Voxiva
Date Initiated: February 2001

Developing nations face new opportunities for sustainable social and economic development created by information and communication technologies. There are tremendous barriers to overcome, however, which have left an enormous segment of the global population effectively cut off from the networked economy and society, and which threaten to widen the already existing gap between rich and poor. The Markle Foundation provided support to Voxiva, a social venture that aims to expand services to poor communities in developing nations, with a particular emphasis on public health information.

Voxiva provides an effective means for isolated developing country populations to send and receive information needed for monitoring diseases and epidemics, and distributing medication. Voxiva's messaging, data collection, information, and transaction services are accessible from all phones, which will allow users to send and receive voice mail, submit reports, order goods, and access libraries of pre-recorded information using the phone's keypad and their own voices to enter data. Information captured by this digitized voice technique also feedsdirectly into Internet and computer networks, expanding the reach of important social services networks into under-equipped rural communities by phone. By deploying a low-cost, telephone-based technology that will extend Internet-like functions and information to poor and rural communities in developing nations, Voxiva has the potential to serve as a model for the successful use of ICT for development goals. As a social venture — one of a breed of enterprises that support social goals with commercial operations-Voxiva is also developing a sustainable business model. Markle's equity PRI investment enable Voxiva to embark upon a pilot project in Peru and position itself for further investment and expansion into additional countries.