Mahideb Jubo Somaj Kallayan Somity (MJSKS)

Established in 2009, Mahideb Jubo Somaj Kallayan Somity (MJSKS) is a non-profit located in Ulipur upazilla (sub district) under Kurigram district of northern Bangladesh.

Since June, 2014, MJSKS has been implementing a smart phone based Livestock Monitoring System (LMS) designed and developed by mPower Social Enterprises Ltd in three upazilas of Kurigram District.

LMS is a combination of a smart phone based mobile application linked to a web interface. The mobile application is in the local language Bengali while the web interface is in English.

Grassroots level livestock workers, who are usually entrepreneurs and commonly known as “Para-vets” use the smart phone application to deliver cattle health services to small holder cattle farmers living in remote rural areas. The livestock workers use the app to register farmers and their cattle upon which the system provides a unique ID for each farmer and the cattle. Successively, livestock workers make scheduled visits every month to each of the registered farmer’s households to capture the changes in health, production, rearing management of each cattle and take relevant photographs using smart phones. The data is then uploaded to the web interface through which expert veterinarians sitting in urban areas can view individual cattle profiles together with photographs. Based on the data, the vets deliver their feedback for betterment of animal health and production that livestock workers then implement in their areas of operations in remote rural areas.

The primary benefit of the system is that cattle farmers even in remote rural locations can quickly get veterinarian services from experts at very affordable costs and without having to travel to distant urban areas to get such services. The livestock workers on the other hand earn anything from $24 to $75 additional monthly income by using the mobile app.

So far, the system has benefited 2635 farmers.