Gram Vaani means ‘voice of village’. We have developed a voice-based & participatory community media platform ‘Mobile Vaani’. It supports rural and low income communities in accessing relevant contextual information & social security entitlements.
The platform is freely accessible 24x7 to anyone with a basic mobile phone. Callers can give miss call to receive a call back and listen to the content, share opinions & forward content to others. Also, conveniently scheduled “call outs” can be used to contact communities and to conduct surveys remotely. We repurposed our technology and leveraged our established partnerships for the COVID-1...
SEE ALLThe platform is freely accessible 24x7 to anyone with a basic mobile phone. Callers can give miss call to receive a call back and listen to the content, share opinions & forward content to others. Also, conveniently scheduled “call outs” can be used to contact communities and to conduct surveys remotely. We repurposed our technology and leveraged our established partnerships for the COVID-19 response. This includes:
- Authentic information on COVID-19 from governments and WHO, disseminated as FAQs, news, entertaining and engaging content in regional languages for awareness building and countering misinformation.
- Capturing community experiences and feedback of the lived reality of the COVID-19 outbreak and its influence on social and economic life, including through community research surveys.
- Directing this information through scientific and policy channels to ensure that community voices are heard.
- Relief and grievance redressal for multiple issues (health and non-health) related to COVID-19 and associated lockdown
- Self-assessment survey to enable end-users check their vulnerabilities and connecting them with teleconsultation partners,
- Facilitate a large network of partnerships in health, nutrition, education, child safety, gender and special needs domain to use the Mobile Vaani model with their respective communities.
- Partnering with formal/informal groups to gather need assessment data and advocate for the rights and entitlements of the migrants workers
SEE LESSStage 5: Scaling
Our community media platform-‘Mobile Vaani’, designed to be voice based social media, was repurposed and scaled up during COVID19 crisis, so that this platform can act as a means of informing and providing relief to hard-to-reach communities.
Registered in Indiain India
Focus Areas:
Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance, Good Governance, Economic Empowerment and 4 MoreSEE ALL
Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance, Good Governance, Economic Empowerment, Health, Displaced Persons & Migration Management, Inclusion and TechnologySEE LESS
Problem
Communication channels and social security systems are often broken by the barriers of literacy, the digital divide and socio-cultural factors such as wealth, gender, and caste, leading to widespread exclusion. These fractures have widened during the COVID19 crisis derailing development efforts. Critical problems facing rural and low-income populations include lack of community awareness, spread of misinformation, weak accountability of stakeholders, and proper COVID19 case management.
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Solution
Mobile Vaani, our flagship participatory platform, informs, engages & hears voices from communities. It is a federated network of community media platforms that empower rural and low income communities. These platforms operate using IVR (Interactive Voice Response) that do not require smartphones or Internet connectivity, and enable people to listen and share voice messages with one another. The platforms are mobilized by community volunteers, who support communities to exercise their rights
Target Beneficiaries
Mobile Vaani (MV) caters to rural and low-income urban communities of under served areas. MV’s engages communities in 5 Indian states directly and in 20 states indirectly through partners. Given the participatory nature and easy access, MV caters to men, women, transgenders, persons with disabilities belonging to different age groups. Our surveys reveal: MV users depend on agriculture (smallholder farmers or wage laborers, 50% users), with average monthly household incomes under $70 (80% users)
Mission and Vision
Gram Vaani’s mission is to challenge socio-economic ideologies and norms that are responsible for the reproduction of all forms of inequality, by providing a community media technology platform - Mobile Vaani (MV). MV aims to empower the communities and facilitate action for social security by ensuring:
- equitably access to people despite existing inequalities
- a shared understanding among people on matters of concern
- action by leveraging the power of media to demand better models of change
Competitive Advantage
In partnership with 150+ organisations, our platform has a sustained user-base (80 to 100 thousand users call monthly) and community network with immediate reach to 25+ interactive platforms through an established delivery channel. It is operated in multiple languages and they are proven to be relevant for behavior change communication. The technology is hosted on cloud and there are no complex requirements at partners end to deploy the service, thus making it easy to scale-up and replicate in multiple languages and sectors (health, education, agriculture etc) across the country/geographies. Our platform is institutionalized within government systems, thus contributing to the sustainability of the service. The service is cost-effective with low per-user engagement and no recurring cost on the mobile application. We have won several national and international awards including the most recent National Health Authority’s Grand Start-up Challenge for the initiative on national insurance
Planned Goals and Milestones
Given the unprecedented nature of the pandemic crisis and due to rising poverty levels among remotely located communities, MV envisions the following goals -
- To effectively communicate with relevant stakeholders about issues emerging on the MV platform and channelize efforts to support communities
- To amplify the collective voice
- To support network organizations and run MV platforms among their communities
- To strategize & contribute to public policy with the help of evidences gathered
| Projected Cumulative Lives Impacted | 100,000 |
The Team Behind the Innovation
Mr. Aaditeshwar Seth, PhD: Co-founder and Director, Professor, IIT Delhi.
Mr. Vijay Sai Pratap, BE, MBA (SSSIHL), MBL (NLSIU), Co-founder & CEO
Mr. Rachit Pandey, BTech, IITK: CTO
Ms. Orlanda Ruthven, PhD: Director, Workforce & Labor Rights
Mr. Rohit Singh, MBA (NMIMS), a Certified CSR Assessor by URS Worldwide (USA): VP Programs and Partnerships
Ms. Sayonee Chaterjee, MSW, Director - Gender & Nutrition
Mr. Sultan Ahmad, M.A. in Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policy, Director - Media & Governance
EXECUTIVE TEAM INCLUDES WOMEN
