DEFINITION

Design statement
Nexus is a participatory service that explores all possibilities to create incentives for the
youth population throughout Africa to engage in conversation about issues affecting their
local communities.

1. Marketing + create incentives for youth participation
“engagement is one of those no faking kind of things” !! - Clay Shirky
Approach:
• Method – How to encourage participation.
• Reasoning – How to lower the threshold/barriers to participation.
• Where – How to make participation convenient—fit in within the everyday
Potential methods to encourage participation:
• In-person visits to place where people cluster during the day
• Record messages via mobile phone
• Bring supporting documentation e.g. flyers, posters
• Reinforce behavior and further market campaign e.g. buttons, stickers
Reasoning
• Convenient
• The neighbors are doing it—I should too (can’t think of this psychology term)
• I get something for participating (gift, a physical reinforcement—even a pencil would
work)
Where
• Micaela Help!

2. Nexus system
Description here.
• Database of responses to a topic
• Allow commenting and social ranking
• Visibility for the international community to understand key issues affecting youth
• Ability to remix the audio for re-broadcasting
• Issues that bubble up can influence topics discussed at the AU
• Provide UNICEF with more insight into issues affecting the local communities
• Etc…

3. Radio
The goal of the radio broadcast is to increase awareness, promote participation, and trigger
dialogue between youth around weekly topics introduced by Nexus.
Potential solutions include:
• Ability to leverage existing youth radio programs to playback responses to topics
introduced by Nexus
• Allow the listeners to rate/vote for their favorite responses to a topic via SMS or IVR (i.e.
American Idol)
• Ability to take calls during the show to trigger dialogue and hear comments/responses
(Talk radio)
• Invite the youth with the most votes from the previous week for an one-on-one interview
• Allow listeners to vote for a topic for discussion on Nexus at end of show
• Play the recordings from a campaign and have the listeners guess the topic
• Request a local/national/international celebrity to answer a question about a topic to facilitate conversation

4. Conversational round-trip
Description here.
• Hear your own voice broadcasted on a radio program
• Trigger one-on-one conversations at local level
• Influence youth to take action in their community
• ETC…