Dear Partners,
Over the past six months, development professionals around the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with new initiatives to aid beneficiaries to get through this crisis. This included launching new social and behavior change communication campaigns and community outreach efforts to build awareness about this public health emergency. It also included reimagining programming in education, agriculture, environment, and governance projects, and humanitarian response in light of new social distancing requirements. During this time, many of you increasingly called us to assist in your response.
So far, in 2020, we have managed three times more mobile phone-based initiatives than we originally forecasted: information campaigns on the 3-2-1 Service, remote field worker trainings, and automated mobile phone surveys. At times we have felt capacity constraints – we’re very sorry if you have felt this too. But together, so far this year we have reached over 23 million people, a 415% increase from this time last year!
Today, we are pleased to share with you our three-pronged plan to significantly scale the support we can offer you to achieve more impact.
First, Viamo plans to double our geographic reach. We will establish new country offices (see list below) with knowledgeable staff and integrations with local telecom companies. As a result, we will reach twice as many people with reliable low-cost communications, including the 3-2-1 Service. This staff investment also includes additional support in our existing countries, and at headquarters, in order to assist organizations to adapt their strategy to include more mobile phone-enabled programming.
Second, we will expand our product suite to unlock more value for our partners. Our new solutions will help raise awareness. They will also go further, to assist audiences to commit to specific behaviors that improve well-being, such as setting a clinic appointment, selling their crops, saving money, or redeeming a voucher, all through any mobile phone.
And thirdly, we are making significant investments in our implementation teams so that we can offer more specialized and robust support to our partners throughout the project lifecycle. This will bring added value and expertise in the co-designing of mobile programming and the creation of highly engaging mobile content.
One reason we are able to make this commitment is because of a recent collaboration and investment by VestedWorld, an Africa-focused venture capital firm. We are thankful to VestedWorld for this vote of confidence and we are incredibly excited to use this investment to improve our service to you, our partners. Together we will achieve our goal of reaching 1 billion underserved people by 2030.
“We look forward to a long partnership focused on building a truly global platform that delivers life-enriching access to the digital economy to people across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.”
– Jeffrey Stine, Managing Director of VestedWorld
We will keep you updated on the progress of these new developments and welcome your thoughts, feedback and questions.
Thank you again for your continued partnership,
David McAfee
CEO
New Viamo expansion countries include:
Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Iraq, Jordan, Liberia, Morocco, Myanmar, Philippines, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, and Vietnam.
