Mobile penetration has increased exponentially in Nepal, with 98 percentof Nepali households currently owning a mobile phone, according to recent data from the Nepal Telecommunications Authority’s report of August-September 2020. This increase in mobile phone usage has correlated with an increase in access to information, with phones acting as information relays.

Viamo, shorthand for ‘via mobile’, is a new social enterprise that understands this paradigm shift, and in turn, seeks to connect individuals and organizations with right information via mobile devices to make better decisions.

Viamo’s services enable organizations to engage with traditionally hard-to-reach populations through their mobile phones in meaningful, real-time, two-way conversations in local languages, instantly reaching across distance and literacy barriers. Through a combination of digital strategy advice and support in implementing meaningful mobile engagement campaigns via our established platform, Viamo is able to offer rapid, cost-effective and impactful solutions thanks to our close partnership with mobile telecommunication companies and existing infrastructure integrations into their core networks.

Viamo is committed to pushing the envelope in terms of outreach, information dissemination, data collection, and inclusivity. In this regard, we are constantly expanding our services to mobile communication channels like voice (Interactive Voice Response, IVR), text (SMS and USSD), and ChatBots.

Viamo's 321 service, known as Suchana ko Sansaar in Nepal, has been playing an integral role in bridging the information gap among communities in rural Nepal. Viamo has partnered with Nepal Telecom (NTC) and launched a service where anyone can access information by dialing 32100 on an NTC sim at no cost to them. The themes covered by the platform are child protection, health, agriculture, early childhood development, weather forecast, news, entertainment and disaster risk reduction. Each theme is subdivided into various topics with key messages created by experts and approved by the concerned government entity in Nepal. Every month, the platform is accessed by over 192,000 unique listeners in Nepal. Viamo hosts similar platforms in 19 other countries, with more being added every year, reaching over 10 million unique listeners every month.

In the wake of COVID-19, in order to understand the information gaps and new needs of our users, Viamo developed the 3-2-1 Service COVID-19 Survey with researchers from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. The survey evaluated our users’ knowledge of the coronavirus, as well as the impact of the pandemic on their lives and livelihoods. Tulane and Viamo developed 12 separate questionnaires, each addressing a specific COVID-related topic. These topics include knowledge of COVID-19, attitudes towards the pandemic, preventive behaviors, motivation levels, and impacts on food security, income, and mental health. Apart from Nepal, the survey was also deployed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania.

In May 2020, Viamo partnered with UNICEF in Nepal to design and deliver a mobile-based remote training service to build capacity and support community health workers via Interactive Voice Response (IVR). As conducting group training sessions for 10,465 Female Community Health Volunteers (FCHVs) and 3,445 Community Health Workers (HWs) was a new challenge due to movement restrictions in the wake of COVID-19, the IVR remote training was an innovative approach that cost both effective and engaging.

A four-module training curriculum for FCHVs and a seven-module training curriculum HWs was deployed daily through their mobile phones. UNICEF, along with the National Health Training Center (NHTC), designed the curriculum and Viamo optimised the final content to suit mobile engagement. The modules revolved around COVID-19, its symptoms, prevention, and differentiating between quarantine, social distancing, and isolation, the use of Personal Protective Equipment, diagnostic methods of COVID-19, and how to keep safe while serving COVID-19 patients. There was a pre and post test survey before and after each module to understand the knowledge changes that took place. We found a 97 percent knowledge increase from before and after the training on content surrounding routine screening for COVID-19.

At the end of each module, a survey was conducted to make it more interactive and collect data on knowledge recall. It was found that 80 percent of HWs stated that the modules were easy to understand and 66 percent considered it effective. One of the key lessons from the training was the negative correlation between large modules and the training completion rate.

The core focus of Viamo lies in three approaches -- digital strategy advice, implementation of mobile engagement services, and advice on best use of digital data. These three themes define our activities and are also our core output processes. Hence, the culmination of these three themes helped World Vision International Nepal (WVIN) integrate an IVR component into their Sikka platform. Sikka is a blockchain powered digital assets transfer platform designed for vulnerable communities to receive tokens to represent a cash or voucher value through SMS, developed by the WVIN Innovation Lab in 2017. Sikka has, to date, distributed approximately $600,000 to beneficiaries across 14 districts in Nepal as part of various emergency response programmes.

Viamo has been engaged as a thought partner with the Sikka project ever since it started and recently supported the team in incorporating IVR features on its platform to further reach at-risk groups and address challenges faced by communities with low levels of digital literacy.

Development professionals around the world have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with new initiatives to aid beneficiaries to get through this crisis. These have included reimagining programming in education, agriculture, environment, governance projects, and humanitarian response in light of new social distancing requirements. During this time, many new partners increasingly engaged with Viamo to assist in their response. So far, in 2020, we have managed three times more mobile phone-based initiatives than we originally forecasted. So far this year, we have reached over 23 million people, a 415 percent increase from 2019! Moving forward, our focus will be on continuing to build a global platform that delivers life-enriching access to the digital economy to people who need it most.

Aradhana Gurung is the Country Manager for Viamo in Nepal while Emma Leering is Director of Programs for Viamo in Nepal and Shruti Jha is the 321 Product Manager for Viamo in Nepal.