Vodafone Foundation announces winners of 'Mobile FOR Good' Awards 2014

Committed to mobilising social change by leveraging the power and potential of the mobile technology, the Mobile for Good awards programme acknowledges and supports ideas and concepts from NGO/NFPs that effectively and efficiently empower communities and change lives in their own unique way.

The five winner NGOs, were awarded INR 1.2 million each and will be mentored by NextGen to expand and upscale their capacity, improve project monitoring and enhance impact evaluation of the projects they manage

Announcing the winners, Marten Pieters, MD & CEO, Vodafone India, said, “With over 900 million users and 90% penetration, mobile phones have become a part of almost every household in the country. This gives a unique opportunity to leverage their reach to connect, engage, develop content and deliver solutions via meaningful applications that can drive positive social and economic change, even in regions and among communities otherwise difficult to reach. We are excited by this opportunity and remain committed to support new ideas, innovations and applications that have the ability to transform society across domains- health, education, empowerment, inclusion and governance.”

Presenting the awards to the winners, the Chief Guest, R. Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM & former Union Telecom Secretary, said,” There is a rising trend in the social development sector to use mobiles and their diverse features and functionalities.  Rapidly accelerating trends in enabling transformation through the use of ICT will increase access, enhance efficiency and enable innovation in the sector like never before. The success stories from the Mobile for Good Awards programme clearly indicate how rapidly the trend is accelerating and impacting several domains at once.”

Introducing the awards programme, Rohit Adya, Director, External Affairs, Vodafone India, said, “Since  its launch in 2011, Vodafone Foundation’s Mobile for Good Awards programme has supported the growth and expansion of 13 such applications thus far and the winners this year have much to look forward to. We received over 122 applications and our eminent jury spent considerable time understanding the impact and scalability of each application before diligently selecting the winners in each category.”

Founder & Director of Digital Empowerment Foundation, the implementation partner of the programme, Osama Manzar, said, "There is tremendous creativity amongst the non-profit organisations about the usage of mobile and mobility applications. With the help of the Mobile for Good programme we are trying to help the existing innovations achieve scale and replication."