It’s just 10 days until the first international edition of the Akvo Track Day. Here Sebastian Wafula talks with Akvo’s Luuk Diphoorn and Mark Charmer, at Akvo’s East Africa hub in Nairobi.

Sebastian Wafula: Imagine I’m a six year old. What is Akvo Track Day?

Luuk Diphoorn: It’s a place where people come together who use cool technology to make their work better, and to share experiences with each other. They all work in the field of trying to make the world a better place, and trying to help improve the lives of people. They have a common purpose but they do it in different ways.

SW: So, for a six year old, Akvo Track Day is a day when people from far distant places come together to share ways that technology – especially gadgets and gizmos – are making their lives just a bit better? While they work hard to make other people’s lives better.

Mark Charmer: Yes! We need to learn to explain it like that too.

SW: So give me some examples of the people coming, here in Nairobi?

LD: We have people coming from Kisumu in Western Kenya. They’re going to talk about how they’re using smart phones to make short videos to show the world how football is going to help kids in the community stay away from germs and diseases.

We also have Care Kenya joining us to explain how they’re using smart phones to very quickly map out all the water points and toilets in the north of Kenya, to make informed decisions about where interventions are needed.

MC: And we’ll find out the process that UN-Habitat is going through to open up how and where it is spending money globally, even encouraging whistle-blowers to report on where money isn’t being spent where it was supposed to be.

SW: What range of problems do Akvo Track Day people work on?

LD: Some are working on environment issues, some on water issues, sanitation, health, education, others on ICT – the use of computers to improve services. But in the end, as a group of people we are in it together.

SW: Why do this? Once you have all these things in place, what’s the end game?

LD: Awareness. You have no idea how many people don’t know that smart phones can become a way to provide safe water. You can use a simple smart phone to do a simple video you can put on YouTube. You can just post pictures online just like you do with Facebook, to connect people working on these problems to the rest of the world.

We’re hoping a lot of these partners will get inspired, on how to move forward with the work they do. After the track Day I want each participant to become an Akvo ambassador to the rest. The people who are coming here are just the tip of the iceberg, compared to the numbers who could be involved one day.

SW: I see this being about demystifying what development projects are. In so many projects, there’s talk about poverty alleviation. But what does that mean? Instead, just saying “Did you know you can now get water because of smart phones?” is a powerful message. People just want water. And they want toilets in schools. Simple things. All of the people coming to the Track Day are working on fixing those problems. And they’re using new technologies to make this process easier.

The Akvo Track Day events are free to attend, and running in Nairobi, Amsterdam and Washington DC on Thursday 23 May. Sign up below.

Sebastian Wafula is a social media consultant at TrINC Media, based in Nairobi. www.trincmedia.com

On 23 May 2013 we will be hosting the next Akvo Track Day. This will be the first international edition, with concurrent events running at our AmLab HQ in Amsterdam as well as in Nairobi and Washington DC.

With different programmes in each location, all three events offer a chance to learn about and discuss the latest ways people are implementing, reporting, monitoring and communicating development programmes, hear about how Akvo partners are using our tools in the field and catch up on all our news – including new product developments.

Amsterdam Track Day

At our Amsterdam event, we are excited to have several guest speakers willing to share their experiences. Evariste Kouassi Komlan from UNICEF will join us to talk about how UNICEF is using Akvo tools in Africa to modernise water, sanitation and hygiene monitoring.

During the Autumn Track Day in October last year, Manuel Salazar showed us how Mars Chocolate piloted Akvo FLOW in the Ivory Coast to map cocoa farms and Akvo RSR to tell farmers’ stories. During the upcoming Track Day, Andrew Pederson will share with us the more strategic sustainability approach of Mars’ ‘Vision for Change’ programme.

We will have KNVB WorldCoach Doreen Nabwire talking about WorldCoaches and girl empowerment. Martijn Marijnis from ICCO will present a baseline survey on food security conducted in Indonesia. Sunita Nadhamuni, former director of Arghyam and an Akvo board member, will talk more about her initiative in India to improve rural governance through data and volunteers. And we will share with you the recent launch of the prototype ‘Go Three60’, the AmLab Phase 2 proposal to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenge Explorations programme.

Nairobi Track Day

The Nairobi event includes a mix of presentations and interactive demo sessions. In the morning, Pontus Westerberg of UN Habitat will share insights from the development of Open UN-Habitat and Siem Vaessen of Zimmerman & Zimmerman will present the new and improved Openaid.nl. They will be followed by speakers from the Football for Water and Connect4Change consortia discussing how they’re using Akvo RSR to report their activities and communicate within and beyond the programmes they’re working on.

After lunch, speakers from CARE Kenya and Food for the Hungry will talk about how Akvo FLOW is being used by the Millennium Water Alliance (MWA) Kenya programme.

The visual identity of this Track Day, seen above, was designed by our resident graphic designer Linda Leunissen and is based on vehicle race tracks at night.

At the Washington DC Track Day, we will provide an overview of the latest developments from around Akvo and will welcome guest speaker Ben Mann, who will talk about the Millennium Water Alliance Latin America (MWA-LAP) program and how the organisations in the alliance are using Akvo tools to help increase access to safe water and improve sanitation and hygiene in rural Latin America.

You can read about earlier Track Day events in Amsterdam to get an impression of the day here: Spring Track Day and Autumn Track Day 2012.

Charlotte Soedjak is a project officer at Akvo

Updates: 9 May (Mark Charmer) – Some tweaks to text. Added signup button graphics.

There was an informal event here at the AmLab in Amsterdam last night to launch AmLab’s new identity and the first joint product from the group. It’s called Three60.

To recap, AmLab is not just the location of our headquarters, but also a physical hotspot for international development and innovation in the centre of Amsterdam. AmLab is an initiative of three partners – 1%CLUB, Text to Change and Akvo. It’s housed in a 370 year old building with a fascinating history – it was formerly the headquarters of the Dutch West Indies Trading Company.

Last November, the AmLab partners, led by 1%CLUB, were awarded a phase one grant, with the brief to “Show the world aid is working – let’s ask the crowd”.

On May 1, we submitted our AmLab Phase two proposal to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Grand Challenge Explorations programme. Last night we presented our journey through phase one, a movie and website to everyone here. Afterwards there was plenty of opportunity to experience the website, share feedback and get together. It’s been a big team effort so we used the opportunity to say thanks to lots of people.

You can see the result at www.gothree60.org.

AmLab doesn’t have its own blog yet, so we’ve posted the joint blog on this below:

GoThree60

Just imagine a tool that shows how aid is working. It’s getting more and more realistic as we launched AmLab’s new identity and our new concept: Three60.

AmLab (Amsterdam Lab) is the physical hotspot for development and innovation in the center of Amsterdam. The place to be for anyone who is involved in international development. AmLab is an initiative of 1%CLUB, Akvo and Text to Change.

Three60 wants to become the Global Label for Aid Transparency and Data Gathering using mobile phones as a reporting tool. The Three60 approach has the potential to make information about aid that is, aggregated bottom-up, sourced from multiple viewpoints, open, and real-time, accessible to all. This new way of communicating about the impact of aid gives anyone, anywhere, the possibility to get involved and see for themselves how aid is working.

On the 1^st of May AmLab has submitted its first full proposal for Phase II of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation (BMGF) Grand Challenge Exploration, after been granted for Phase I in November 2012: Show the world aid is working, lets ask the crowd.

Three60 was developed in cooperation with Cannes Chimera during a workshop session in Seattle.

1%CLUB, Akvo and Text to Change have joined forces in AmLab and Three60, because together we have the expertise and tools to increase our reach and revitalize traditional development aid practices with technological innovation:

• 360, because we want to make aid transparent, 360 degrees around the world.
• 360, because we believe aid should be visible from every angle in the development chain.
• 360, because we want to establish a 360º feedback loop connecting everybody.
• 360, because that will be our global SMS short code for everybody to send their feedback to about development projects they are involved in.

Three60 is not only a platform, it’s a movement to get people more involved into the transition of becoming more open about development aid.  We want to achieve total transparency using a bottom up approach. How is our approach radically new compared to traditional data-gathering methods for aid?

Join the future of aid transparency now at  

Three60 is an initiative of 1%CLUB, Akvo and Text to Change; Three organizations who share a firm belief in the potential of modern technologies to speed up development. All three partners have been pioneering tools for social change since 2008 and have developed tools and services that are in use by governments, companies, NGOs and communities across the globe.

Frodo van Oostveen is a programme manager at Akvo, based in Amsterdam.

With Akvo staff in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America it is sometimes difficult to keep track of all the printed material we have in use. I am about to take stock at our main hubs to find out how much material we have got, so I thought it would be nice to do a quick round up off all the printed materials we are currently using.

As a technology foundation, we have always tried hard to keep the range and volume of printed material we produce to a minimum. Especially as we are working with people in many of the most remote parts of the world. But here’s what we do have.

Annual Report 2012

The annual report gives an overview of the things we’ve worked on at Akvo in the past year. It contains a product overview and list of the main programmes we are involved in, talks about highlights in 2012 and has a brief overview of our financials.

The annual report will be followed by the Akvo in 2013 booklet, later this year, to incorporate any new developments. The document is also available for PDF download here.

Akvo FLOW 1.5 leaflet

The Akvo FLOW 1.5 leaflet is a double sided A4 sheet with all the details on the current version of our mobile based data collection tool. The document is also available for PDF download here.

Akvo logo Stickers

We haven’t had these for a while, but we will be reintroducing Akvo logo stickers soon. You can stick them on anything you like. They look great on your notepad, bag, laptop or even the back of your computer screen.

Akvo movie posters and postcards 

The Akvo movie posters where designed in 2010 by Dutch Artist Vincent Wijers, to evoke a sense of simplicity, improvisation and optimism. They challenge assumptions about development aid and and present local aid workers as heroes. The designs are printed on A2 sized posters and A5 sized post cards, and you will find at least one of these posters in any of our hubs.

Akvo logo T-shirts

Akvo T-shirts are mainly used by Akvo staff. We love them because it makes us easy to recognise in the crowd and on pictures. No one asks us for which organisation we work anymore, the T-shirt says it all.

It’s time for open data T-shirts

Unlike the Akvo logo T-shirts, open data tees are also available for people not working for Akvo. They are designed in collaboration with Siem and Tristan from Zimmerman and Zimmerman and show a maze of rectangle shapes, symbolising data that is not easy and openly accessible, something we are very committed to change. We may start selling these online, if there is demand.

Akvo RSR beginners manual

The Akvo RSR beginners manual is designed to get new RSR users started. It looks like a small booklet, but unfolds to a poster sized manual, it’s a bit like an RSR update stream, it starts small but ends up being something much much larger. The beginners manual provides new users with step by step guidance on how to create an update and add a photo or video. The flip side of the manual is a fun poster which helps remind users what they are doing it all for. This folding layout is designed to be very high quality and is only available in Z-fold printed form. But we recently also made the same content available for download in a different layout – the multi-lingual printer-friendly RSR manual in English, French and Spanish too.

RSR training kits

RSR training kits are given to partners who are new to RSR. It is a fun little box filled with lots of clever material. You’ll find a mix of things described above, the RSR beginners manual, some movie poster post cards and one of those clever USB sticks with lots of background information (see below). The kit is designed so it can also accept a small camcorder or mobile phone, if the partner chooses to include one. Noone has yet, but with camcorder prices falling under €50, we think it’s a matter of time. Training kits help partners to get comfortable with Akvo RSR so they can start posting updates on their projects.

Akvo USB sticks

Akvo USB sticks look like a black little credit card. They have the same size and thickness, but when you flip a little ledge on the side of the card a USB stick pops out. One side of the card shows the Akvo logo, while the other side features all of our product logos. We mostly use them in RSR training kits to enclose video’s and pdf’s with the training material, but they are flexible in use and we find more and more ways in which they come in handy.

Linda Leunissen is a graphic designer at Akvo, based in London.

This is a guide for our support partners which outlines roles and responsibilities and what you need to know to use Akvo RSR and support your field partners to use it. We hope it helps you to get started with Akvo RSR.

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Roles and responsibilities of support partners
3. Different types of RSR users
4. Role of the RSR ‘organisation administrator’
5. How to use the admin
6. How to set up a partner site
7. How to get more help

1 Introduction

Akvo is a non-profit foundation headquartered in the Netherlands. We build open source internet and mobile software which is used to make international development cooperation and aid activity more effective and transparent. We provide the software as a service to the vast majority of our partners, backed by a partner-support and training team.

Akvo RSR stands for Really Simple Reporting. It’s a web-based system that makes it easy for development aid teams to bring projects online and share progress with everyone involved and interested.

Akvo’s partner organisations have different roles. We have funding partners, field partners and support partners.

Our funding partners obtain and provide most of the money to carry out the projects featured in Akvo RSR.

Our field partners implement them, in collaboration with the local community.

Our support partners are organisations that assist field partners in different ways.
If you are a support partner, this manual should help you in this role.
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2 Roles and responsibilities of support partners

Support partners can help field partners by providing knowledge, information, contacts and training as well as getting involved in implementing projects. They usually help with project planning and are responsible for approving plans before they’re rolled out. They also monitor progress and outcomes and often get involved in troubleshooting, as required. They need to be well-connected within their relevant field of activity.

Within Akvo RSR, support partners play an administrative role and are responsible for ensuring the tool is used effectively. Your responsibilities include:

1. Proofing and quality checking project descriptions
2. Ensuring project information is kept up to date and correct (active/needs funding/complete)
3. Encouraging field partners to post updates about project progress
4. Reading and checking partners’ updates
5. Approving new RSR users from within your own organisation

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3. Different types of RSR users

An Akvo RSR user account is a personal account – you shouldn’t register an organisation as a user. If a colleague needs to make an update, he or she can easily sign up too. That way, updates can only come from identified individuals.

There are three different categories of RSR users, and each has different user accounts and associated rights. The three different categories of RSR users are:

1. Update user - An update user account is the most basic type of account. It enables you to add updates to your organisation’s projects and to comment on any other project on the system, for example to ask a question or give encouragement or advice.
2. Project editor - Project editors can do everything an update user can. In addition they are responsible for entering and maintaining project overviews and detailed project descriptions including budget information, sustainability plans, etc. It’s up to organisation administrators to decide who within their organisation is best placed to fulfil this role and how many are needed.
3. Organisation administrator - Organisation administrators are the individuals with overall responsibility for their organisation’s work in RSR. They can do everything general update users and project editors can. In addition, they manage their organisation’s Akvo RSR account, assign user privileges to colleagues and activate new accounts. They act as the link and contact person between their organisation and Akvo. They’re also responsible for entering and maintaining the information about their organisation and projects in RSR.

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4. Role of the RSR ‘organisation administrator’

At least one person within a support partner organisation (generally only support partners require an RSR administrator account) should be an organisation administrator. There is no limit to the number of organisation administrators an organisation can have, but it’s not advisable to have more than two or three because they need to communicate with each other.

The organisation administrator’s roles and responsibilities include:

Maintaining project information on RSR - It’s the role of the organisation administrator to control the quality of information on RSR about the projects their organisation is involved in. This includes monitoring updates coming in from partners in the field and keeping project pages up to date when things such as the funding information or project status change.

There are five possible project statuses:

• Needs funding: project still needs funding
• Active: project currently being implemented
• Completed: project has been completed
• Cancelled: project will not be implemented
• Archived: project can still be implemented, but is no longer viewable on Akvo.org

When a project receives sufficient funding the project status should be changed from Needs funding to Active. When a project is completed a final update should be posted and the project status set to Completed. – see also paragraph 5.4 for further information.

A project status can be changed to Archived when a partner no longer works with Akvo.

Adding new projects - As an administrator you can create new projects on Akvo RSR and add new projects to the list of those implemented by your organisation. If new projects involve partners that are not yet listed on RSR, they’ll need to complete our organisation form. We’ll then add them to the database so that you can link to them as a project partner. Once you’ve completed all the required fields for adding a new project, we’ll check and publish the project for you.

Activating new user accounts - Anyone within your organisation can create a user account. It’s the role of the organisation administrator to check and approve new accounts. The administrator needs to decide which account type each new user should have – either an update user or project editor account.

When you approve a new user account, an email is automatically sent to this person to let him/her know his/her account is enabled.

Example email

Dear …
Your Akvo RSR account has been enabled.

This means that you can now post updates to projects which are associated with your organisation. Please read the short note about updates on the Akvo website:

http://rsrhelp.akvo.org/kb/project-updates/about-project-updates

We have developed a manual on updates, which should help you in getting started. The manual is attached.

Please use your Akvo RSR account as a personal account. If a colleague needs to make an update, he or she can easily sign up too. This is for accountability, so you understand who is actually making project updates.

If you have any questions, please contact me or email support@akvo.org.

Greetings,
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5. How to use the admin area of Akvo RSR 

Logging in 

Go to www.akvo.org. Scroll down to Admin and click Akvo RSR login.

Fill in your username and password.

You will now enter the back end or ‘admin area’ of the Akvo RSR system.

What can I do in the admin area?

• Countries: you can set the countries in which your organisation operates. We use the ISO 3166 country list.
• Organisations: organisation administrators can edit their own organisation’s details. Because we work with a trusted partner network, we like to keep track of the organisations that are added to RSR. Therefore you can’t add new organisations directly – you need to ask us to do that for you. After we’ve added an organisation, you can then add them as a partner to your project(s).
• Partner sites: if your organisation has a partner site, you’ll be able to change its lay-out and other settings here.
• User profiles: here you find the user profiles of everyone that has a user account for your organisation.
• Projects: you can add new projects and edit existing ones.

How to add or edit a project 

Click on ‘Projects’ to see a list of all the projects related to your organisation.

To open a project for editing, simply click on the project ID – the number at the left side of each project.

To add a new project, click on ‘+Add’ on the Projects line of the Site administration page or ‘Add project’ in the top right hand corner of the Project listing page.

Tip: don’t forget to save by clicking ‘save and continue editing’ at the bottom of the page.

General Information

Title (max 45 characters) and Subtitle (max 75 characters).

Project status: 

• Needs funding: project still needs funding and hasn’t started yet.
• Active: project is fully funded and currently being implemented.
• Complete: project has been completed. Before the status is changed to ‘completed’ an update will need to be placed on the project page by a field or support partner explaining what has been achieved.
• Cancelled: project will not be implemented. The support partner is responsible for communicating the decision to cancel a project. Before the status is changed to ‘cancelled’ they should post an update on the project page explaining why.
• Archived: the project can still be implemented, but is no longer viewable on the Akvo system. The Support Partner is responsible for communicating the decision to archive a project. Before the status is changed to ‘archived’ they should post an update on the project page explaining why.

Language: the main language of the project.

Start date: the date your request is posted is filled in for you automatically when you create a project. When the project is completed, enter the Date complete here.

Description

Summary of project plan: the summary should briefly explain why the project is being carried out, where it is taking place, who will benefit and/or participate, what it specifically hopes to achieve and how those specific goals will be accomplished (max 400 characters).

Background: relevant background information includes geographic, political, environmental, social and/or cultural issues (max 1000 characters).

Current status: description of the current phase of the project (max 600 characters).

Project plan: detailed information about the what, how, who and when of the project (unlimited characters).

Sustainability: plans for sustaining/maintaining results after implementation is complete (unlimited characters).

Goals

Overview of goals: what the project aims to accomplish (max 600 characters)

Goals: Give details of specific goals that fit within the overall project goals. Please note: do not confuse goals with measurable indicators. The goals of the project don’t need to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-specific) – the indicators, however, do (max 100 characters per goal).

Photo

You can only add one photo here. Other photos can be added in project updates. Always include a caption.

Locations

Here you add the physical geographical location of your project. Click on the link to iTouchMap.com to get the latitude and longitude of your project location. This creates the point on the map that will appear on your project page. You can add more than one project location but make sure to mark one of them as the primary location by ticking the Primary location box.

Budget

Enter details of the funds allocated to different budget items. There are ten general budget items plus three ‘other’ items that you can customise (max 20 characters).

Project Focus

Categories: select the Categories that relate to your project. The Focus area(s) of each Category is/are shown in brackets after the Category name. NB: Categories are linked to Focus areas, Benchmarks (or indicators) are linked to categories. After you have selected a category and clicked on ‘save and continue editing’, the Benchmarks related to this category will appear underneath. You can select all the Benchmarks (indicators) relevant to your project.

Benchmarks: displayed as indicators on the project page. If you can’t find the right one, select a different category and focus area and click ‘save and continue’. New benchmarks will appear. (We are working on a more user friendly process).

Partners

Every project needs to have one support partner and at least one field partner. If an organisation has more than one role, you should add this organisation more than once to the project in different roles.

A Support partner is an organisation with professional staff, working in multiple regions or countries on water and sanitation, health, education or economic development projects.

A Field partner is registered on Akvo RSR as an NGO or other type of organisation and has a support partner which approves and supports the implementation of its projects. The field partner has a local office in the region in which the project is implemented.

A Funding partner is an organisation, company or institution that funds the project. Adding funding partners to a project makes it transparent where the project money comes from. A project can have more than one funding partner. Select a funding partner and fill in the funding amount.

A Sponsor partner is an organisation that provides marketing support or exposure for projects. You shouldn’t add sponsor partners to projects.

Links: add links to any relevant external websites.

Additional Information

This is a space to add notes that are only visible within the Admin area of RSR. It can be used to identify missing information, specific contact details or status changes that you don’t want to be visible on your project page.

Tip: When you are done entering all the information you can do a final check by clicking “view on site” on the top right corner.
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6. Setting up a partner site

Using Akvo RSR partner sites, you can customise your project pages in your branding and colours, and embed them into your own website structure.  A partner site is a set of web pages that displays all projects on Akvo RSR that are being carried out by a particular organisation.

The landing page (such as http://akvo.akvoapp/org) shows a pre-built list view of all the organisation’s projects. This page can be used as the homepage for an organisation’s website, but more commonly it’s embedded as a ‘projects’ or ‘activities’ section within an existing site.

The look of the page can be modified using the available CSS (cascading style sheet) styling options, customising the visual experience so that there is no disconnection between the organisation’s website and the partner site add-on. To site visitors, the partner site appears to be part of the overall website.

All functionality provided by Akvo RSR is also accessible using partner sites. This includes donations, updates, comments and widgets.

Steps:

Creating a Partner site requires some understanding of coding. If you need help to create your Partner site, or would like us to do it for you, please ask us. If you want to do it yourself, follow the steps below.

Go to the Admin area and click on Partner sites.

Now fill in the information in the form fields.

Hostname: your hostname is used in the default web address of your partner site and is required. The web address created from the hostname myorganisation would be: http://myorganisation.akvoapp.org/

CNAME: enter a custom domain name for accessing the partner site, for example projects.myorganisation.org

Note: You need to ask your web site technical support person, who manages your DNS records, to help you set this up. It is not an automatic process. Make sure you or your web site technical support person understands CNAME records before using this setting.

Return URL: enter the full URL (including http://) for the page to which users should be returned when leaving the partner site. Clicking the logo at the top of the partner site, the courtesy back link or the organisation name in the breadcrumb trail will take the user to the URL entered here. If you don’t fill this in, the URL for your organisation in Akvo RSR will be used; if no URL has been set in RSR none of these items will be linked. This setting is optional but recommended.

Stylesheet: upload a CSS stylesheet for the partner site. (If you need help to do this, please ask us, we can do it for you.)

Organisation banner logo: Upload a logo file for the banner at the top of the partner site page. By default the logo currently used on your organisation page at www.akvo.org will be displayed.

Favicon: upload a favicon ICO file. A favicon (.ico file) is the 16×16 pixel image shown inside the browser’s location bar, on tabs and in the bookmark menu. The file can also be in PNG format.

About box text: enter HTML-formatted text you want to appear in the top left box of the home page (500 characters.) Usually partners choose to upload an image (see below) instead of text. If text is required, it can be created as an image in a graphics programme and then uploaded.

About box image: upload a background image for the About box. The image must be exactly 470 pixels wide and 250 pixels tall (470px x 250px).

Enable the site by ticking the checkbox.

Save the settings. Your new partner site is ready and can be accessed at http://hostname.akvoapp. org
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8. How to get more help

More information about Akvo RSR and FAQs can be found at:

http://www.akvo.org/web/support

RSRhelp.akvo.org

Email: support@akvo.org