MicroForester: The Armenian Idea of Saving the Nature

What do you think of hearing \'\'microwork\'\' word? You may probably suppose it\'s definite small-scale work and you may get little amount of money for it. You are absolutely right if you think this way. And what can help people living in different locations do small elements of one common job? The answer is – a computer or mobile phone with internet connection.

Microwork which already is a recognized term and doesn’t need to be put in quotes is widely spread across the globe especially in low-income countries where people can be paid doing a certain job through their mobile phones.

Nokia and the World Bank\'s infoDev program have held m2Work international contest of micro-works this year. The contest was represented in Armenia by the Enterprise Incubator Foundation (EIF) which sent an invitation to 28-year-old Alexander Shakaryan to participate in the contest among others. As the latter states, he \'\'has a soft corner’’ for mobile technologies and has previously cooperated with the mLab mobile applications regional laboratory operating in the EIF.

939 ideas were submitted to the contest and one of them was Alexander Shakaryan’s MicroForester project which aims to increase timber lands in the world. As a result of the contest, Alexander’s idea was announced the best in the region (Eastern Europe, South Caucasus and Middle Asia) and second in the world.


The idea is called to increase timber lands along with creating jobs
design - Edgar Mktrchyan

“The idea is as follows: people plant trees in various corners of the world and send the photo made on a smartphone together with the coordinates defined by GPS locations system embedded in the device to the server and the one who planted the tree gets money for it. Then the server analyzes the weather conditions of the location and sends a message to the planter on how often he should water it. You can again make a photo of it while watering and get money for that as well”, said Alexander Shakaryan who presented his idea to the contest through this video:



According to Alexander Shakaryan, states, environmental foundations, responsible private companies as well as individuals who want to pay money for tree planting in various corners of the world are the employees within the framework of MicroForester.

Alexander is not a programmer. He graduated from the Tourism and Service Department of Armenian-Russian (Slavonic) University in 2008 where he was constantly interested in providing various services through technologies. “I even read “Master and Margarita” novel on the small screen of my mobile phone. When smartphones occurred my programmer friends started developing applications for smartphones and I began doing their promotion’’, Alexander says.


MicroForester app’s suggested interface
Hayk Falakyan

As a result of M2Work contest, besides getting USD 2000 and USD 4000 for the first place in the region and second in the world respectively Alexander will also get the support of the organizers and mLab to put MicroForester project into practice. “I am currently doing a research in Armenia to find out where it’s possible to implement the pilot project so as to create a model for its later application across the globe\'\', says the author of the idea.

Ruben Harutyunyan