The games were initially launched in India in 2005 and reached millions of mobile phone users in the country. The model has since been replicated in six African countries.
Freedom HIV/AIDS comprises of four mobile games targeting different mindsets and psychology of mobile users. The games are deployed on low-end black/white to sophisticated high-end colored devices. The project has been developed for different mobile technology platforms like Java/J2ME, C++/Brew, C++/Symbian and Macromedia Flashlite to cater to over 100 devices and handsets covering over majority of devices.
On World AIDS day - 1st December 2006, Freedom HIV/AIDS not only celebrated its first anniversary in fight against HIV/AIDS using mobile phone games but also added a new chapter - 'Africa Reach Program' with Hivos, a leading Dutch development organization, and KPN, the largest Dutch telecom company, under the "Star Programme". The six countries covered under the Star programme in Africa are Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya in Eastern Africa, and Malawi, Mozambique and Namibia in Southern Africa, the regions of high HIV/AIDS prevalence.
Social Impact : There have been effective download of 10.3 million game sessions in 15 months from its launch. As reported, more games have been downloaded in smaller cities and towns in India. The prime reason of this phenomenon is that these areas are media dark areas and have very less access to information. People here preferred to download free mobile games to know more about HIV/AIDS.
Social Impact : The games have been made available to over 6 million handsets in the Eastern African regions. There is more demand of the games in the local languages - Kiswahili and Shen.
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