RE: Documenting the undocumented: How one company counts the 'invisible poor'
Wow, Hiraghm, that was an extremely xenophobic and mean-spirited diatribe you posted. I'm disgusted by your contention that Americans are somehow superior to all others.
On a more positive note, I think this is a great idea. When I was in Peace Corps in Niger, I worked with the Carter Center on Guinea Worm Eradication, and we had a very similar model of collecting information. Young people were trained as community health agents in every village in endemic guinea work areas. They would go door to door, collecting information, which was filtered up through the local public health system. I would then compile all this information into a very detailed spreadsheet, which had the village location and population numbers, including ages, gender, water source information, and such. It wouldn't have been a stretch to collect more data using the same system.
This could be repeated for a very low cost all over the world, and the added benefit of cell-phones could make the data useful in real time. I would recommend connecting with an org like Ushahidi, who collects information in a more crowd-sourcing manner. The combination of real-time data overlapped/mashed-up with more stable demographic info could be a powerful tool.
Best of luck to Melanie.
