SHIFAA Pakistan (no relation to Shifa Intl Hospital) is a good example on how technology can assist the people of Pakistan with the most basic of requirements which are currently not adequately provided. They have created a portal through which the people can connect to medical facilities in Karachi, and are expanding into other major cities as well.

This portal brings together the citizens and professionals where they can communicate and exchange information related to them. It is not only a information resource for users but an effective management tool for health care professionals. One of the interesting parts of the site lets people register as blood donors and get notified via email in case there is a need for blood donations. Later they want to expand these services on a UAN number so that they are easily accessible.

According to the founder Samir Feroze:

“We decided in the beginning of 2007 to develop a platform which would allow users of www.Shifaa.pk to get comprehensive information about blood donors, doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. A unique feature for the blood donor section would be the ability not only to search for a blood donor, but also to request for a particular blood type, which the system would forward to all matching donors in the requesters vicinity. We also built in RSS feeds and email updates so that registered donors could find out immediately if someone near them needed blood which matched their own blood type. …

Another part of the site which only registered health care professionals can see allows them to manage their profiles and mark themselves as “away” when they are out of town and uniquely also provides them a free Electronic Medical Record (EMR) software which allows them to maintain their patient histories and records online so they can access them from any location. It is our hope that our free EMR service is something more doctors choose to use as it has been shown to significantly improve the quality of healthcare GPs and specialists can provide to their patients.”

Ironically, in this case the implementation of technology was the easy part. Their team has been busy raising awareness of the platform, the benefits and the need to donate blood (which remains a cultural challenge) - so far they claim to have 500+ people registered on the portal, out of which 300+ are doctors.

What I liked about this team the best was that they have been funding this initiative by doing a lot of freelance work but still felt passionately about this portal enough to want to focus on it and build it out. As such I felt it was our responsibility to highlight this noble cause - good job guys!

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Technology has brought about an unprecedented change in the everyday lives ever since the industrial revolution. It has facilitated various facets such as the travel, construction, city planning and management, heavy industry with robotic systems and administrative and management tools, techniques to boost agricultural growth, health care etc. and especially in the way people communicate with one another anywhere in the world. The wide use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is also shaping the way social development is taking place around the world.

The use of ICT to further develop logistics and technology solutions in Pakistan is imperative for the provision of basic needs to the citizens. ICT helps by providing a platform that helps health care professionals and specialists to better coordinate and implement standard procedures. ICT has played in key roll in agriculture productivity by enhancing crop yields and improved irrigation and land plowing technology.

ICT can be used to completely disrupt the way transactions are made in marketplaces as Osama mentioned once.

But an emerging question is, that while universally technology is one of the primary reasons that people enjoy a higher standard of living world-wide, most of these are technology solutions where society benefits as a by-product of greater economic traction. E.g. if Walmart or DELL are able to invest in technology and optimize their entire backend infrastructure and supply-chain, they are able to offer products at lower prices to end-users, and as a result can create a bit more economic prosperity among consumers.

Instead of this, a more interesting emerging field of applications is technology products that are built solely for the purpose of helping people in social, cultural, or societal problems. This application of technology could be both both by social entrepreneurs or big large corporations with the means to invest money in solutions.

Over time I want to mention a number of interesting initiatives that are taking place locally and regionally with regards to ICT for Development. Stay tuned.

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Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) should be a pretty self explanatory term; Corporations involved in initiatives that benefit society in general and the uplift of underprivileged citizens in particular.

But what is CSR? Are corporations obliged to divert their assets towards taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, or it it just something good they could consider, without any legal or moral precedence?

Do companies only get involved in social development because it helps brand recognition and boosts sales?

There any many such interesting perspectives that a lot of us have about corporations getting involved in CSR work.

There are many, for example, who feel that social development is only an obligation of the government, and it is their right as tax paying citizens, and only feel that corporations only get involved in anything because of a greedy incentive to make even more money than they might be at any given point in time.

There are others who feel that there’s nothing wrong with companies making money or profits from projects that also help society as a by-product - why should CSR inherently mean "free" activities?

There are even others who think corporations can often have an even greater role to play in social uplift compared to donors and governments. Their take is that governments and donor-assisted projects would take too long compared to how quickly a corporation can choose to impact an area or start an initiative. Their take is that corporations have money, money = power. Perhaps even the power to bring about change.

A majority of the people isolate banks and corporations/businesses as having the largest amount of discretionary funds and influence and can enforce CSR initiatives more effectively. Based on that reasoning, the fact that these corporations have copious amounts of money at their disposal automatically obliges them to take the lead and give back to the people.

Finally, I’ve also seen people think that CSR in Pakistan is somewhat related to existing social problems which seem to have entrenched themselves within our social setup. For example, they feel that corporations are engaged in "CSR" when they are participating in anti-corruption business measures, have to account for the law and order situation and political turmoil the country might be facing. Compliance of ethical issues and international standards of the code of conduct seems to be part of "CSR" activiites.

Before we can start to unravel the more complex relationship of successful corporations towards societies, we need to understand what people in large feel CSR is.

What do you think? Have you heard any interesting perspective from your friends, family or from anyone around on how or why corporations should treat citizens in a certain way, or regarding the types of activities they should be involved in? Let me know in the comments!

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We may not realize it yet, but having an open, democratic discussion on the Corporate Social Responsibilities of organizations in Pakistan is a need of the hour - Let me tell you why.

As with Green & White, Osama and I were working since July 2007 (almost a year ago!) to look at how corporations were positioning themselves as a member of society. It started just from curiousity, and off and on we would talk to MNCs, NGOs, consumers and other people involved in social development issues about their thought process behind the activities occurring in the field.

I was surprised to see how many different definitions of CSR existed in the people we talked to - everyone seemed to differ on what CSR was; why was it necessary; what their role was and how they affected everyone else in the ecosystem.

We met people who denied that their corporations had any role to play to help their society. "Isn’t the investment we’re making in the economy or the jobs we’re creating enough? Why should people hold any expectations from us beyond this?"

We met people who thought that social responsibility was the same as charity - and because of this their companies were missing out on the type of activities that would truly make a difference.

We also saw a lot of very interesting and innovative social leadership activities occuring in Pakistan - the types of things that can make us all proud of being Green - from all over society, sometimes from young people with dreams to change the world.

Read more…

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