URIDU is the founding organization of the Open Source for Equality initiative.
URIDU is a German NGO that is providing illiterate rural women with vital knowledge. URIDU has been developing and pioneering accessible audio learning in the global south since 2016. The organizations goal is to turn accessible audio learning into a global driving force for women’s empowerment and gender equality.
URIDU's core project is Audiopedia. Audiopedia is a global online project combining relevant and localized Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) audio contents with easily usable hard- and software. The web site Audiopedia.io was designed to provide access to open knowledge to both CBOs/NGOs and individuals. Audiopedia does also provide several technological solutions to make contents accessible to both literate and illiterate audiences. Solar powered audio players have been used to provide health education in several projects in East and Western Africa. Mobile web applications in combination with adhoc Wifi networks can stream Audiopedia contents without the need of any internet connection and independently from the electric grid.
Audiopedia.io is a mobile-friendly website providing expert health education and life skills for women using audio. CBOs/NGOs can benefit by using Audiopedia.io as part of their SBCC strategy, as it enables them to search, download, embed and share audio files. Approximately 5.000 audio clips with a total runtime of 150 hours are available in 12 languages.
Audiopedia.io was also optimized for search-engines, thus making contents easy to find. As a result, more than 100.000 women per month are directly accessing Audiopedia to answer pressing health questions. In order to make the contents as accessible as possible, Audiopedia comes with its own url shortener. CBOs/NGOs can upload their own audio content in order to provide it using short URLs or QR codes.
In the future, Audiopedia aims to further enhance accessibility to its SBCC contents using voice user interfaces and programmable voice calls. All software developments will be open sourced, contents are usable under a Creative Commons license.