mBlox and InSTEDD Join Forces to Deliver Critical Services via Mobile to Vulnerable Populations in Latin America.
Today, mBlox, a leader in mobile consumer interaction and payments, and InSTEDD, a pioneer in integrating social and technological approaches to solving humanitarian issues, announced they will be working together to improve the health, safety and development of at-risk communities in Latin America. The mBlox and InSTEDD partnership will provide NGOs, governments, social entrepreneurs and other organizations in Latin America with access to instant, reliable and scalable mobile technology that facilitates life-saving collaboration during events such as disease outbreaks and natural disasters.
"We see our relationship with InSTEDD as a unique opportunity to work with an organization that can leverage our global reach to help disparate communities communicate," said Steve Love, interim Chief Executive Officer, mBlox. "We're passionate about building a network in Latin America that will benefit those in need. We look forward to working with InSTEDD to amplify our social impact in the future." InSTEDD partnered with mBlox to help realize its vision of empowering global communities through collaboration technology in Latin America via its regional innovation lab, iLab Latin America. mBlox provides the expertise and stable infrastructure needed to facilitate the regional services provided by the iLab Latin America. "Latin America is a region with large internal inequalities and low resource environments; yet full of potential in terms of using technology to empower communities within their own local contexts," said Eduardo Jezierski, Chief Technology Officer, InSTEDD. "We identified that mBlox solves many of the challenges of working with local and regional providers. mBlox has established networks, streamlined infrastructure for maximum flexibility and cost-effective programs that we can plug and play into our collaboration tools. Their shared vision of aiding the regional communities in Latin America is also extremely important to us."
mBlox's purpose-built network powers InSTEDD's collaboration technology and enables disparate communities to communicate across the region via bulk text and multimedia-enriched messages. The technology also gives the ability for people to reply in real-time, creating reliable, interactive communications. mBlox's services allow InSTEDD to focus on using and designing open source tools which help disseminate critical information to those in need in the Latin America region. In addition to providing collaboration technology consulting services to its partners, the iLab Latin America serves as a research and innovation space where public and private organizations across Latin America have the opportunity to discuss social and humanitarian matters that could benefit from the technology innovations. The InSTEDD collaboration technology powered by mBlox's Latin America network of technology and services will be implemented in early 2012.
mBlox mBlox is a mobile interaction and payment specialist that provides enterprises and solution providers with the fastest and most reliable way to engage with their customers on mobile devices without compromising on security. mBlox delivers a combination of software and services that allow businesses and solution providers to create mobile solutions with the greatest possible reach. Backed by leading venture capital firms, mBlox offers a network of more than 800 operators in over 180 countries, covering over 90% of the world's population. InSTEDD Founded in 2006 in California's Silicon Valley with seed funding from Google.org and the Rockefeller Foundation, InSTEDD designs and uses open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow and knowledge sharing to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations. InSTEDD has launched two innovation laboratories or "iLabs," which are fostering collaborative engineering practices and entrepreneurial innovation in those regions.
InSTEDD's highly skills interdisciplinary team of public health experts, scientists, and software engineers works closely with leading consultants and strategic partners in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. Through collaboration, InSTEDD is able to maximize resources and work faster, smarter and more cost effectively.
