Roots of Success was recently selected, along with fellow Full Circle Fund grant partners One Economy and Niroga Institute, to have custom mobile apps developed during the upcoming AT&T Mobile App Hackathon for Social Good. The two-day Hackathon, happening later this month on October 26 & 27th, will give us an opportunity to present our challenges and ideas to a diverse and talented community of app developers, who will work through the night and next day designing innovations to support Roots of Success’ work! Over 65 developers have already signed up to help, and there is still room for rockstar developers interested in our work to join — visit the Eventbrite page for more information and to register.
Apps developed during the Hackathon will support our work preparing people with the knowledge and skills needed to accelerate the transition to a more equitable, healthy and sustainable society. We’ve proposed an app that would make it possible for students going through our course to access additional resources and continue engaging with course content long after they have completed the class; as well as a course companion app that could allow students to track their progress, access multimedia, practice vocabulary outside the classroom, apply what they learn in the course, and/or spark conversations with classmates, family, and community members. Roots of Success Instructors are encouraged to reach out to us with additional ideas for how a mobile app could be useful to them and their students — though it will ultimately be up to the teams participating in the Hackathon to decide what challenges they will respond to, and how.
Smartphones now make up 30% of the three billion mobile devices worldwide, and users spend over half the time on apps, but it is estimated that it costs at least $30,000 to design, implement and deploy a quality mobile app — far more than Roots of Success would have been able to invest in this increasingly important technology. We are very grateful for the generosity of AT&T, the Full Circle Fund, and all the volunteer developers who are making this Hackathon for Social Good possible; and we cant wait to see what kinds of mobile apps are developed during the event!