Peer Water Exchange
Description
The Peer Water Exchange (PWX) has launched an SMS interface for receiving field reports on water and sanitation projects. This service helps connect field personnel working in remote areas without good internet coverage to send in an SMS and have PWX convert it into a status report attached to the main project report on PWX. Field reports help managers and funders far away to keep track of progress and issues and act on them. These reports allow entire organizations to learn and share since they replace bi-lateral communications with broadly visible storage and distribution channel. The natural extension is to have beneficiary villagers (the billions without water and sanitation) report on the projects themselves on a regular basis, thus allowing them to share the results of development themselves.
What we deliver
We provide the ability get up to date information of water and sanitation projects in remote areas. Reporters are field staff and visitors. The reports are used by implementing organizations, funders, government agencies, analysts, and the public.
Whom we deliver
4 organizations in India, 3 are trialing, and 20 partners are watching.
Why is the project unique?
The Peer Water Exchange platform remains alone despite six years of operation. Peer review, collaboration, and participatory decision-making remain rare in the development sector. SMS is a channel that has been used in some areas; but we have solved the problem of handling a stream of SMS reports and attaching it to a project along with regular reports. In this we remain innovators, all alone in the forefront.
Roadmap
Today, the masses can use mobile technology to share their progress with the rest of the world, to express their needs, and even to help themselves. We need to stop trying to push data to them and empower them to reach to us. That means we need to listen to them and act, not let them suffer in silence. Mobile technology gives them a voice, my vision is that it should also give us ears.
Contact
Rajesh Shah
Peer Water Exchange
163, Laughing Waters, Varthur Road
Bangalore, Karnataka, India
URL/Website – http://peerwater.org
