Download the original report here: SPIDER Stories
A number of health and social organizations in Cambodia are working hard to support and improve the health and livelihood of people in Cambodia. To generate a big impact for this important work, there is the need for two-way communication that can reach out to people directly and overtake the literacy barrier.
iLab Southeast Asia staff, Mr. Chanmann Lim, works with nurse at Marie Stopes clinic to test the Verboice system.
Through funding from the SPIDER network, InSTEDD’s iLab Southeast Asia began the project to assist the Women’s Media Centre (WMC), Open Institute (OI) and other partners in Cambodia in implementing a series of mobile-based information lines, scheduling advice systems and question boxes for women and children that complement and extend the reach of their current mass media projects.
InSTEDD has already developed an open source IVR system called Verboice. The objective in this project is to implement the Verboice platform to answer the requirements and needs in Cambodia. We work with partners from different dimensions of expertise, who have existing programs going on that would benefit from expanding their content and program through an IVR system.
Training Verboice to a team from Open Institute
iLab Southeast Asia staff, Mr. Chanmann Lim, works with the Open Institute staff to test the interface design of the Verboice system.
We began working with Open Institute and the Women’s Media Centre of Cambodia. Open Institute intended to use IVR for their existing program on Gender-Based Violence. WMC thought of extracting IVR content from their existing radio content, but later they want to use IVR in combination with their radio shows, such as setting up quiz call-ins with their listeners.
We have other new partners interested in using Verboice for their existing programs. The ILO Better Factoryprogram wants to use IVR for a labor law quiz and
“tip of the week” to factory workers in Cambodia. BBC Media Action group wants to expand their existing youth program “Loy9” to IVR. Marie Stopes, a reproductive health organization, wants to use this IVR for post-abortion surveys and follow-up.
ICT4D Cambodia Network
We work with all partners to identify their use cases and content, and assess the different types and complexity of existing content. Further modifications to Verboice are made as needed, to enable partner organization to adapt it to their own design flow and content.
We also provide frequent demos and training to groups or individual partners so that they have more understanding about the system. We set up phone lines connected to a system for testing, so that our partners can design their content and test it. With the existence of this test line, we encourage and assist our partners in designing their call flow and testing the content with their selected target group, so that they could include their caller feedback earlier and revise the content.
Extraction of prototype of Reminder Scheduling
Through the collaboration with OI we received a contribution of a server computer from their SPICE program. This server will be used as a Verboice server for our Cambodian partners.
Development of language pact support
For scalability of the implementation we also have been processing a partnership agreement with the telephone operator “Smart Mobile” to provide phone lines for partners in the country to use to connect with Verboice. In addition, we also collaborate with other programs such as SPICE in getting additional connection with other telephone operators.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE ILAB SOUTHEAST ASIA’S WORK WITH VERBOICE IN CAMBODIA, CONTINUE HERE:
https://instedd.org/blog/verboice-in-cambodia/
