Questions and answers
Some answers to questions about the smartphones
Who are the phones for? A phone is meant to serve a cluster of neighboring farmers who are participating in the soil health research. It is anticipated that most clusters will consist of mixed groups of 6-10 neighboring farmers. Proximity for meeting is a key consideration, as is gender equity.
Then ‘who’ does the phone actually belong to? The phone belongs to the cluster members as a group and is meant to serve the whole group’s interests.
Are there any strings attached? Yes! A cluster must sign a contract with the organization indicating that they commit to holding (at minimum) bi-monthly meetings where they will share, discuss and upload their cluster’s input on the experiment. The group can decide to meet at any other time for viewing videos or other materials of interest to group members.
How will a cluster finance the phone usage/data bundles for information sharing? The grant included a modest amount for buying data bundles for the phones. The idea is that a cluster is provided with a data bundle during their group meeting so that they use it, when they are together, to share and transmit information related to their research and feedback on videos, etc.
What about phone charging? How to manage their phone’s charging will be left to each cluster. There is no additional money to pay for this. So, we’ll need to monitor closely. Will charging become a critical roadblock or will groups be able to manage on their own?
How many phones will each organization get? We were able to purchase 115 phones in total. Insofar as possible, we will strive for proportional distribution of phones based on the number of participating farmers that each organization is facilitating. However, a cluster must complete a registration process to receive a phone.
Phone application process
How does a cluster get a phone? It’s not automatic. As a prerequisite for receiving a phone, the partner must provide the cluster information and documentation. Each cluster must also produce the physical evidence that they have sat and developed clear internal rules for the phone’s equitable use. They must agree which of their members should be the designated custodian of the phone on behalf the group (the responsibility can rotate) and how, as a group, they intend to regulate its use so that all members can benefit from it.
Cluster registration by the partner organization: Each facilitating partner must register information about the cluster applying to receive a phone. Information must include the cluster members’ names, ages, and genders. (This information should generally correspond to that contained in the ODK data registry form.)
Cluster’s rules governing phone use: The group must provide a copy of the cluster’s rules governing phone use.
Sim registration: The phones will need sim cards to transmit and receive data. Who it will be registered to is another thing that will need to be negotiated and agreed upon.
Contract: Each cluster must also sign a contract with the organization that acknowledges that they understand that their cluster’s ownership of the phone is contingent on using it to share learning with others. The contract template can be found under the forms tab.
Gender equity
Gender equity principles: There is a lot of evidence in the literature that the prevailing gender and cultural norms usually mean that men have more power and control than women over critical resources such as these phones represent. We kindly request that the facilitating partner ensures that the principle of gender equity is observed so that women have equal opportunity to be a phone custodian and also enjoy its use. We need to make a conscious effort to ensure that we are not perpetuating gender biases in this case.