A new report on mobility by Devex, in partnership with Toyota Mobility Foundation, titled “From the ground up: Local views on mobility and development,” surveyed over 1,200 global development professionals — both international and local staff based around the globe — and interviewed 48 practitioners on how improved mobility can lead to improved outcomes for a variety of development initiatives. Here are some ways the development community can make this happen.

Design solutions to meet everyone’s needs. For any mobility solution to be effective, it must meet the needs of the people it is intended to serve. For example, the Mann Deshi Foundation in India offers a “business school on wheels” that visits 72 remote villages a year to provide intensive training to women, many of whom dropped out of school and married early.

Tailor solutions to the terrain. Solutions need to adapt to local geography, weather, and on-the-ground conditions. In the Philippines, for example, the Yellow Boat of Hope program — under which local nongovernmental organizations distribute bicycles and boats — helps children in remote areas with no road access travel to school.

Embrace technology. Technology solutions — such as public transport or ride sharing websites and mobile applications, electric vehicles, and even telemedicine or online learning — attempt to help erode mobility barriers and the way the development community approaches them. For this reason, they must be embraced, with 39 percent of respondents to the Devex-TMF survey citing technology as a key factor driving forward mobility solutions.

Read the full article about mobility helping developing nations at Devex International Development.