifications and budget allocations for a wide range of essential public services and infrastructure projects.  Such a comprehensive public visualization of the implementation gap - the divergence between what facilities and services should exist according to plan and what is actually observed on the ground – will maximize the pressure for local accountability and provide vital empirical information for advocacy and local governance reform.

Citizen guardianship over public-interest information channels is essential to democratic debate and socially responsible media policy change. Independent, noncommercial and community media are struggling to survive while multi-billion dollar industries grow more powerful from the cables they run under the public roads and the licenses they use to broadcast on public airwaves, fighting off public obligations at every step. How can we create an environment where diverse media thrive? This is about how and what we communicate. Today's emerging information technologies have the potential to connect the world as never before. New media tools enable us to share solutions, strengthen cultures, and create new levels of accountability and transparency in governments and corporations, as well as, among social change organizations. THIS PROJECT could make local, regional national, and international media advocacy activities accessible to anyone interested in holding information gatekeepers in check. It would provide concerned citizens with 1) tools to feedback to broadcast, cable, satellite, radio and internet content decision-makers, 2) tools for messaging policy makers, and 3) motivation to transform individual viewers/receivers/"consumers" into participating media rights advocates by provide opportunities to get involved. THE PROJECT would also address a pressing need among media advocacy players in the U.S. Accessing information about partnerships, collaborations, new initiatives, etc. is klunky and time-consuming. Bridge-building between and among advocates across regions and issues is timely, if not urgent in today's media landscape. The widest gulf exists between grassroots and local media justice organizations and Washington D.C. Policy change efforts. The connection between scholarly research and community advocacy is developing, yet improving knowledge of and access to organizations would expedite productivity (and therefore, positive policy change). THIS PROJECT could minimally, be the gateway to more efficient networking, alliance and partnership initiatives and collaboration. Funders and/or investors would use the service to gain pertinent information about media issues or potential grantees. This mashup would help strengthen media movements, and ultimately be the e-support of efforts that preserve the free expression of diverse perspectives.