Kudos to Question Box Heroes

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Over the past few months, a collection of extraordinary people have been providing extraordinary support to Question Box. We want to offer appreciation and recognition to:

John Digrado, CPA – John has led the charge to get all of Open Mind – Question Box’s paperwork in order and up to date with the Federal and State tax and regulatory boards. John has filled out hundreds of pages of government forms, organized our books, and generally been a great intermediary between us and the government. Thank you John!

Brendan Cassidy is our summer intern in Pune, India.  Brendan is improving the Question Box hardware, and creating formal manuals and documentation.  He’s doing a great job and surviving monsoon season.

Caitlin Feeney is just about to finish her 2 month internship. She’s diligently cleaned up all of Open Mind’s contact files, secured a free account for us at Salesforce.com to manage the contacts, created our upcoming newsletter (our first!) and translated our entire site into  Mandarin Chinese!

Hayley Tobin has just come on board, and already has drafted a manual and new website content. We’re looking forward to her assistance through September.

Arjun Sivakumar has worked with us for two summers, and we are sad to lose him to law school! Arjun has written countless grants and conducted significant research.

Software engineer Chokha Palayamkottai, founder of Integralops, has volunteered his company’s engineers to build the next generation of Open Question software! This software will enable organizations to run their own Question Box hotlines from their offices. Big thanks to Open Mind Board member Farida Paramita, who is managing the project, and who designed the user interfaces.

Megan MacMurray has been terrific, cleaning and updating our website and enabling new features. Thanks to Geetika Agrawal for being part of the online Question Box collective and offering design guidance.

Lastly, thank you to Raymond Ellis, Rebecca Seguerre, Nitin Gambhir, Oliver Zee, Kristin Cornuelle, and Rene Kathawala at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP for securing Open Mind’s 501c3 status, walking us through trademark and IP issues, and working on contracts. We are very grateful for your time and contributions.

 

Question Box’s strength lies in our volunteers, community, and partners. We invite you to join us with your talents to bring knowledge and understanding to the world.

A Young User at Maher Home for Children, Vadu, Maharashtra, India

 

Rose Shuman to address the Africa Gathering in London

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

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Rose Shuman, founder of Open Mind and Question Box Project will be speaking at an exciting Africa Gathering in London themed “World leading technologies changing Africa” on July 3rd, 2010.

Africa Gathering brings technophiles, thinkers, entrepreneurs, innovators and everybody else together to talk about positive change in sustainable development, technology, social networking, health, education and good governance in Africa. More info…

Rose Shuman is a featured speaker at the Guardian’s ACTIVATE 2010

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

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In a video interview with the Guardian, Rose Shuman talks about the pace of Internet spread in the developing world ahead of the ACTIVATE 2010 summit.She is a speaker at the summit.

 

The Guardian’s Activate Summit is a unique and powerful gathering of global visionaries at the Guardian’s headquarters in London.Its a packed day of ideas and inspiration, providing insight into how the web and the myriad technologies that weave it all together are reshaping our world.



Question Box in Deutsche Welle

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

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Question Box gets written about in Deutsche Welle.

Excerpt:

“Maher founder Sister Lucy Kurien, 54, said Question Box was useful for students who need help with homework and want to find out about exam results. Although that information has been available online, students couldn’t access it – until now.

‘It has been very difficult for them, unless they get (the information) from the newspaper or the radio,” she said. “And we have a simple television program, but we don’t have a television cable connection. It has been very difficult.’ ” Read full article

Open Mind is Now a 501(c)3 – Help us celebrate with a donation!

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

Hello supporters and friends of Open Mind – Question Box! We are pleased to announce that Open Mind has recently received 501c3 Status from the IRS – It’s official!  That means that all donations from US residents are now fully tax-deductible under the law.

To celebrate, we are starting our first-ever fundraising push! Open Mind is raising $30,000 in order to build a Question Box Total Toolkit that will enable any organization to build and run their own local language telephone hotline. Can you help? Please Donate Now!

IRS 501c3 letter text

Question Box featured on Deutsche Welle Radio

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

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Deutsche Welle DW radio QB – It’s in English!

DW reporter Michael Atkin was present at a Question Box inauguration at Maher home for women and children. Hear his firsthand reporting of what he saw and experienced live, and how Question Box became accidentally involved in a competition between two local political parties when each claimed Question Box was their initiative!

Link to Deutsche Welle

Question Box in CNN Money.com

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

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Question Box was recently mentioned in CNN Money.com.
Excerpt:

” ‘Question Box takes a pragmatic approach to how people in the developing world deal with technology,” says Erik Hersman, author of the popular tech and innovation blogs WhiteAfrican.com and Afrigadget.com, and cofounder of crisis-mapping nonprofit Ushahidi. “If I need an answer to a question, it’s much easier to use my voice and have people doing the technical stuff on the backend. A lot of the success around Question Box is to do with it being more analog than digital.’ ” Read full article

Question Box Highlighted in iRevolution blog

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

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Patrick Meier, Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships at Ushahidi, presents a strong case for why Question Box should be on the frontlines of vulnerability alert systems worldwide. Excerpt:

“I’m in Bellagio on Lake Como this week for a Blue Sky Thinkers Workshop on the UN’s new Global Impact and Vulnerability Alert System (GIVAS)….(I think) the global alert system should directly empower vulnerable communities to prevent or mitigate the impact of crises on their own livelihoods. In other words, GIVAS should be a self-help system for vulnerable communities. The development and maintenance of this system should be the responsibility of the UN and governments.
So here’s an idea (still under development): why not use the QuestionBox technology and approach to create “call in” centers for information on tactics for resilience.” Read full post now at iRevolution

Question Box featured in PBS & NDN blogs

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

We have just discovered two wonderful blog posts written about Question Box last Fall. Both posts highlight that voice remains the primary communication method of choice in the developing world. Question Box works from that reality, delivering information to people the way they want it, in their language.

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Sam duPont of the Global Mobile Technology Initiative at NDN writes, “This kind of innovation is what’s needed now (in the mobile space)– with such a new technology, we’ll only get anywhere by trying everything, and seeing what really works for the end users.” Read post

 

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Prabhas Pokharel, a Knight News Challenge Winner, writes in IdeaLab, “(Question Box) leverages the voice capabilities of mobile phones to deliver important information in interesting ways.” Read post

Squawk Box

Friday, March 26th, 2010

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Brown Alumna Rose Shuman talks about her venture Question Box.

“In 2006, Rose Shuman found herself in a hotel room waiting to be summoned by the technology company that had flown her out to California for an interview. To prepare to impress her potential employer, she started brainstorming ideas that would demonstrate her creativity. Suddenly, the image of the intercoms that sit on the wall beside the entrances of Brown dorms popped into her head. She realized they could be the basis for a vast network linking the developing world…” Read More