The Daily: Who are the “invisible people”?

Melanie Edwards: You and I are all registered through social security or birth certificates. But about one billion [people] around the world are not officially recorded as existing or registered anywhere.

We have invisible people in the United States, especially in the case of homeless. But in Brazil, it’s about 12 percent of the population. Twenty million people fall into this invisible category.

TD: Why try to survey the “invisible people”?

ME: Governments, corporations and nonprofits all want to serve the under-served, but they really don’t know who they are. How can you serve a population when you don’t know who they are?

“Invisible people” don’t have access to the basics that you and I would. They don’t have access to education, healthcare, microcredit or land titles.

TD: How does MobileMedia survey them?

ME: We hire and train local youth, our “mobile agents.” We teach them survey techniques and how to use a PDA. Then they’re sent into the field to collect data and information on the “invisible” community, from income to health, education and housing needs.

This gives the community more of a voice. It also gets the mobile agents, some of which are former drug traffickers, closer to their community. As our local partner told the agents, “You guys are giving every person whose house you are walking into a voice in the world about who they are and what their needs are.”

TD: Why hire Brazilian youth? How do you get them to work for you?

ME: They get paid over double minimum wage, since we want to make this a profession and create real positive role models. We also did some research on what the drug traffickers make because it’s a major business there.

We want to show people in community that there’s a future with technology, and that there are options out there besides drug trafficking. We want to show there is so much potential for growth in the community itself.

TD: How does surveying the invisible populations help them?

We want to use this data as an advocacy on behalf of them. We’re in the process of forming a contract with the Brazilian government. The government uses the data to increase access to existing services and to formulate new services for these invisible communities that are now becoming visible.

Why start MobileMedia? Why did you leave the private sector?

ME: I’ve worked in both the private and public sectors, living the extremes from Wall Street to West Africa. I studied psychology in college and then went on to be a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. When I came back to the U.S., I studied International Relations. Then, I went into investment banking with JP Morgan.

But I always had this nagging feeling of wanting to get back into the field. To do something in development, to make an impact. Investment banking provided great professional training, and it led to social entrepreneurship. I realized that we can use business knowledge and skills to really make [an] impact.

TD: And why work in social innovation? Why not something traditional?

ME: After working in the technology sector, I started Global Technology Corps, which is like a digital peace corps. During the Kosovo crisis, Al Gore came to us and asked if we could get Internet access to the refugee camps.

That was my first experience seeing the power of the Internet and technology in a crisis situation. That’s when I realized: this is what I have to do. Technology in developing countries is where the high impact is.

TD: I’m a student and I’m sold. How do I get involved?

ME: First, there’s the social entrepreneurship course series in Public Policy. That is a great way to first understand what social entrepreneurship is: measuring social impact and making organizations sustainable through revenue generation.

Second, there’s social start-ups all around Stanford that students can get involved in. The MobileMedia project, for instance, is a product of Stanford, organic from The Farm. Students were involved with the incubation and evolution of the idea from day one.

Lija McHugh, a senior, and Adam Stone, who vaguely remembers senior year, would like to know that someone out there reads this. You can contact them at lmchugh@stanford.edu and astone@stanford.edu.