Part 3: Initial Messaging Feedback

 

Throughout the election week, SNA-K collected both solicited feedback (via our large network of partner organizations, outreach workers, and their observations as well as feedback they received from the community) and unsolicited feedback through our office line and SMS platform.

All feedback (quotes from the general public, observable impact, and feedback from partners) is tracked in relation to specific messages and actions taken. SNA-K keeps this information in a database, which will be fully analyzed in the months after the election process is completed.

In this report, we have included a snapshot of the types of solicited and unsolicited feedback SNA-K received from partners and subscribers during the March 4^th elections week.

 

Dandora

During and following the elections, SNA-K sent messages and helped flag security concerns in Dandora to the NSC. Dandora was one of the areas that experienced the most tensions and incidents in the days leading up to and following the elections. On election day, youths supporting a particular political party overwhelmed police in Phase 4 to prevent voting. This was brought under control by backup security, and SNA-K sent a message.

Feedback from residents included comments that, the message “helped to calm down the situation” and “was sent at the right time,” because, according to partners “they think the whole world was watching Dandora. Everyone knew what was happening.”

 

Following a second message, our Dandora co-ordinator summarized feedback from eight outreach workers in the area. They said: “the message helped to maintain calm, reminds us of our community, makes us be united, shows someone thinks about Dandora, reminds us to be peaceful all the times, and thanks for reacting and responding to our concerns.”

 

Burnt Forest & Kariobangi North

Our area Co-ordinator for both Burnt Forest and Kariobangi North reported similar feedback from both places.

In one case, a community partner said: “The message had a real impact. People stopped and were looking at their phones. They were gathered in groups and talking about politics.”

He noted that the community was congratulating SNA-K members on their work and that the messages had a particularly big impact in Kariobangi North where they helped to break up negative groupings.

He noted that based on the feedback he received, people were saying that, “the IEBC has their own ways of doing this – and they may not trust them but getting a peace message from us will give them a reaffirmation of the situation.”

Many community members requested additional messages.

 

Korogocho

The highlights of the messaging feedback from Korogocho are as follows:

– “The messages make people think otherwise if they wanted to do something wrong.” – “Updated people with the information which made people to be calm.” – “The messages helped keep people calm.”

 

Eldoret

On March 11^th, Eldoret partners wrote to SNA-K, saying:

“We are grateful for the good messages we have been receiving from SNA-K. Continue with the good job,” and “Viva SNAK for coming up with such a unique way of preaching peace through mobile technology. Keep up!”

SNA-K also received quotes from community members:

“We are grateful cos the messages are totally free of charge, not as we thought when being subscribed to the system.”

This quote shows the importance of building trust and credibility when it comes to SMS and technology-based services. Another person noted:

“I went to the interior and Kapsoya, and they are complaining not to be receiving messages. Kindly do some outreach there.”

This shows that a demand was created for SNA-K messaging in additional areas.

On March 6^th, an SNA-K subscriber called the SNA-K office line, saying:

“Rumours circulated in the morning almost brought commotion, that the election kit had been spoilt, and people would vote the second time. People were worried. Rumours spread so fast, but when asked how they got info those spreading rumours disappeared and calm returned. We are getting messages from SNA-K and forwarding to all in our phonebooks. I am proud of what Sisi ni Amani is doing. We need to celebrate you after elections. There is a big effect, and the stickers are all over so we are asking people to not bring propaganda here because this is amani zone.”

This message shows the importance of messaging that is directed towards the spread of rumours and how people interact with information that they receive during emotionally tense periods.

 

Narok County

Narok County was a main focal point for SNA-K, with the area experiencing tensions throughout the voting process. In particular, reports from Ololulunga of high tension came in from polling day, and through the tallying process. In response to the pre-election messages sent with voter education information, the SNA-K office line received calls from Ololulunga subscribers, saying:

“We are generally peaceful and hope to vote peacefully tomorrow. Continue sending these messages. Ni poa sana.”

On March 5^th, after chaos at a polling station over tallying, an SNA-K subscriber called Samuel, called and said:

“There has been calm in Ololulunga and I would like to thank you for informing the police who came to the area so quickly and for the message you sent that helped to maintain calm. I can now go home happy after my tallying center has finished its job peacefully Thank you Sisi Ni Amani.”

SNA-K’s Coordinator for Mulot, Sogoo, and Sagamian, Pastor Wilson Mosonik, received phone calls and thank you messages from the areas he was co-ordinating.

On March 5th, a man named Joel from Rongena, called Mosonik to thank him for the messages saying that the area has historically always had problems during elections, and that this time, the messages brought peace and have been a topic of discussion. Further, during the tallying where tensions were rising, he would show people the message about maintaining calm and he said it really helped. He wanted to say thank you.

This feedback shows the potential for messages on peoples’ phones to become a tool that they can use in their own peace efforts.

Community members from Sogoo and Sagamian told Mosonik that the messages were helpful and that they recognized that SNA-K has really worked hard and that they appreciated the messages. They said that the messages helped bring peace in the areas and that if anyone was about to bring up a dispute they would be shown the messages from SNA-K.

.Again this shows the need to further understand how messages can become a tool for the people who receive them to talk more openly and with more credibility about peace.

In Transmara, also in Narok County, a subscriber called the office line on March 9^th to say:

“Thanks so much for your wonderful messages. At least you gave us something to look up to and helped us maintain peace…Kudos.” Further, we received a call on March 10th letting us know that the messages were very helpful and that the messages were being discussed during a morning mass at church that morning.

 

Sotik/Sotik-Borabu Border

SNA-K received a lot of feedback is Sotik, specifically around the Sotik/Borabu border.

On March 5th, a subscriber called Barimen living on the Sotik Borabu border told Pastor Mosonik, the area coordinator, that he was happy that the SMS came in right before and during the elections and “helped maintain calm even when the electronic registers were not working.” He thanked SNA-K for bringing peace to the border.

This and other feedback show that SMS, if used well, can be a tool to encourage patience in particular and help people wait out scenarios that could otherwise lead to rumors and tensions. On March 6^th, a subscriber called Langat wrote to the office line to say:

“Its been a long stretch towards the finishing line of 2013 elections, On behalf of Sotik district I wish to thank SNA-K for tireless work of reminding the residents importance of maintaining peace.”

 

General

Finally, as a nice piece of general feedback, SNA-K also received a message to the SMS number 22762 which, translated to English, read:

“Thank you SNA-K educating me through your messages and for helping me maintain peace. Mine is to say that God bless you because your organization is like a church.”

 

Lessons Learned

Throughout the course of our elections-based messaging, several key takeaways, lessons learned, and questions for the future became clear. These included:

1. As the days went on, it became clear that there are certain situations in which messages cannot or should not be used. While this issue has arisen previously and we have set guidelines to deal with this, new situations came to light during the week and deepened our understandings of these situations. These highlighted the importance of establishing clear guidelines based on our prior research and our new election-time experience going forward. These guidelines should outline instances and occasions when a message is not or might not be appropriate, and how to go about making that judgment call. Below are some examples of situations where messaging could in fact contribute to insecurity, rather than alleviate it.
   1. High-Risk Message: This is the first and most important situation where messages should not be sent, as it deals with the danger for a message to cause alarm or worsen situations on the ground. These are messages that would be sent to an entire area, even if the issue is localized, and could cause alarm. This category also includes messages that would be sent out after a certain time at night, which again risks causing alarm. SNA-K was careful to avoid sending messages that had the potential to worsen or aggravate a situation. In cases where the concerns were geographically very isolated; or, where uncertainty was caused by thieves/common criminals taking advantage of the situation; or, finally, when an incident occurred late in the evening, SNA-K alerted security and continued to monitor the situation instead of sending a message. We noted that where people saw that we would report incidents and/or the potential for violence to security agencies, it also increased the reputation of SNA-K and the SMS. This represents an important factor for future exploration through research.
   2. Annoyance Factor: In order to create maximum impact from the messages, it is important that they are not sent so frequently as to become an annoyance. This includes reading the general mood. Tallying went on for days, and people became exhausted from hearing about the election. SNA-K was vigilant about not sending too many messages asking people to be patient, and instead, at one point sent all subscribers a message commending them and letting them know they were appreciated. We suspected that any more messages asking people to continue to stay patient was likely to backfire, and prompt people to unsubscribe or to disregard our messages.
   3. Organizational/Perceptions Risk: As situations evolve, it is important to be very, very, careful about being perceived to be partisan. In the coming days/weeks as the court cases are decided, this becomes even more important. One example is that after the results were announced, it was necessary to send a 160-character message to urge people to celebrate or react responsibly, without seeming to favor either side. As communities become more and more polarized in the coming days ahead of the court judgment, being sensitive about this type of dual targeting for multiple groups at the same time will become even more critical.
2. Some amount of silence is crucial. In order for the messages to have an impact, they need to arrive at the right time, when people are most likely to pay attention to them. In extreme cases, messages need to be able to interrupt disruptive activity, including spreading of rumors. This involves understanding and calculating the limited social capital and airtime that SNA-K has as an organization to get people to pay attention to us. Messages cannot be sent out every time there is tension; instead, they should be used strategically so as to have maximum impact.
3. Targeting is Key. People responded very well to messages that included the name of the place they were located. This personalised the messages and added to the sense that they were not alone, and their areas were being watched. In the future, as platforms become more sophisticated, it might make sense to have functionality whereby there is a “fill-in-the-blank field” for location, for example, “let us keep peace [location]” and the field would automatically be filled in from the database. This would hasten the process of message sending.
4. Messages in combination with on-the-ground work and effective collaboration with relevant institutions is key. Our work throughout the election process showed the importance of combining messaging with on the ground work. This was demonstrated by the situations in which messages were not appropriate, but which SNA-K was able to report to relevant institutions such as the NSC for rapid response. This helped both to mitigate conflict and to increase SNA-K’s reputation in the target communities. One medium or approach is never going to be effective for every possible situation – it is important to have an awareness of appropriate responses to specific situations, and to work closely with partners and relevant institutions to help ensure that there is a relevant response to each issue that arises.

We hope that this blog post can serve as a starting point for conversations around the nuances of messaging about peace and using text messages as a medium. Our next blog in this three-part series will share some of the raw feedback we received with regards to our messaging around the March 4^th elections.

Election Week: March 3 – 9

Sisi ni Amani sent out a total of 524,514 messages to its 65,000-strong subscriber pool during the week of the Kenyan general elections. Messages were sent out as and when the situation demanded. They were crafted to respond to a range of scenarios, from civic education needs and rioting at polling stations, to encouraging patience and calm where lines were long, or when there was a delay in announcing results.

In the first of a three-part blog series, we will provide a brief update of how events unfolded. The second part will examine the lessons learned from the week, and present some points for discussion and research for the future. The third part will pull out feedback from partners, subscribers, and members of the Kenya-wide Sisi ni Amani community, and reflect upon the impact of the messages sent.

It took a full six days from voting day, on March 4, for the IEBC to announce the results of the elections. The team followed the elections through a number of mediums, including monitoring the situation on the ground through our area co-ordinators and parters, and media – both traditional and social. We are currently continuing to watch and track the political situation, as there are two major legal challenges to the outcome pending in the Supreme Court – one by Raila Odinga, Prime Minister, and leader of the CORD coalition, and the second by numerous civil society organizations under the umbrella of KPTJ (Kenyans for Peace Truth and Justice) and AfriCog. Mr Odinga is calling for an entirely new election – citing inconsistencies and failures that marred this exercise.

As the Supreme Court prepares to hand down its verdict, we are preparing for one of a number of scenarios, including the possibility of a runoff, a re-count, an entirely new election to be called (a re-run), or for the election results to be declared valid. We are closely watching as events unfold, as each scenario carries the risk of volatility, that could impact the communities in which we work.

As SNA-K collected information, verified situational updates, sent messages, and responded to the process of releasing the results and announcing a final outcome, the team was shadowed by a filmmaker. To see more on his work, you can check out this link to the Peace in Our Pockets (a documentary about the work of Sisi ni Amani and some of its partners) blog. For an insight into the messages we sent, and the situations that called for them, please see this article in Quartz, written by SNA-K’s Program Manager Neelam Verjee.

Leading up to and throughout the election cycle, SNA-K’s work was also featured in Businessweek, The Economist, CNN, again in Quartz, and in Foreign Policy.

Reflection on the Kenyan Context

Happy 2012 from Sisi ni Amani – Kenya! We have some exciting updates on our programming this year, so please stay tuned for a blog post on our plans for the year.

One of the most exciting components of the new year is our collaboration with PeaceTxt.  As SNA-K launches this international collaboration, we wanted to take the time to reflect on the importance of this initiative in the Kenyan context.

In 2007, Kenya held a disputed presidential election, which resulted in widespread protests followed by violence throughout the country. The violence pitted ethnic communities against one another, and led to over 1,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) throughout the country.  While Kenyan elections have historically been marred by violence, the 2002 elections (which brought democracy after many years of dictatorship) were peaceful, and the 2007 elections led to months of violence and displacement at a larger scale than ever before. The damage and distrust created by the 2007-2008 post election violence has yet to be healed in many Kenyan communities. 

Within the next year and a half, Kenya will hold its next general election, the biggest election ever to be held in sub-Saharan Africa (the election date is yet to be definitively confirmed). The election is the first to take place under the country’s new Constitution, which was ratified by a peaceful referendum in August, 2010. While the Constitution and the approaching elections hold promise for increased checks and balances and opportunities for civic engagement, the election carries with it a risk of future violence.

The Constitution changes the structure of the country’s government and internal boundaries, creating a system of counties and changing the borders of constituencies. This has caused some tension over how boundaries will be divided. The Constitution also changes electoral positions, and many individuals at the grassroots do not understand how the new structure of government will work, or even which positions they will be voting for.

Additional factors add to the potential for tensions and violence. Six alleged suspects of the post-election violence, two of whom are expected to run for the presidency in the next Presidential Election and are the main political leaders representing two major ethnic communities in Kenya, have been indicted by the International Criminal Court, and had initial hearings to judge if their cases will proceed to trial. The response of Kenyan politicians and the suspects themselves has created tensions between political parties.

The country still has high numbers of internally displaced persons who have yet to be resettled after the 2007-2008 post-election violence. The resettlement of IDPs is a contentious issue, as many continue to suffer in camps and resettlement plans threaten to inflame existing land conflicts between ethnic communities.

Despite resistance to ICC trials, the Kenyan justice system has been criticized for a lack of will and ability to try local cases of violence adequately. International leaders recently warned that the next elections will be “make or break” for Kenya at a conference in Nairobi.

Finally, it is important to note that tensions continued after the 2007-2008 violence stopped. In late 2009, BBC reported on an “ethnic arms race” in which communities were re-arming in preparation for the 2012 elections in the volatile Rift Valley. This means that many communities within the Rift Valley rearmed and still possess the weapons that they armed with.

SNA-K was founded in response to the events of 2007-2008, and the potential for future violence and the use of mobile technology to create a foundation for, plan, and help spread the post-election violence. During the 2007-2008 violence, mobile phones – specifically SMS – were used to spread rumors and fear and to organize weapons distribution and attacks. Violent actors were extremely effective at using these widely proliferated technologies, while peace actors were neither well prepared nor able to leverage these technologies to the same effect.

Since July 2010, SNA-K has worked to understand and implement programming that utilizes mobile phones, and specifically SMS, to help build peace, collaboration, and conflict resilience in Kenyan communities. We have built a subscriber base of over 10,000 individuals in our target communities, and implemented civic education, civic engagement, and peace promotion programming.

As we move towards Kenya’s next election, we can’t think of a more exciting partnership than the one we have just launched with PeaceTXT – a unique collaborative project of PopTech, CeaseFire, Medic Mobile, Ushahidi, and the Praekelt Foundation. The partnership supports our work here in Kenya to reach more people and more communities, while CeaseFire’s proven approach and successful methodology will add a new level of training and expertise for our local teams.

Most of all, we are excited to help create best practices on the implementation of SMS-based programming for peace promotion and violence prevention, and to incorporate these lessons into PeaceTXT International’s model, enabling the work we are doing here in Kenya to inform efforts on a larger scale.

SNA-K Launches Partnership with PeaceTXT

SNA-K is excited to announce that we have launched a partnership with PeaceTxt! Learn more in this post from Patrick Meier:

SMS for Violence Prevention: PeaceTXT International Launches in Kenya

[This post was written by Patrick Meier, and originally posted on the Ushahidi blog here]

One of the main reasons I’m in Nairobi this month is to launch PeaceTXT International withPopTech, Ushahidi, Praekelt Foundation, Sisi ni Amani, CeaseFire Chicago andMedic:Mobile. PeaceTXT International builds on the original PeaceTXT project that several of us began working on with CeaseFire Chicago last year. I began thinking about the many possible international applications of the PeaceTXT project during our very first meeting, which is why I am thrilled and honored to be spearheading the first PeaceTXT International pilot project.

The purpose of PeaceTXT is to leverage mobile messaging to catalyze behavior change around peace and conflict issues. In the context of Chicago, the joint project with CeaseFire aims to leverage SMS reminders to interrupt gun violence in marginalized neighborhoods. Several studies in other fields of public health have already shown the massive impact that SMS reminders can have on behavior change, e.g., improving drug adherence behavior among AIDS and TB patients in Africa, Asia and South America.

Our mobile messaging campaign in Kenya builds on the very successful interruption and behavior change work performed by CeaseFire in Chicago. Note that CeaseFire has been directly credited for significantly reducing the number of gun-related killings in Chicago over the past 10 years. In other words, they have a successful and proven methodology; one being applied to several other cities and countries worldwide. PeaceTXT International simply seeks to scale this success by introducing SMS.

PeaceTXT Chicago builds another successful campaign in the US: “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drink and Drive.” Inspired by this approach, the PeaceTXT Team in Chicago is looking to launch a friends-don’t-let-friends-get-killed campaign. Focus groups recently conducted with high-risk individuals have resulted in rich content for several dozen reminder messages (see below) that could be disseminated via SMS.

These messages are user-generated in that the content was developed by high-risk individuals themselves—i.e., those most likely to get involved in gun violence. The messages are not limited to reminders. Some also prompt the community to get engaged by responding to various questions. Indeed, the project seeks to crowdsource community solutions to gun violence and thus greater participation. When high-risk individuals were asked how they’d feel if they were to receive these messages on their phones, they had the following to share: “makes me feel like no one is forgetting about me”; “message me once a day to make a difference.”

Given that both forwarding and saving text messages is very common among the population that CeaseFire works with, the team hopes that the text messages will circulate and recycle widely. Note that the project is still in prototype phase but going into implementation mode as of 2012. So we’ll have to wait and see how the project fares and what the initial impact looks like.

In the meantime, PeaceTXT is partnering with Sisi ni Amani (We are Peace) to launch its first international pilot project. Rachel Brown, who spearheads the initiative, first got in touch with me back in the Fall of 2009 whilst finishing her undergraduate studies at Tufts. Rachel was interested in crowdsourcing a peace map of Kenya, which I blogged about here shortly after our first conversation. Since then, Rachel and her team have set up the Kenyan NGO Sisi ni Amani Kenya (SnA-K) to leverage mobile technology for awareness raising and civic engagement with the aim of preventing possible violence during next year’s Presidential Elections.

SnA-K currently manages a ~10,000 member SMS subscriber list in Baba Dogo and Korogocho, Kamukunji and Narok. SnA-K’s SMS campaigns focus on voter education, community cohesion and rumor prevention. What SnA-K needs, how-ever, is the scalable SMS broadcasting technology, the type of focus that PeaceTXT brought to CeaseFire Chicago and the unique response methodology developed by the CeaseFire team. So I reached out to Rachel early on during the work in Chicago to let her know about PeaceTXT and to gain insights from her projects in Kenya. We set up regular conference calls throughout the year to keep each other informed of our respective progress and findings.

Soon enough, PopTech’s delightful Leetha Filderman asked me to put together a pitch for international applications of PeaceTXT’s work, an initiative I have “code-named” PeaceTXT International. I was absolutely thrilled when she shared the good news at PopTech 2011 that our donor, the Rita Allen Foundation, had provided us with additional funding, some of which could go towards an international pilot project. Naturally, Sisi ni Amani was a perfect fit.

So we organized a half-day brainstorming session at the iHub last week to chart the way forward on PeaceTXT Kenya. For example, what is the key behavioral change variable (like friendship in the PeaceTXT Chicago project) that is most likely to succeed in Kenya? As for interrupting violence, how can the CeaseFire methodology be customized for the SnA-K context? Finally, what kind of SMS broadcasting technology do we need to have in place to provide maximum flexibility and scalability earlier rather than later? Answering these questions and implementing scalable solutions essentially forms the basis of the partnership between SnA-K and PeaceTXT (which also includes Revolution Messaging). We have some exciting leads on next steps and will be sure to blog about them as we move forward to get feedback from the wider community.

Conflicts are often grounded in the stories and narratives that people tell themselves and the emotions that these stories generate. Narratives shape identity and the social construct of reality—we interpret our lives through stories. These have the power to transform relationships and communities. We believe the PeaceTXT model can be applied to catalyze behavior  change vis-a-vis peace and conflict issues at the community level by amplifying new narratives via SMS. There is considerable potential here and still much to learn, which is why I’m thrilled to be working with SnA, PopTech & partners on launching our first international pilot project: PeaceTXT Kenya.

Posted in Crisis, Mobile, Nairobi, Partnerships, Peace efforts, Ushahidi, elections.Tagged with CeaseFire, Foundation, ihub, MedicMobile, poptech, Praekelt, Prevention, SisiNiAmani,sms, SnA-K, Violence.

By patrick

December 12, 2011

Narok Outreach Success (March 19, by Megan Turner)

The Narok Leadership Team has done an incredible job with community outreach: in just two and a half weeks, they’ve managed to get over 1,700 subscribers, mostly from very rural areas. The Sisi ni Amani member groups in these various areas have shown tremendous dedication, commitment, and organization in conducting extensive outreach. Jackson Saruni, a bright and motivated member of the Narok Leadership Team, has taken the lead in coordinating and organizing the various groups.

Each week, they have chosen a different location. They started with one week of outreach at Narok University College, led by a dedicated and self-motivated team of University students. In one week, the students managed to obtain 700 subscriptions out of a student body of approximately 2,000.

Next, the team focused on Mulot, a rural and primarily Kalenjin area, and brought in another more than 700 subscribers, with more still coming in. They focused on door-to-door and market day outreach, and also brought 31 pastors from different churches on board to conduct outreach on a Sunday.

The group is now focusing on Ololulunga, a primarily Masai rural neighbor to Mulot. The border between Ololulunga and Mulot is often a hot spot for violence, and by bringing groups from both locations together to conduct outreach on either side of and across the border, the group is targeting a large constituency. In addition, one enthusiastic member group, NABOK, has also been leading outreach in the rural areas of Sekanani and Aitong, with 300 subscribers within the first few days.

Next week outreach begins in Narok Town, with three different groups including University student volunteers from both Narok University and Kenya Methodist University in Nairobi participating.

Planning Outreach in Narok Town (March 18th, by Megan Turner)

Today, we had a meeting with our local chapter leaders in Narok to finalize plans for outreach in town the week of March 21^st. While there, we were able to meet with the leader of Narok Youth Congress who displayed an interest in the new SMS system and indicated an interest in joining and assisting with outreach.  In terms of the upcoming outreach in town, the community groups are going to focus on markets that are still divided along PNU/ODM lines, pikipikis, churches, Total and Majengo Estates, and the Central Business District.  Local community groups such as HAPEP and Neighbors Peace Initiative will be involved with the various aspects of outreach.  Students from Kenyan Youth Methodist are planning on coming to Narok University on Friday to assist with outreach, and students on both ends are excited to meet and work to promote peace together.

Identifying Uses of Technology in Narok (February 26th, by Rachel)

A series of focus groups in Narok has enabled us to make key conclusions about the ways in which community groups currently use the technology, and how Sisi ni Amani’s platform can enhance their work.

Major Conclusions about Use of Technology & Coordination:

• Groups use technology for outreach and coordination. SMS is the most effective – both in terms of cost and impact – for outreach and often for communication. Groups often use a system whereby one person sends an SMS to a group in their phone, then that group passes it on, etc. This means any important message sent may have a “ripple effect” and reach even more individuals than its intended audience.
• Groups only sometimes coordinate with each other and communicate with other groups in their areas.

Major Conclusions in Terms of Sisi ni Amani:

• These groups find the technology most useful for communicating within their own established networks, especially if they get to use it free of charge (at least for a certain amount of credit). This is because they currently face barriers of efficiency and cost when communicating within their networks.
• Groups also do not have the ability to communicate to the entire community, and would find the technology useful for that purpose. At the same time, this needs to be geographically specific (someone from Olulunga doesn’t necessarily want the message to go out to Narok Town), and thus creating geographically specific groups will be very important

Key Conclusions for System set-up and Information Flows

• There will need to be different types of groups within the SMS database:
•  Community groups’ networks: community groups can use the database and keywords to communicate with their own networks
• Geographically-tagged groups: Groups separated based on geographical areas and used for targeted outreach
• Narok County: A group that includes all database members (for things like civic education, peace messages, etc.)