Good Technology: Envaya Builds A Civil Society Platform

Contestats of youth Parliament in Muheza wait for election result —

Tanga Youth Development Association

There are first world problems, like, “should you go for sushi or bánh mi when you get lunch with your ex?” or “which of the six parties happening this weekend is really worth going to?” And there are third world problems, like the lack of clean water, or smokey cook stoves, or the absence of civil society infrastructure.

A lot of the technology we talk about on Motherboard solves first world problems, some of which didn't even exist before the technology itself (admit it, whether or not you can check your email from your phone hasn’t been a pressing issue in your life for the last 15 years). So in this new series, we put the spotlight on individuals and companies going the other way, looking for solutions to third world problems using contemporary technology.

The Problem: There are lots of small non-profits and community groups in the third world, but inter-group communication is extremely limited. This lack of a communication platform makes it hard for small organizations to find grants, share effective methods, and work together as a wider movement.

A Solution: Envaya is a new San Francisco based startup that “develops and deploys software that empowers and connects grassroots organizations around the world.” The software includes tools to build simple websites, and tools for larger NGO’s tools to support local efforts.

The company has been in existence for about a year, and operational in their first country, Tanzania, for 8 months.

“The reception its had in Tanzania is absolutely tremendous,” says Joshua Stern, Executive Director and Co-Founder. “We have over 250 community organizations across the country using Envaya and for the majority of them, this is their first online presence whatsoever, which is a pretty big deal.”

One question we get a lot is “why civil society?” That’s an important question, because there has been this large surge in the last decade, and it’s been a good thing, of investment, a lot of sophisticated technology being deployed, very smart minds and organizations building tools and systems to encourage private sector growth, with micro-finance…and technology incubators.

And that work is really important, but it’s only half of the equation, and the other side of the business sector is the civil society sector and that has sort of been left in the dark, and it’s sort of being run by larger old guard NGOs and Agencies. And they certainly understand issues, and they are self aware, but there’s still a large technology gap on that side of things, and that’s what we’re working to fill.

The Envaya platform was built from the ground up to be simple and light, something that worked in both English and Swahili — and could be set up from a shaky mobile connection, with Google Translater integrated into the system, it seems a little like “Blogger lite”.

Organizations post information about their programs, contact numbers, photos from events — nothing really exciting. Of course, it is exciting in and of itself.

Stern says that what surprised him most (though it shouldn’t have) about development work in Tanzania (he was a Peace Corps volunteer there) was that the best work was being done by tiny local organizations, as opposed to the big, moneyed NGOs.

Despite doing good work out in the field, the only real time they have to connect or collaborate with one another and to find sources of funding is at most annual conferences where they’ll come together to share ideas, information with one another, and find out which funding sources are currently active for them. Then they’ll go back and be alone for another year.

Just sharing contact information is a huge deal, especially when it comes to finding aid money, says Stern:

Now that we’ve hit a critical mass of users, we’re starting to move beyond in providing additional applications.

Envaya is building up and out. Right now, they’re about to expand into larger East Africa, an expansion that will be equal parts exciting and difficult. “Once you have a region online, the network only grows,” says Stern. “The idea is to have one larger network so an organization in Malawi can talk to an organization in Rwanda, which span multiple african languages [including] English.”

And they’ll be looking to expand as a company, too.

We’ve been very lucky so far and we are working on partnerships that will allow us to scale to reach much wider regions, and the goal down the line [is to offer] more sophisticated technologies, whether it’s a full stack of grant making, monitoring and reporting systems, financial transaction tools (things like mobile banking), or much richer application support for specific verticals of organizations.

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