Thank you to all founder community participants. We’re pleased to announce the top 20 winning action ideas and existing apps.

We’ve called the app Do Some Good – the website is now live and the app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store. Check it out and take a little time to do stuff that matters from your mobile.

The Top 10 Ideas

We’re pleased to announce the top 10 ideas from the community and two further actions that were developed with Orange’s charity partners, Samaritans and Groundwork, which you’ll also find on the app.  The ideas:

CyberMentors on the move by digitalvolunteering – Report Bullying

Forest Nation by pothe – Tag and take pictures of places that need trees

Free Your Bike by Sustrans – Survey on biking habits

Guerrilla Gardening by cool4bob – Report places that need regenerating

Hidden Science by Holly future Morph – Survey about science careers and submitting a question to inspire others

TAG MAP - I DO IDEAS by Stuart – Submit a video to change your community and be matched with funding

Multilingual Translators by Practical Action – Translate small pieces of text that will be used in “how to” guides to help people out of poverty

Love Outdoor Play by Play England & Mission Explore – Map places to play

photofoundation by Photofoundation – Donate photos to create an image bank for charities

Sustainable places to eat by Sustainable Restaurant Association – Review the sustainability of restaurants

*Wellbeing Survey by Samaritans – Survey on wellbeing

*Urban Oasis by Groundwork UK – Share your urban oasis with others

The Top 10 Apps

Thanks to all who shared the other types of apps that already exist which help people do good stuff for society and the environment. Here are the top 10

St. John Ambulance First Aid App by Daniel Borchert – shows the latest first aid advice and protocols for dealing with emergency situations. It is simple to follow with illustrated guides and voiced instructions.

River Cottage Landshare – brings together people who have a passion for home-grown food. It’s connects people who want to grow veg but don’t have anywhere to do it with those that have a spare bit of land they’re prepared to share.

iBreastCheck by Daniel Borchert – helps women be breast aware through a video demonstrating how women can check their breasts, providing the ability to set your own reminders for a breast check, and a risk report to assess how your lifestyle could affect your risk of getting breast cancer.

Mappiness by George – collects information about your happiness and monitors this in relation to who you’re with, where you are and what you’re doing. It is part of a project run by the London School of Economics and they will use the information collected to find out how people’s happiness is affected by their local environment.

Cofacio The Help Engine by sim stewart – makes it simple for people to help each other, share ideas and offer advice on a range of subjects such as cooking, charity actions, places to visit and things to buy. What’s more, by using the help engine and being thanked users earn goodwill points which are then turned into funds for charity projects by our corporate partners.

Love Clean Streets by Jogesh Limbani – allows you to report problems such as graffiti vandalism, fly-tipping, damaged pavements etc to your Local Authority. The app brings citizens and local authority workers together to improve local environmental quality.

Mission: Explore by MissionExplore – is a unique way for kids, families, tourists and locals to explore London. There are missions for specific locations, and others that can be done anywhere in the world. The app will help you discover the hidden geographies that surround you.

AiCandle by dreampj – can be used to take part in Amnesty International’s campaigns and petitions. You can also make a difference by sharing the AiCandle and actions with friends, colleagues and fellow activists.

Good guide by Daniel Borchert – helps you find safe, healthy, and sustainable products while you shop. You can browse, search or simply scan a barcode to see detailed ratings for health, environment and social responsibility for more than 70,000 products and companies.

Rideshare – lets you search Europe’s largest carpooling platform for lifts, and easily find passengers to share your journeys with. With 1.5 million registered users and over 400.000 lifts in its database at any one time, rideshare.co.uk is Europe’s largest carpooling platform.

So what’s coming next? The launch! We’re in the final stages of developing and testing the app and are excited about the full-scale launch to get people doing good on their mobiles. We’re kicking off in March with a program of continuously expanding mobile actions with more charity partners and more ways to do good.

As we’re cracking on with the final stages we’re not setting up a new challenge. Instead, we’d like to invite you to be part of the launch and hope that you will join us in spreading the word about doing good on the go.

You, the founders of this community, have been vital to get this movement underway. We’ll keep you posted on the next steps and would like to thank you again as we couldn’t have done it without your contributions!

So what’s next? The judges will get together soon to look at all the other apps and make a long list of those we would like to get behind. We’re looking for a total of 10 apps to feature to Orange customers and will take all of your comments and votes into consideration.  We will be in contact with each of the winning app owners individually to discuss the next phase.

We are delighted with the way mobilevolunteering.co.uk has developed since the August launch.  We hope you have enjoyed participating.  Achieving an active community of nearly 1500 members has topped all our expectations.

In fact you have achieved so much together that we would like to extend the Founder Community with a new call topic as we develop Orange Mobile Volunteering into a sustainable initiative.  The remainder of the year will enable us to develop the community with your expertise and input and enable you to retain your relationships with other community members and keep involved in the dynamic new mobile volunteering category.

Watch this space for the announcement of the new exciting challenge coming soon!

This is one of the most dynamic friendly and helpful communities we’re ever started so thank you so much for all your contributions!

So what’s next? The judges will get together shortly to look at all the other actions and make a long list of other exciting ideas we hope to take forward. We’re looking for 7 more popular and feasible actions so it could be you! Therefore please keep the conversations flowing as these will continue to be helpful to our judging panel.

You will know by the 8th October if you are a winner, as we will be in contact with each of the idea owners individually to discuss the next phase. This will involve a series of conversations and meetings so that the Orange team are able to build successful actions ready for the launch.

The fun doesn’t stop here of course. The competition for apps continues until 20th October and we’re sure that their owners would appreciate you switching your experience and judgement to that. There are some really strong contenders here – the top three as we write are The Help Engine, Mission:Explore and Help Amnesty International Petition

Here’s the latest word on what’s ahead for the apps and ideas underway here.

The Orange Mobile Volunteering app platform will be built from templates which allow specific functionalities – think view photos, listen to audio, view text and so on. These templates make mobile volunteering tools quick to develop and easy to learn.

Take a look at this presentation for a sense of how it will all work. Take advantage of this walk through as as inspiration on how to edit your submission to make it most appy in Orange eyes!

View the presentation (PDF)

Hello everyone, with just over a week to go before the ‘Ideas for mobile volunteering’ call closes, here are some tips that will really influence the voting and judging:

1. The best ideas will have support from a relevant charity or organisation to actually be responsible for them. Many of the submissions have this but there are still some highly rated ‘orphan ideas’…

2. Feasible to make. Naturally, mobile apps need to use the capabilities of a phone and be simple to use so this means actions should be restricted to this list, as presented at Jam 1:

View Photo (add comment, add location)
Listen to audio (add comment, add location)
View video (add comment, add location)
Complete Survey
Upload Photo (add comment, add location)
Upload Audio (add comment, add location)
Upload Video (add comment, add location)
Mark location on map (add comment)

3. Actions need to qualify as volunteering, where people are giving up bits of their time to help out, live on the phone.

If you’ve any questions, don’t forget there are two more jam sessions coming up soon – there are a few places left at each:

Jam 2: Prototypes and Partnerships. 16th September, HubCulture London 5.30-9pm
Jam 3: Technical Development. 21st September, Orange Labs London.

To attend either of these jam sessions please sign up at http://orangejams.eventbrite.com/ now.

spread the love

Things are really hotting up at mobile volunteering. So many ideas and apps have come in that it’s important (and fun!) to look beyond the top ranking ideas and spread the votes around. If you do this you may stumble on ideas that really appeal, or that are similar to yours. Try filtering the submissions using different options, especially ‘the latest’ to get the new ones.

Here are a couple of recent ideas that have caught my eye – why not check them out?

Accessibility Capture Application, Trustee Finder, Watch and Give and Kiva Micro Loans

twins

If you find you’ve submitted an idea which has much in common with someone else’s, great!  This indicates that you’re on to something good.  Why not consider joining forces (and votes) to make your app a reality?

orphans

There are lots of brilliant new ideas for mobile volunteering actions that lack a sponsor to run the app, collect the data and measure results.  If you have such an ‘orphan’ idea and you think that established organisations like Oxfam or Freecycle could benefit, please give them a ring.  Tell them Orange sent you!  If you do have an organisation behind your idea, it will be marked up in the judging as this makes it more likely to do good.  If/when yours is backed, tell us!

jam session,  Tuesday evening in London.

There are three jam sessions coming up in the next few weeks focussed around different objective as follows:

• Jam 1: Meet and Collaborate. 7th September, HubCulture London 5.30-9pm
• Jam 2: Prototypes and Partnerships. 16th September, HubCulture London 5.30-9pm
• Jam 3: Technical Development. 21st September, Orange Labs London.

To attend any of these jam sessions please sign up here now.

Hopefully, see you there!

David Simoes-Brown

Thanks to you all for your energy and enthusiasm on the site this week. Once again we’re been amazed by the quality of the ideas and contributions to date.

This is a big week with the launch meet-up of the Founder Community on Thursday from 5.30pm at 1 Alfred Place in London. We’ll be showcasing some of the best ideas to date and it’ll give you an opportunity to hear from Orange about their plans and aspirations for this movement. There are just a few spaces left so if you haven’t already done so, please register here using the password ‘mobilise’. Also you might be interested to see the new design on the site tomorrow in time for our launch event.

Thanks again for all your contributions and I look forward to seeing many of you for the launch on Thursday.

David and the Mobile Volunteering team

It’s great to see to you here on this site.  We’ve had interest from more than 200 to join in before even being launched so all bodes well for a really healthy and expert mix of developers, social entrepreneurs and NGOs. There are a few ‘lurkers’ such as me and Orange too!  We’re going for growth so please feel free to invite others you know and who you think might make a useful contribution.

So let’s get innovating.  On this site we will create everyday opportunities for social action, kick-starting a new movement we’re calling Mobile Volunteering.  Through an app on their mobile phone, people could for example volunteer to map and tag wildlife photos, make an audio map for the blind, or complete a charity’s survey. Imagine the potential of millions of people regularly contributing in this way.

As an incentive to upload some good ideas fast we intend to showcase the best initial ideas as the launch event on the 19th August in London.  You’ll receive an invitation to this in the next couple of days.  We’re capacity constrained to 100 so be sure to book early if you want to come.

We’re going to update this blog regularly so keep a lookout for news on events, inspiration and gossip!