How can we promote better life through volunteerism?
A 5-step end-to-end platform that utilizes volunteerism to help communities rebuild and transform beyond the disaster relief stage.
Project Type: Social Innovation | Date: January - May, 2021 | Team Institute of Design, IIT | My Role Concept development, UX design
Challenge
This is a 14-week-long project sponsored by JustServe. As North America's leading volunteering platform, JustServe continues to expand the boundaries of volunteering. We worked on generating innovative, efficient, and valuable ways to use volunteering to address social issues.
We landed on community revitalization. A characteristic of disaster relief efforts is a sense of urgency to stop the bleeding. BUT what happens after?
Rebuilding a community takes a systematic effort over a long period of time. We hope to empower community revitalization through a self-sustaining volunteer system.
Just as JustServe's vision indicates: We " heal" our communities by serving them.
How can volunteerism stay in aging, deactivated, and post-disaster communities and help residents rebuild their homes systematically?
Solution
After primary research and rounds of concept iteration, we created a 5-step end-to-end platform to help communities rebuild and transform beyond the disaster relief stage.
What we do?
01 Community vision creation
Use generative design + agile methods to crowdsource and define community visions.
02 Partnership and investment
Create conditions for community-led transformation.
03 Project and volunteer management
Activate space quickly through modular and adaptable environments to support needs.
Service Overview
Three principles:
Critical for the work to be effective and impactful
Five steps:
Systematically engage people and resources
One network:
Potential stakeholders that work to reflect and realize the needs of the residents
“Ownership is the foundation of community. Full stop.”
APP Experience
- Collect needs from the community
- Make plans for actionable projects
- Initialize and open public channels for funding
- Get involved and track project progress
- Record contributions and gain certificates
Feedback from clients
“I think you guys have really done a great job creating a front door to unaffiliated volunteers and really looking at it from a local solution. That's a very complex and real problem.”
------ Heath Bradley, JustServe Global Manager
"The idea of trying to create a volunteer system that stays, that leverages collective goals is an unbelievable insight for making innovations and interventions around the community and its needs. "
----- Larry Keeley, President & Co-founder at Doblin Group
Check out the full report here