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"Counting the 'Invisible' People of Brazil"

An Interview with Melanie Edwards,
Founder of MobileMedia

(First published in The Stanford Daily, 2/22/2005)

How can technology transform international development? How can new technologies promote social change? This week we interview the founder of MobileMedia, an organization that combines PDA’s with Brazilian youth to surveys the “invisible people” of Brazil. Melanie Edwards is the founder and executive director of MobileMedia, lecturer in Public Policy, and Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford.

The Daily: What are “invisible people”?

Melanie Edwards: You and I are all registered through social security, or birth certificates. But about 1 billion around the world are not officially recorded as existing or registered anywhere. We have invisible people in the United States, especially in the case of homeless. But in Brazil, it’s about 12% of the population. Twenty million people fall into this invisible category.

The Daily: Why try to survey the invisible people?

Melanie Edwards: Governments, corporations, and nonprofits all want to serve the under-served, but they really don’t know who they are. How can you serve a population when you don’t know who they are?

“Invisible people” don’t have access to the basics that you and I would. They don’t have access to education, microcredit, or land titles.

The Daily: How does MobileMedia survey them?

Melanie Edwards: We hire and train local youth, our “mobile agents.” We teach them survey techniques and how to use a PDA. Then they’re sent into the field to collect data and information on the “invisible” community, from income to health, education and housing needs.

This gives the community more of a voice. It also gets the mobile agents, some of whom are former drug traffickers, closer to their community. As our local partner told the agents: “You guys are giving every person whose house you are walking into a voice in the world about who they are and what their needs are.”

The Daily: Why hire Brazilian youth? How do you get them to work for you?

Melanie Edwards: They get paid over double minimum wage, since we want to make this a profession and create real positive role models. We also did some research on what the drug traffickers make, because it’s a major business there.

We want to show people in the community that there’s a future with technology, and that there are options out there besides drug trafficking. We want to show that there is so much potential for growth in the community itself.

The Daily: What will happen with the data once you’ve collected it?

Melanie Edwards: We want to use this data as an advocacy on behalf of them. We’re in the process of forming a contract with the Brazilian government. The government will use the data to increase access to existing services and to formulate new services for these invisible communities that are now becoming visible.

The Daily: Why start MobileMedia? Why leave the private sector...?

Melanie Edwards: I’ve worked in both the private and public sectors, living the extremes from Wall Street to West Africa. I studied psychology in college and then went on to be a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. When I came back to the U.S., I studied International Relations. Then I went into investment banking with JP Morgan.

But I always had this nagging feeling of wanting to get back into the field. To do something in development, to make an impact. Investment banking provided great professional training, and it led to social entrepreneurship. I realized that we can use business knowledge and skills to really make an impact.

The Daily: ...And why work in social innovation? Why not something traditional?

Melanie Edwards: After working in the technology sector, I started Global Technology Corps, which is like a digital peace corps. During the Kosovo crisis, Al Gore came to us and asked if we could get Internet access to the refugee camps.

That was my first experience seeing the power of the internet and technology in a crisis situation. That’s when I realized: this is what I have to do. Technology in developing countries is where the high impact is.

The Daily: I’m a Stanford student and I’m sold. How do I get involved?

Melanie Edwards: First, there’s the social entrepreneurship course series in Public Policy. That is a great way to first understand what social entrepreneurship is: measuring social impact and making organizations sustainable through revenue generation.

Second, there are social start-ups all around Stanford that students can get involved in. The MobileMedia project, for instance, is a product of Stanford, organic from The Farm. Students were involved with the incubation and evolution of the idea from day one.

Wow, great interview. How can I read them all?

All the interviews with outstanding social entrepreneurs and articles have been collected into a report on social innovation. It is available below for easy reading, printing, and sharing.

The Story of Social Innovation:
Interviews with Social Entrepreneurs