In the run up to this year’s Meffys we are profiling the finalists in the different categories.  Today its the turn of the Market Award for Social Responsibility and Development, recognising the mobile products, services and initiatives that have had a significant impact on the social, economic or the environmental development of underserved communities.

The winners will be announced on October 19th 2015 in at a Gala Dinner taking place in London,  hosted by the legendary musician, beat-boxer and musical mastermind, Beardyman

Be My Eyes is an app that connects blind people with volunteer helpers from around the world via live video chat. This allows the blind to handle big and small tasks, while sighted get the joy of helping someone else in a easy and informal way.   The technology behind Be My Eyes is simple, yet extremely powerful. The Be My Eyes app connects visually impaired to sighted volunteers. They are connected via a live video call using peer-to-peer technology. More than 250.000 volunteers are already lending eyes to the visually impaired, providing guidance 24/7.

The system is built as a shuffle-call system, which forwards the help request until a volunteer answers. Visually impaired can lend a pair of eyes without deciding who to bother, which creates independence.   We are crowdsourcing the translation of the app, improvements of the source code and the marketing. Be My Eyes has been translated into 90+ languages and has been featured in the most prestigious medias across the globe without using a dime on marketing or translations. The power of Be My Eyes – is the power of the crowd.

Be My Eyes is also a finalist in the Innovation in mHealth category.

GoodSAM app uses GPRS technology to alert trained first responders to emergencies within their immediate reach. In an emergency, seconds count. Opening an airway and basic life-support can improve outcomes and save lives if done quickly enough. Through the GoodSAM app, trained first responders (who may be off duty) including doctors, nurses, firefighters, paramedics, police officers and medical students can register to be alerted to incidents in their surrounding area and could be on scene within minutes. With a built-in Defibrilocator function, app users can also easily identify public access defibrillators.

GoodSAM is also a finalist in the Innovation in mHealth category.

Turkey has a population of 77,6 million with around 800.000 that are visually impaired.  Turkcell My Dream Partner is an IVR and mobile application service that enables visually impaired people to access information fast and free of charge. Through the use of text to speech (TTS) technology it brings services, news, educational materials and navigation systems to visually impaired people more easily. Most news and up to date information is still only available in a written format and needs to be converted to the Braille alphabet or an audio format to be accessed by visually impaired people. My Dream Partner converts information and news to audio via TTS technology, independent of time and location, instantaneously.

It also provides 5.000 audio books and magazines like Harvard Business Review Turkey. Personal and competence development of visually impaired people is also available with 180 audio training programs such as chess, science, economy, and history. Users can also reach information useful for daily life like exchange rates and weather forecast. The app also provides a location for key services – the nearest hospital or pharmacy for example.  

what3words has built a uniform global location reference system that gives everyone, everything and everywhere a simple address.  The company has divided the world into a grid of 57 trillion 3mx3m squares and pre allocated each with a fixed and unique 3 word address.  3 words are significantly more memorable than the equivalent alphanumeric characters or the lat/long coordinates required to define the same location, and much quicker and easier to say. In places with no street addresses the system is quicker and cheaper to implement than anything else.

what3words is currently available in 9 languages and is used in 170 countries, accessible across most platforms and less than 10MB so works offline.   what3word addresses are being integrated into apps & services to improve operational efficiency, enhance customer experience, drive growth and save lives.  Examples include being used in to deliver packages in the Favelas, medicine in the Townships, address water pipes and mosquito nets in Tanzania and direct staff at music festivals in the UK.

what3words is also a finalist in the Innovation in Apps and the Innovation in Mobile Technology categories.

Worldreader Mobile (WRM) is a mobile e-reader and library application optimized for inexpensive mobile phones to reach children, families and adults on devices they already own. Designed to work with browsers using extreme compression technology, it offers a fast and data-light reading experience – even in areas with 2G coverage (85% of the world population lives within the area of 2G coverage according to GSMA).

The design of WRM enables people, regardless of the mobile device they own, to have an excellent and affordable reading experience (i.e. the cost to read the equivalent of a 300-page print book on Worldreader is c. $0.08 ). Moreover, Worldreader Mobile enables users to save books to their phones for reading when offline.  With over 18,000 titles in 43 languages, the WRM library covers the spectrum of literacy, from those learning to read, to those reading to learn, to those reading for pleasure. Educational titles complement leveled early-grade readers for our youngest readers, to thrillers and romance novels for some of our oldest.

Worldreader Mobile is also a finalist in the Innovation in Education and Innovation in Mobile First Markets categories.

The winners will be announced at a Gala Dinner taking place on 19th October at the prestigious Rosewood Hotel – a stunning 5 star venue in the heart of the city.

Tickets are on sale now – be sure to book your VIP table for a front row seat and join the who’s who of the mobile industry at this year’s celebration.