Vodafone Americas Foundation and mHealth Alliance Announce Winners of Wireless Innovation Competitions

At the Global Philanthropy Forum Conference today, The Vodafone Americas Foundation and mHealth Alliance announced the winners of the second annual Wireless Innovation Project™ and the first mHealth Alliance Award for innovation in mobile health (mHealth).  The winning projects, which together will be awarded $650,000 in cash and prizes, were selected for their ability to leverage wireless technology to help meet challenges faced in developing countries, including access to clean air, medical care, and financial services for the rural poor. The award will help bring each project to the next stages of implementation and scale.

“As someone from the wireless industry, I’m proud to be associated with these winners,” said Terry Kramer, president of Vodafone Americas Foundation. “We’ve selected three outstanding innovations that cover a wide spectrum of issues, and have the ability to help millions of people.”

This year’s winners include: 

1st Place ($300,000 winner) –
100 Million Stoves
Approximately 700 million households, including the poorest half of the world population rely on fire and simple stoves for cooking. Smoke and exposure from these stoves are responsible for causing premature deaths for 1.5 million women and children as well as contributing to climate change. With the potential to improve health, air quality, reduce greenhouse gases and save lives, 100 Million Stoves is a simple wireless stove use monitoring system (SUMS) that can be attached to the millions of new low-emission stoves being used in developing regions. Being developed at the University of California at Berkeley for initial application in India, this groundbreaking wireless technology will help assess the impact of household energy programs, enable feedback from users, and provide transparent verification of carbon credits.

2nd Place ($200,000 winner) –
FrontlineSMS: Credit
An open source software, FrontlineSMS:Credit has the potential to open up financial services and micro-financing to millions of people in the developing world.  The application leverages mobile payment systems and core banking software to bring financial services – such as savings, credit, insurance and payroll – to the entrepreneurial poor, eliminating geographic and time barriers and turning mobile payment systems into platforms for mobile banking.

3rd Place ($100,000 winner) & winner of the mHealth Alliance Award ($50,000) –
Sana (previously MocaMobile)
Sana is a multidisciplinary group based out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a mission to revolutionize healthcare delivery in rural and underserved areas.  Sana has developed an innovative open source platform that allows mobile phones to capture and send data for an electronic medical record and links community health workers with physicians for real-time decision support.

In addition to the Wireless Innovation Project™ third prize, Sana also will receive the mHealth Alliance Award – with benefits totaling $50,000, including participation in Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology, and Society’s Global Social Benefit Incubator Program (GSBI™), a highly competitive program that connects innovators with a Silicon Valley support network and provides instruction on how to achieve maximum sustainability and impact in social enterprises.

“Innovations like Sana demonstrate the power of mobile health, or mHealth, to close the health information divide,” said David Aylward, executive director of the mHealth Alliance. “We selected Sana for the mHealth Alliance Award because of its proven potential to connect remote health workers with medical professionals, supporting the delivery of quality care to the furthest reaches of wireless communications.”

Wireless Innovation Project winners and the mHealth Alliance Award winner will receive a unique trophy – one-of-a-kind hand-made African baskets woven from telephone wire and crafted by artisans associated with Bridge for Africa, a nonprofit fair trade organization that promotes employment in rural Africa.

Award winners were selected from a pool of nearly 100 qualified applicants from universities and non-governmental organizations throughout the United States. A panel of judges from the fields of wireless engineering, international development, social entrepreneurship and business evaluated the applications for their potential to solve critical global problems in the fields of education, health, access to communication, the environment or economic development.

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About the Vodafone Americas Foundation
Vodafone Americas Foundation is part of Vodafone’s global network of foundations. We are affiliated with Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s leading mobile telecommunications company, with ownership interests in 31 countries and Partner Markets in more than 40 countries. As of June 30, 2009, Vodafone had approximately 315 million proportionate customers worldwide. In the U.S., our foundation directs its philanthropic activities towards the San Francisco Bay and the Metro Denver Areas where most of our employees live and work, and where we strive to make a positive and enduring impact on our communities. The Foundation is driven by a passion for the world around us. We make grants that help people in our communities and around the world lead fuller lives.

About the mHealth Alliance
The mHealth Alliance is dedicated to enabling the delivery of quality healthcare to the farthest reaches of wireless networks in the developing world.  Created by the United Nations Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Vodafone Foundation, the Alliance’s mission is to be a catalyst and accelerant, supporting leaders, celebrating successes, creating hard research, filling gaps, making connections, and forging public-private partnerships. More information is available at www.mHealthAlliance.org.

About the Global Philanthropy Forum
A project of the World Affairs Council of Northern California, the Global Philanthropy Forum aims to build a community of donors and social investors committed to international causes, and to inform, enable and enhance the strategic nature of their work.

Through an annual conference, a summer seminar, special events and conference call programs, the GPF connects donors to issues; to effective strategies; to potential co-funding partners; and to emblematic agents of change from around the world. By building, and continually refreshing a lasting learning community, the GPF seeks to expand the number of philanthropists who will be strategic in pursuit of international causes. For more information visit http://www.philanthropyforum.org.

About Santa Clara University’s Center for Science, Technology & Society
Santa Clara University is committed to educating leaders of competence, conscience, and compassion who will help fashion a more just, humane, and sustainable world.  As a University center of distinction, the Center for Science, Technology, and Society undertakes three integrative activities: educating students, engaging the public, and exemplifying the realization of social impact through our flagship Global Social Benefit Incubator Program (GSBI™).  In so doing, we forge strong connections across local and global businesses, civic and academic institutions, and the technology innovators of Silicon Valley in the context of Jesuit values of service.  For more information visit www.scu.edu/sts.

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