PeaceTXT: Using Mobile Technology to End Violence
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An Unconventional Collaboration
PeaceTXT is a multidisciplinary project to explore the potential of mobile technology to amplify a proven approach to reducing violence. The program brings together several renowned partners including:
CeaseFire, a national and international public health strategy based in Chicago that has been scientifically proven to reduce shootings and killings using behavior change and disease control methods.
Medic Mobile, maker of advanced tools that enable frontline healthcare workers to better serve their communities through innovative, appropriate mobile technologies.
Ushahidi, creator of collaborative mapping platforms that allow for timely sharing and access to crowdsourced information contributed from many different sources.
The initiative is convened under the auspices of the PopTech Accelerator, which incubates unconventional collaborations with significant potential for the social and ecological good.
Project Updates
- SMS for Violence Prevention: PeaceTXT International Launches in Kenya
From the Ushahidi blog - Reflection on the Kenyan Context
From PeaceTXT International partner Sisi ni Amani - CeaseFire & PeaceTXT: Using Mobile Technology for Change
An update from the CeaseFire blog
Getting Involved
The PeaceTXT team has received initial support through a generous grant provided by the Rita Allen Foundation. We are expanding our network of additional partners, supporters and technical advisors. To explore how you or your organization might contribute, please contact peacetxt@poptech.org.
In Partnership With:
Amplifying a Proven Approach
CeaseFire is an interdisciplinary approach to reducing violence, rooted in the observation that violence is a learned behavior that can be prevented using disease control methods.
Focusing its efforts in communities most severely impacted by violence, CeaseFire uses a system based on data to identify and detect potentially violent events; interrupt and intervene in potentially lethal situations likely to result in a shooting or killing; identify and assist the most likely persons and groups involved to change their thinking about violence; and work on community and ultimately global norms about violence. To do so, CeaseFire has a system including trained community managers, violence interrupters, outreach workers, faith leaders and other community leaders to intervene in conflicts, or potential conflicts, and provide alternative ways of thinking, and change longstanding community norms regarding the social acceptability of violence.
CeaseFire launched in 2000 in West Garfield Park, Chicago, one of the most violent communities in the U.S., and was quick to produce results, reducing shootings by 67% in its first year of operations. CeaseFire’s results have since been replicated more than 18 times in Chicago and throughout Illinois, and have now been statistically proven by a U.S. Department of Justice funded, independent three-year evaluation. The DOJ’s analysis validated CeaseFire’s success in reducing shootings and killings by 41% to 73% and demonstrated a 100% success rate in reducing retaliatory killings in five of the eight communities examined. The model has been replicated more than a dozen times nationally and has two international sites in Iraq, and planning underway in the Caribbean, London, S. Africa, and Mexico.
Mobile Technology for Social Change
The PeaceTXT project brings together some of the world’s best technologists and social innovators to explore how mobile tools and mobile messaging might further accelerate CeaseFire’s ability to engage communities, change social norms, improve its efficacy and find new paths to scale. Our investigation is broad but intensive, exploring and rigorously evaluating several possible applications.
While the initial work will focus on CeaseFire’s efforts in its model sites in Chicago, there is clear potential to apply key insights and methods to the global context. Experience and learning gained from this project is expected to prove invaluable to conflict resolution and violence prevention efforts, nationally and globally.
