Indigi-Net is a service aimed at creating more meaningful connections between independent travelers and local entities in developing countries by facilitating service and skill exchanges between the two. Indigi-Net takes advantage of technology to help empower locals in developing nations and support these connections made when travelers visit the third world. The service supports a grassroots movement of socially aware travelers, resulting from a change in perspective. Every year hundreds of millions of people strap on a backpack and go off to see and be part of the world. They visit small villages and remote locations, wanting more than just a tourist experience, often wishing they could do something truly useful for the local communities. We see these explorers, most equipped with phones, as a potential distribution system of needed resources and information - a perpetual and sturdy link between the remote and the urban, the developed and the third world. Each person has different skills, knowledge and other advantages.
Indigi-Net incorporates mobile phone technology and the strength social networks on the web. More than 80% of the world's population is covered by the GSM cellular networks, and more than 2 billion people own a mobile phone. Indigi-Net takes advantage of this increasing penertration of the cellular networks, merged with the power the social web has in connecting between people with similar interests, creating a web-based service which could be accessed using simple and local SMS messages. This enables a lower entry level, allowing for active participation even from those who do not have access to the internet. Indigi-Net's underlying goal is empowering local communities, by giving them the ability to post and edit data regarding their initiatives online. We explore the use of technology here as a tool meant to encourage these more meaningful connections to happen between locals and travelers.
Indigi-Net focuses around three main possibilities of exchange: knowledge, monetary and physical work. We believe that each traveler can use their different skills and strength to the benefit of the local communities they visit. So instead of only constantly taking from your hosting ***, this is a way to give back. If through buying mattresses for a drug-addicts home, directly helping out a local entrepreneur by using your photographs to create a webpage for their service, or even helping a family rewire a computer; the possibilities are endless. And every person can contribute. The system allows you to browse through locations according to needs and services requested. Information is fed directly from local entities and through travelers who visit there.
Instead of simply bringing candy, Indigi-Net allows its users to have more meaningful experiences while exchanging services between travelers and local entities.