Strong Connections
Stories of Resilience from the Far Reaches of the Mobile Phone Revolution
by Rosa Wang
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Pub Date Feb 01 2022 | Archive Date Mar 15 2022
Greenleaf Book Group | River Grove Books
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Description
Rosa Wang’s remarkable book takes readers to the last frontier of the mobile/digital revolution. While much has been written about breakthrough technologies and early adopters who live where roads are good and smart phones are affordable, this book explores the largely undocumented journey of how digital technologies are entering the lives of those in extreme poverty—people, often women, often illiterate—who live without electricity or running water.
With powerful stories, Wang brings you to the front lines of the revolution—to join meetings with small-holder farmers in raucous town halls in remote parts of Tanzania, and to sit on dirt floors alongside non-literate women in rural India. The book chronicles the exponential trajectory of the mobile phone through the arc of the author’s own journey, an Asian-American woman from Mississippi navigating male-dominated environments and cultures, while changing the digital world without a background in technology. Readers will learn of the challenges that come with life on less than two dollars a day, and in that world, the transformative power of digital technologies: to give identity, improve finances, and to bring some degree of empowerment.
Along the way, the author introduces memorable individuals and guides them on their journey across the digital divide to join the mobile generation. These people, poor in monetary resources and literacy, are rich in social connections, warmth, and wisdom. Their day-to-day lives seem implausibly hard, and their resilience humbles at every turn. This book is about them. At its heart, this is their story.
Advance Praise
“This is one of those rare books that takes you on a journey you didn’t know you needed to take—and leaves you richer for it. With her gentle, unassuming style, Rosa Wang brings us with her as she walks alongside poor women (mostly) in Asia and Africa whose lives are being transformed by a small chunk of plastic and metal that so many of us take for granted. As we explore together, Rosa shares glimpses of ordinary women whose access to hope and a way out of poverty is grounded in the mobile phone revolution—and how their gender often slows that access. Never voyeuristic, she weaves these tales with glimpses of her own journey from high-flying financier to NGO advocate for digital finance, bringing the most practical solutions and building connections that are transforming our worlds.”
—Robin Gorna, Writer, Activist and Founder, Women4Global Fund
“We all own mobile phones and know extreme poverty is real, but phones and poverty seem to belong to different universes. Wang takes us to meet those in extreme poverty, often illiterate, often without electricity or running water, and predominantly women, whose lives are being changed by their mobile phones (apparently more common in India than toothbrushes). It is an illuminating and often heartening journey.”
—Professor Eldar Shafir, Co-author of Scarcity
“Mobile/cell-phone technology has an unparalleled capacity for bringing the nearly one billion unbanked women into the formal financial system. Rosa Wang has been on the frontlines of ensuring that low-income women gain equal access to this life-changing technology and, with it, the full range of digital financial services. In her book Strong Connections, she tells the inspiring stories of the women who are working to guarantee equality of opportunity for women—as a path out of poverty and toward empowerment.”
—Mary Ellen Iskenderian, CEO, Women’s World Banking
“An engaging and inspiring journey through history, technology, and social progress from the frontlines of one of the most positive innovations (largely) improving life for many of the poorest people on our planet.”
—Matthew Bishop, Author of Philanthrocapitalism and Former Business Editor, The Economist
“In Strong Connections, Rosa Wang provides endearing, enlightening, and profound dispatches from the front lines of the mobile phone revolution. It is an eye-opening journey of opportunity and wonder.”
—Roger Thurow, Author of Enough and The First 1000 Days
“Often when we talk about increasing financial inclusion through the use of technology, we talk about the technology itself or the potential impact on economic growth. Told from the viewpoint of one of the veterans in this field, Strong Connections provides real-world stories from people the author has met through her work in the field of what it actually means to be financially excluded, and how technology-based financial products and services can change the lives of people—especially women—who live without access to reliable electricity, water and sanitation, and education.”
—Charu Adesnik, Executive Director, Cisco Foundation
Marketing Plan
Targeted press release distribution and podcast outreach
Large scale book seeding via Goodreads
Online marketing campaign including targeted and trade advertising
Targeted press release distribution and podcast outreach
Large scale book seeding via Goodreads
Online marketing campaign including targeted and trade advertising
Available Editions
| ISBN | 9781632994820 |
| PRICE | $17.95 (USD) |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
sara a, Reviewer
First off, this is an important book! It's an eye opener on how mobile phones are empowering women to do business, bank their money, and open their worlds to possibilities. That alone would be enough of a reason to read this book, but Rosa Wang has also done a wonderful job with storytelling--both her own and others. That makes this book very readable. I imagine some prospective readers might be worried that this book would have too many statistics and be rather dry. But, I assure you it is not. Wang describes each location, gives us a visual with a simple map, and does not neglect to tell us the culture of each location and how that impacts her work. I think that those of us living in the western world would be smart to read this book to see the power of a mobile phone... and then imagine what else could be accomplished.
