Happy July! I hope everyone’s staying safe despite a pandemic that remains rampant, particularly in emerging markets. As the world continues to shift rapidly, I am thrilled to share important updates about our work with our partners in the past 6 months.
Our 3-2-1 Service continues to be a vital tool in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. So far over 16.3 million minutes have been listened to on the Service regarding COVID-19 this year alone – that’s over 30 years of content. In collaboration with the World Health Organization, we co-developed key messages that provided our partners accurate and trustworthy information about vaccines to share with millions of listeners through our 3-2-1 Service.
In total our partners reached over 6.4 million people through our innovative mobile products and solutions since the start of the year. Health care workers, teachers, mothers, and farmers have received more than 115 million key pieces of information to help them make better decisions and live healthier, more prosperous lives. Click here to listen to examples of Viamo’s work.
Partner Highlights
Since the start of 2021, with our partners we have worked with us on over 280 active projects. Here are a few key highlights:
- Ebola didn’t get the memo that the world was already dealing with a global pandemic. After an outbreak in Guinea in February, Johns Hopkins University used the Breakthrough ACTION program to employ mobile solutions to help combat the spread of the deadly virus. In just 4 months over 173,000 people received messages on how to spot the signs and symptoms of Ebola and how to keep safe. Last month, Guinea announced that the outbreak had been contained.
- Viamo supported UNICEF in more than 20 countries to implement communication campaigns, surveys, remote training, and targeted messaging campaigns at scale. Through our Global COVID-19 Response partnership with UNICEF in 2021 we deployed a 6 month mobile survey exploring the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 on children and vulnerable people in Nepal, achieving a 95% engagement rate.
- In May after Mount Nyiragongo erupted causing volcanic lava to flow towards the populated city of Goma in DRC, thousands of citizens were evacuated. Access to real-time information was crucial. Viamo collaborated with Internews to distribute life-saving information on our toll-free 3-2-1 Service. This allowed over 75,000 listeners access accurate information on a rapidly changing natural disaster in May and June through the VOLKENO NI JIRANI news bulletin.
Our Solutions
Our designers, product managers, and engineers understand that for many organizations the goal is not just to collect data, but to make sense of what that data means. After listening to your feedback, we are proud to announce the launch of a new set of dashboard capabilities that give partners detailed real-time view of their mobile-enabled projects. These are also helping our customers combine data and insights across multiple Viamo products and services. Take a look at one here.
We have done this without sacrificing privacy in an increasingly digital world. In an effort to continue to protect the safety and privacy of our partners and users, we have developed a strengthened version of Viamo’s Data, Security, and Privacy Policy, inspired by the strongest privacy standards in the world such as GDPR and Canada’s PIPEDA as well as emerging best practices and legislation.
Looking Forward:
With the rest of 2021 ahead of us, we remain committed to ensuring our partners meet their goals to engage with their target audiences using innovative mobile tools. To continue delighting our partners and users, we:
- Are continuing to bring the Viamo platform to emerging markets, planning to double our countries of operation by 2022. By the end of 2021 we will have expanded to Sierra Leone, Liberia, India, South Africa, Sudan, Philippines, Vietnam, Egypt, and Iraq, furthering impact in these key markets and ensuring our partners have support in-country to implement their mobile strategies.
- Have hired a new team of more than 12 people (product owners, managers, designers and others) focused on strengthening our products. These teams will also create new categories of mobile products that will allow our partners and our users to transact with each other, and have meaningful conversations and interactions with each other at scale.
