Aricent’s frog design today announced a collaboration with UNICEF as the organization’s lead design and innovation partner on Project Mwana, a major mHealth initiative to improve maternal and infant health and welfare in peri-urban Malawi and rural Zambia. The immediate goal of the project is to leverage mobile technologies in innovative ways to significantly increase mothers’ visits to clinics for ante and postnatal care by January 2012.

frog will donate its services pro-bono to develop appropriate and sustainable mobile systems that will be able to communicate critical information on clinic locations, availability of services, delivery of results, the importance of visiting clinics and more, to the people who need this information most.

“UNICEF and frog share a common vision for the powerful role that mobile technologies can play in creating efficiencies around delivering life-saving health services for mothers and their children,” said Erica Kochi, communication specialist with UNICEF. “We are proud to partner with frog and believe our collaboration can have an immediate and meaningful impact on improving maternal and newborn health.”

Supporting this partnership, frog together with its parent company Aricent, also announced the launch of “Mobile Mandate,” a multi-year investment to tap into the power of mobile technology for social innovation projects in areas such as health, education, energy, and economic well-being. Bringing together deep experience in mobile innovation and design for social good, Mobile Mandate will enable frog and Aricent to connect Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), designers, technology companies, and social entrepreneurs in the field, building scalable collaboration models that create high-impact solutions together with network operators, device manufacturers, and application developers.

“Social impact is ingrained in our DNA, and the desire to improve the world by humanizing technology has been one of the consistent drivers of frog’s success over the past four decades,” said Doreen Lorenzo, president of frog design and executive vice president and general manager of Aricent. “Mobile Mandate reinforces our commitment to social innovation and underscores our belief in the ability of mobile technology and thoughtful design to tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges.”