ICT4Peace Foundation
Since 2006 I’ve been a Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation, based in Geneva, Switzerland. The Foundation has its roots in the WSIS process and is now spearheading a UN resolution for the use of ICT in crisis management.
My work and role in the Foundation are entirely separate from the opinions and ideas expressed in this blog. While there is obvious and broad overlap, the content herein does not necessarily express the Foundation’s stance or opinion.
on March 17, 2008 on 11:55 pm
Solving the Mideast Crisis. One Text Message At A Time:
Souktel, the first-ever service to link Palestinians with jobs and aid via SMS, celebrates 1,000 users in the West Bank and Gaza.
March 17, 2008 - Ramallah, West Bank
Souktel, the pioneering service that connects Palestinians with jobs and aid through text messaging, welcomed its 1,000th client to the SMS JobMatch network last week. Like the hundreds of users who have signed up since 2006, new customer Mourad Abu-Zaid hopes to find employment — not through an agency, but through his cell phone.
“I graduated last summer with a degree in IT but I haven’t had much luck finding work,” Abu-Zaid explained at a small ceremony in Ramallah. “A friend of mine told me about Souktel and how I could create a mini-CV by answering questions sent over SMS. He had uploaded his resume from his phone so that employers could find it on the Souktel database. He got a job quickly this way…so I wanted to try as well. I feel optimistic about my chances.”
While finding a job — or hiring staff — on a cell phone may seem strange to some, it makes perfect sense in the West Bank and Gaza, where only a third of Palestinians have access to the Internet or newspapers but more than 80% use mobiles. In a region where 4 out of 10 men are out of work and checkpoints restrict movement, browsing Souktel’s job list on your phone isn’t just convenient; it’s a lifeline. “The Palestinian economy is growing,” explains Souktel regional manager Mohammad Kilany, “but people are having trouble finding out where the jobs are. Classified ads are limited and there aren’t a lot of job-find resources. Souktel’s JobMatch network fills a huge gap in the labour market by giving people real-time work information, even in rural areas or refugee camps with no Internet. We believe our technology can be a key to economic prosperity here”.
With everyone from college grads to shopkeepers using Souktel’s service, finding a job (or a new employee) via SMS has taken hold quickly, mainly because it’s fast, cheap and simple: Through a series of question-and-answer text messages, job-seekers create “mini-CVs” with data on their location, skills, education level and more. Meanwhile, employers create mini “Job Ads” through a similar process. Both sets of information are sent directly from users’ phones to a central database, which matches the mini-CVs with relevant job ads. Users then get SMS “match” messages, with details about jobs or potential staff, along with phone numbers for follow-up.
Since early 2007, Souktel has also been working to improve humanitarian aid delivery in Palestine and other developing countries. A second service, called AidLink, lets NGOs coordinate food and medical deliveries through an SMS “alert and survey” system.
As it prepares to enter its third year, the Palestinian-Canadian venture that started as a Harvard Business Plan Contest runner-up is matching over 10 people per month with jobs at major Palestinian employers, all via SMS. Meanwhile, 11 local and international NGOs use Souktel’s SMS AidLink service to manage delivery of emergency food and supplies to more than 1,600 needy families and 300 farmers.
“Looking ahead, we want our third year to focus on two goals,” explained co-founder Jacob Korenblum, a Canadian aid worker who’s been running Souktel with Palestinian teammates in Ramallah since 2005: “We want to leverage our SMS JobMatch service to help build a stronger Palestinian economy and we want to expand our SMS AidLink service so that local aid agencies can offer faster, better help to families in Gaza and the West Bank. Having 1,000 users on our JobMatch service is a great start to that journey”.
For more information please contact: media@souktel.org
See our SMS demos. Meet our users. http://www.souktel.org