How to count the ‘invisibles’

On a visit to a poor neighborhood, or favela, in Rio de Janeiro several years ago, Melanie Edwards asked how many people lived there. She heard estimates from 5,000 to 60,000. No one really knew.

They were “invisible,” just a small part of the 1 billion people around the world who are off the grid, lacking birth certificates, driver’s licenses, or voter registration cards. “They have nothing to show that they exist in the world,” Ms. Edwards says.

That information gap poses threats to both these people and everyone else. Without accurate data, governments and aid groups lack the ability to reach them effectively. At the same time, problems that might spread from these areas, such as epidemics, are likely to go undetected longer. Even businesses that would like to reach these people with helpful products and services are hampered by a dearth of knowledge about their specific needs.

Edwards, a former Peace Corps volunteer, has founded Mobile Metrix, a market research firm aimed at serving this “invisible” billion along with the rest of the 4 billion people – more than half of the world’s population – who subsist on less than $3,000 a year.

Mobile Metrix hires local youths to go into neighborhoods carrying PDAs, hand-held devices capable of storing and transmitting data as well as audio. Their work often paints a clearer picture of who lives there than government estimates or infrequent paper surveys that can be inaccurate or years out of date.

The PDAs allow information to be gathered more accurately and shared more quickly than with pencil and paper.

But the key Mobile Metrix innovation in early pilot programs in Brazil has been employing young people from the neighborhood, male and female, to conduct the surveys. These “mobile agents” must be recommended by a prominent community member, such as a church or nonprofit organization leader. They are trained in how to conduct a survey and how to use their PDA. A typical survey might ask 60 to 80 questions, such as “How many people live in the home?” and “What is their level of education?”

The mobile agents are 16 to 25 years old. “You see these youths transformed,” Edwards says. “That tends to be the age where they could be going into prostitution or the drug gangs, so we’re hoping this is an alternative to that. In several cases, we’ve had gang members come up and want to become involved.”

One applicant held up his hand during his job interview and showed that he’d lost two fingers, blown off by a hand grenade during a drug war. “He became one of our star mobile agents, and now he’s gotten into university, and he’s making three times the minimum wage in a high-tech job,” Edwards says.

Unlike in the United States, where people may sometimes be suspicious of visitors on their doorsteps, people in the favelas open up their homes to the mobile agents, often offering them food and drink, even “dressing up” for the interview, she says.

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