We are proud that for the second year in a row, THNKer Jon Gosier's Abayima has won the Knight News Challenge in the mobile category. Abayima is a non-profit organization founded to support citizens when their voices are threatened in the form of attacks on communications infrastructure.
Abayima was one of five winners, and was awarded $150,000 USD grant by the Knight Foundation. The Knight News Challenge accelerates media innovation by funding breakthrough ideas in news and information. Winners receive a share of $5 million in funding and support from Knight’s network of influential peers and advisors to help advance their ideas.
Read about the winner here.
About Abayima
The majority of mobile phone users around the world use simple feature phones which, unlike smartphones, do no not have advanced storage or secondary communication options (wifi, bluetooth, RFID etc.). The Abayima team aims to build an open source application called SIMKit that people can use to store information to SIM cards – effectively turning the cards into storage devices and their mobile phones into e-readers. This app is particularly useful for sharing news and information in countries where communications networks are unsafe to use due to surveillance or where authorities or other circumstance have shut-off access to the internet altogether.
Congratulations Jon!