Communication between aid workers and beneficiaries in
Somalia through SMS has allowed the Danish Refugee Council to monitor and
improve the way in which it delivers aid in the field.
By
DRC SMS Feedback team, February 2013
The
SMS Feedback System was developed with funding from the Humanitarian Innovation
Fund and launched in 2011.Its purpose is to provide aid recipients in isolated
areas of Somalia with the means to communicate with aid providers.
Over the
course of three months the SMS feedback team has received over 21 SMS messages
from towns and cities all over Northern and Southern Somalia including
Mogadishu, Galka’ayo, Ainabo, Salahley and Sheikh. More often than not, these
are messages of appreciation or simple inquiries into the day to day work that
DRC does throughout the region. Sometimes however, the SMS feedback team
receives frank messages of complaint or annoyance. These are the most useful
messages as it allows the SMS feedback team time to address problems as they
arise and to notice them sooner than they otherwise would have in the past. It
also gives aid beneficiaries greater say on the kind of help they receive, not
to mention a greater awareness of the impact of DRC work in their communities. The
following exchange between a man in Salahley District and one of our Community
Driven and Recovery Development (CDRD) project team members in the field
highlights a typical exchange:
Complaint/CDRD/Salahley/Processed
Translated SMS: We agreed that the DRC would complete
projects in Salahley in two years, but the DRC has postponed projects, and the
delay is your responsibility. We are asking ourselves why this has happened.
DRC is what you told us fake or is something wrong with your projects?
The above
complaint was forwarded from Salahley to the SMS feedback team where it was
investigated before sending back a reply. This process is repeated daily on a
large scale between aid beneficiaries and aid workers. The language is often
frank as the above message demonstrates, and the individuals are not shy about
letting their feelings be known. For the aid workers, this process enables them
to be accountable to the communities they work in. Most importantly however,
this process is completely transparent in that anybody can access these
communications online at our CDRD page and our various social media outlets
such as facebook, our CDRD blog and twitter. In this way information is
constantly being shared between aid beneficiaries, DRC staff, and donors. This
free flow of information is key to improving the process by which DRC provides
humanitarian relief throughout Somalia.
Report prepared by Abdirahman Abdillahi Muse
/edited by Leila Elmi
