Efforts to quantify the benefit of social program date back at least to Thomas Hobbes, but in the past 15 years there has been a

As Spring turns to Summer in California, our user-base continues to grow in Indonesia—and our organization continues to take shape as an independent nonprofit. Last month we had over 6,000 active monthly users, and we have reached over 30,000 unique users since our launch.

Atma Connect—a California-based technology organization focused on connecting and empowering people in the developing world—has won the 2016 Global Amplify Urban Resilience Challenge with their AtmaGo.com urban resilience app. The Amplify Urban Resilience Challenge is a partnership of The Rockefeller Foundation, USAID, the Swedish Development Agency (SIDA), the UK Development Agency (DFID), OpenIDEO, and IDEO.org.

Just a quick update today: AtmaGo has reached 20,000 users in Indonesia! Big thanks to all of our Indonesian staff for driving this forward—and to our new users for creating posts on everything from the recent terror attacks in Jakarta, to jobs, events and so much more.

Since our last update in June, AtmaGo has reached over 10,000 users! Our users and staff in Indonesia deserve a big round of applause.

Along with expanding to new cities in Indonesia and improving our web-based software, we are very happy to report that the Cisco Foundation has pledged to help us develop an Android application next year.

In early April, we rolled out a new version of AtmaGo that adds user profiles, improves the navigation and updates the user interface. And since then, activity has been strong! We now have nearly 3,000 active users who are connecting with their neighbors to share vital information. People are using AtmaGo to find water and supplies, post about education and jobs, and report problems from fires and floods, to traffic and crime.

Just a few weeks ago, Meena and Nick were in Jakarta, Indonesia to meet with Atma Connect’s Indonesian staff, talk with users and launch the new version of AtmaGo. Pictured above is a group of key users who came out to tell us what they love about AtmaGo—and how we can improve.

“To the citizens and residents of Bukit Duri, do not give up in the face of floods! When the floods come, unplug all cable, save important documents and jewelry, and make your family and yourself secure” — AtmaGo User Comments from February, 2015.

On February 10, the Wall Street Journal reported that heavy rains had inundated the capital city of Indonesia.

Over the past three months, we have been engaged in an intense process of learning from the field—and we have learned a lot! Working with our new Indonesia Field Director, Alfan Rodhi, we have carried out nearly 100 user interviews and tested an early version of the AtmaGo application in several neighborhoods in Jakarta.

As anyone who has turned on a TV or opened a newspaper knows, the world has been suffering a spate of conflicts and challenges of late. So it was a nice change of pace to hear Fareed Zakaria hold up progress in India, reforms in Mexico and the recent election in Indonesia as global “success stories.”

A tanker truck lumbers into a neighborhood, and people rush to the truck carrying containers of all sizes and colors. A man on a motorbike with a bubble top container in tow winds down narrow alleys in an urban slum. A woman brings over buckets to fill water from a neighbor who has piped water provided by the city. Children carry water containers home from the neighboring community.

I had this realization while working in India in 2010 on a study of climate change and water in cities. My team worked in 5 neighborhoods in a city in the center of India to develop strategies to help cities become more resilient to climate change impacts such as water scarcity and flooding. While documenting the prices people were paying for water from the formal (water utilities) and informal (water market) sectors, I realized that the poorest people were paying far more for water than their wealthier neighbors who were connected to the municipal piped system.

Water is life — and access to it at a fair price is key for health and economic success. But hundreds of millions of people around the globe suffer from water scarcity. A large proportion of people in developing nations live without consistent indoor water service — or are forced to buy drinking water from private vendors. These informal water markets serve millions of people in major cities in nations such as Indonesia, Brazil, India and South Africa. But due to a lack of price information and the inability of customers to communicate their feedback, many of the water vendors can overcharge — with prices reaching 20 to 30 times what other customers may pay