Apple Gear Shines in Fight Against Global Poverty

When Shawn Ahmed travels to places such as Bangladesh to fight poverty he counts on iPhones and Macs to help him do battle.

Ahmed is the founder of a one-man global relief effort he calls the Uncultured Project and is using technology and social media in inventive ways to engage people across the globe in their common humanity.

In partnership with the Save the Children Foundation and USAID, Ahmed went last summer to a cyclone devastated village in Galachipa, Bangladesh to distribute non-food relief items to victims of the disaster. He provided individual donors to Uncultured Project real-time receipts for their generosity using his iPhone and TwitPic.

As seen in the clip above, Ahmed used his iPhone to show villagers in another Bangladeshi community videos made by the people in the west who helped bring safe, clean drinking water to their lives. “This is not a charity,” Ahmed said, “it’s an experiment in community.”

The 28 year-old native of Toronto, Canada quit his scholarship graduate studies at Notre Dame University after being inspired by Dr. Jeffery Sachs (author of The End of Poverty) to try and make the world a better place — one meaningful difference at a time.

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“I’ve also been using the iPhone to report real-time in the field,” Ahmed said in an email. He makes extensive use of Twitter and YouTube to break down the distance between his supporters and the communities they support. Connecting to them with his iPhone, Ahmed said, “I hold votes on how I should help people in Bangladesh. Voting has led [to] school supply distributions to orphans and much more. And, of course, all my videos are edited on a MacBook.”

The Uncultured Project’s YouTube channel just went over 10,000 subscribers and Ahmed is hopeful for the prospects of his unpaid, unemployed, uncultured journey to help the poorest of the poor: “It’s about inspiring others to believe that we can be the generation that ends extreme poverty.”

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About the author

Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

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http://photoblog.bridgescreative.com Jim Bridges
When I first saw the headline, I missed the word “gear” and thought maybe Steve Jobs or Apple had (finally) decided to use some of their massive amassed wealth to give back and do some philanthropic work. But nope. Just another story about how people use Apple products. (Which is not meant to take anything away from Ahmed’s work, which I think is great.)
If there is anything that does bother me about Apple and Steve Jobs personally, it’s how the bottom line is really what it comes down to with very little given back. I know no one, especially a company, has any obligation to engage in charitable work or donations, but it seems like a huge missed opportunity. Sure Apple has a few Product Red items, but that really seems a token gesture. (And even there, how much goes to charity isn’t stated, and from what I understand, it is less than most other companies that participate in the program, percentage-wise.) To the best of my knowledge Jobs has not used his money or stature to publicly help any cause in any significant way (other than the bottom line of Apple). It’s possible he donates millions, secretly, privately, but again what a missed opportunity with a man whose famed reality distortion field could be used to actually changing the world.
Contrast that to Bill Gates. Microsoft may be the company that has traditionally come off as the money-grubbing, greedy of the two. But when you look at the work Gates has done, he’s put both his money and his efforts behind some very significant, potentially world-changing projects. I vaguely remember a few years back watching Walt Mossberg’s interview with Gates and Jobs together and Jobs’ silence on anything to do with bigger issues outside of technology was telling, especially with the passion Gates talks about (and acts) on the issues he’s chosen to work on.
Don’t get me wrong, Jobs does have a brilliance in what he does. And while I think Apple doesn’t do anything that does not contribute to the bottom line (with a healthy profit margin), they do create tools that can help to change the world for the better. It would just be nice to see them (or Jobs) take more of a direct role.
Kudos to Ahmed and others making use of Apple’s technology to improve life for people around the world. But I’d love to see Apple and/or Jobs use some of their war chest to take a more direct hand in it.
http://ObamaPacman.com Obama Pacman
@Jim Bridges,
Bill Gates probably felt guilty for what he did, thus trying to make up for it.
Steve Jobs in all likelihood is contributing to a good cause. Even without it, Steve Jobs’ contribution to humanity via technology look to be much greater than Microsoft innovation of IP theft, vaporware, buggy product, awful design, late delivery, and fud.