Information and Communication Technologies for Development

This evening I went to visit a low income community named Parque Regina, through Jane's contacts at Sou Da Paz. My guides were Marilia and Marcio. Marcio lived in the community and had helped the community take an open area filled with trash and rubble and turn it into a community park, complete with trees, walkways, and a basketball / soccer court. It took an hour by public transit to get to the community. Marilia translated, and we interviewed a group of 10 workers to ask about how they currently found work. We found that all of them had cell phones and email addresses, and had used the internet before for looking for work. However, most of these workers were looking for full time work. Despite this goal, several were unemployed and several worked informally.

We also showed them the sign-up and job matching process and tried to get their initial user feedback. We got several useful comments that we will incorporate into the product.