SeeClickFix is a free mobile phone and web tool that allows citizens to report and document non-emergency issues to communicate them to those accountable for the public space. Issues that are reported through the website are recorded on a map for everyone to see and interact with. Anyone can receive email alerts on the issues based on a filter by geographical area and keyword.
SeeClickFix is a free mobile phone and web tool that allows citizens to report and document non-emergency issues to communicate them to those accountable for the public space. Issues that are reported are recorded on a map on the web for everyone to see and interact with. Anyone can receive email alerts on the issues based on a filter by geographical area and keyword.
Take a government run 3-1-1 system, put it on the web and democratize it. Put the issues on the map and allow the community to manage it like Wikipedia. Now you have a sense of what SeeClickFix can do.
An Example Story
For example, walking around her neighborhood, Alice sees some graffiti. Pulling her iPhone from her pocket, she snaps a photo of the graffiti and in a few flicks of her finger uploads the photo and an issue report to SeeClickFix. Her location is automatically passed from her iPhone into SeeClickFix via the iPhone app. Immediately, SeeClickFix notifites interested parties including the Block Watch, the local merchant association, the local City Council person and the City's Public Works Department. Interested neighors can vote to push the issue to the top of the agenda and people can collaborate to decide who will take responsiblity for fixing the issue. In this case, the merchant association rep Bob acknowledges the issue via his Blackberry's mobile web features and assigns the issue to his foreman Chuck. All the interested parties see that Bob is on top of things. And they get a warm fuzzy feeling seeing the merchant association's logo. Once resolved, Chuck updates the issue via his Blackberry and everyone (including Alice) is alerted that the issue is resolved.
Why It Matters
In a world where too many people ignore too many problems or feel powerless to address them, it is important to have concrete tools to turn complaints into action. SeeClickFix allows citizens to act to make their neighborhoods better. And it's not limited to grafiti. SeeClickFix can be used to report and solve any problem in the public space from roadway design to crime to potholes.
SeeClickFix improves the way we live our daily lives. Specifically we:
Turn Residents into Citizens by creating easy ways for residents to collaborate to identify and resolve local issues,
Motivate Governments through transparency and specificity to solve problems,
Provide Accountability for many to documents their personal efforts to improve things, and
Create New Volunteer Opportunities for residents and non-residents who want to help their andother communities.
Impact So Far - It's Working!
SeeClickFix has been used in over 14 states across the U.S. over 4,000 times to report issues and ~20% of them have been resolved. SeeClickFix features can be found embedded in websites from major media properties like the New York Times hyperlocal sites, Boston Globe and Philly.com. We have been endorsed by New Haven's Mayor and a mayoral candidate in Pennsylvania.
In New Haven, CT, where SeeClickFix was founded, more than 1200 issues have been reported by 800 different people since March. Additionally local government, state government, public and private utilities, non-profits, business improvement districts, community groups and active citizens are all using SeeClickFix to receive alerts, respond to issues and demonstrate accountability to their constituents and areas of responsibility.
Mobile Features
SeeClickFix has a mobile web version of the website in beta that has been tested on Blackberries and iPhones. We would like to add the following mobile features:
Video
See and hear our pitch: For a 90-second video description of the project see our blog.
Your Support Matters
SeeClickFix is a nights and weekends project for the 4 founders who are striving to take the project to the next level. We appreciate your help. We look forward to your support to allows us to:
Build More Mobile Features - we'd like to complete an iPhone application for example. Currently we have an optimized mobile version of the site.
Continue Community Outreach. With more time to focus on our SideClick community ambassador program, we could spread more quickly.
Additional Partnerships. We're looking to expand our distribution channels with other media website.
The Haiti Health Coalition will provide opportunities to communicate and collaborate between organizations that provide health care. We will sponsor conferences, establish a web site directory of 1.000 organizations, and initiate a referral network for children with cleft lip and palate, club feet, and burns.
In Haiti, the needs are great and the resources are few. In 2000, The Haiti Connection organized to build coalitions; offer opportunities for collaborative educational, medical, and spiritual projects; and to provide information about the resources available to non-profits and NGOs. Our web site is one of the largest directories of resources for groups who work in Haiti. Each month we answer hundreds of e-mail requests for referrals, some for ill or injured children. Associates realized health care organizations often did not know what services each provided or where. There was no directory of the groups. Some services were duplicated while many areas had little health care.
There was/is a need for increased communication. In the past year, directors of the Association Medicale Haitienne, Catholic Medical Mission Board, Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, World Relief, International Child Care, Management Sciences for Health , The Haiti Connection, and other groups, priortized needs, provided ideas for solutions, and offered advice on how to initiate the solutions.
The Connection will establish a Haiti Health Coalition web site directory of over 1,000 health care organizations, cross referenced for the name, their specialty, and location where they work in Haiti. The Connection will add hundreds of additional resporces to its web site, that will be linked to the Health Coalition site. The resources will include educational materials for clinications and patients, best practices to establish clinics and build hospitals, and contacts to get medical supplies and equiptment. We will establish a referral network for children with burns, club feet, cleft lips and palates. Medical specialists will provide opportunites to use their expertise and to "show one, do one, teach one".
The Haiti Connection is the primary contact for the Haiti Health Coalition's 10-15 member advisory group that will communicate via e-mail to exchange ideas. In January 2009, we will began a seris of meetings in Haiti to present each group's projects and plans. The meetings will generate additional ideas and plans. We will co-sponsor an annual conference to provide opportunities for continuing medical education, collaboration on projects, and short courses on administration and program plans.
The impression most New Orleanians have of Central City is that of a war zone inhabited by degenerates looking to prey upon innocent victims and each other. I-Witness Central City is a storymapping project that aids residents in reclaiming their history and their neighborhood through personal stories accessible online and via a cell-phone walking tour.
I-Witness Central City grew out of an earlier oral history program known as the I-10 Witness Project (www.i10witness.org). I-10 Witness emerged immediately following Hurricane Katrina as a means of giving those affected the opportunity to record their experiences and give their perspectives a place in the larger conversation about what happened here and how to move forward.
The stories that make up I-Witness Central City are organized not by topic but rather by location. There are two ways for listeners to access these stories. They can find them via video markers on a Google map or they can walk around Central City and look for our signs indicating that a story happened where they’re standing. A person can call up the number and hear the storyteller’s own voice setting the scene.
Some of the stories we’ve collected happened recently; some happened long ago. Kids growing up in Central City today might never know about the jazz funeral that the Free Southern Theatre held for itself in 1980 or who painted the murals of civil rights workers under the overpass. Others might hear a more personal tale of a resident finding love for the first time or a child confronting the neighborhood bully. Our project helps the neighborhood learn about itself and offers outsiders a whole new way of perceiving this much-maligned area of New Orleans.
The Community Living Connection (CLiC) addresses the need for accessible day program services for people living with brain injuries in rural areas. Through both web-based and person-to-person interaction, this high tech - high touch approach to improving independent functioning of survivors of brain injury focuses directly on building cognitive, social, and vocational skill sets that increase quality of life and facilitate greater participation in the home and community environments.
CLiC will address through computer and assistive technology, the challenges inherent in delivering comprehensive brain injury rehabilitation in a rural environment where geography and distance have traditionally limited access.
Our first step is a pilot program to provide computers, internet connection and program facilitation to allow group interaction with web conferencing ability.
Under the direction of the online facilitator, the program will provide structured rehabilitation services such as cognitive rehabilitation, social opportunities, structured goal setting, discussions, education, vocational skills, and to plan for meeting times for participation in community activities.
A full copy of our concept paper is available upon request to:
Bay Area repertory movie theaters are in trouble. (SF Chronicle, Audience Fading for Repertory Movie Theaters, Mick LaSalle, Monday, February 11, 2008). Programming that would have ensured a good turnout 20 years ago may not succeed in the era of NetFlix. Yet the true power of film is best appreciated onscreen and with other people.
There is an audience for repertory film that is not being reached. For the Art Deco Society of California website, I try to track films from the 1920s and '30s being shown in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our membership (700 paid; website/myspace/ecalendar unknown) will attend films of interest (and dress up for it!). It's hard to let our members know ahead of time because there is no single source for showing what's playing at independent theaters, let alone at film venues like the Mechanics Institute, Villa Montalvo, or the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.
My dream is to create an online data repository for repertory film showings in the San Francisco Bay Area. Each organization showing films would upload their data to a common site that would then feed out streams (RSS, etc.) that could be easily picked up by sites like Yahoo movies. Films would be categorized by decade, genre (silent, precode, noir). Individuals could easily bring up what's playing in their area, or set up alerts for their special interests. The ADSC website could subscribe to an RSS feed for 1920s, '30s, and '40s. Other organizations might have similar needs.
Our country is facing the Iraq War, the War on Terror, the Drug War, environmental policies, support for Africa, education, and health.
Our congressional representatives are supposed to represent our interest, but are under increasing pressure from lobbyist, corporations, and big money.
Govit is a website that is inspired to help balance the power, and get your voice heard on the issues.
Elders and the rapidly aging within the nation will receive the connection to resources and support that they need in a manner that enables them to Live Well independently within the community and supported by the community.
Live Well is a platform that will enable individuals and those who support them to meet their ongoing needs through a community network and that harnesses the potential of technology to integrate their support within the communities in which they live.
As care delivery is increasing pushed out of acute care facilities, as people are able to live longer with the assistance of chronic care treatments, and as the population ages, there is a need to improve access to social services for social services professionals, family/caregivers, and the individuals who need external support to Live Well in the community.
We aspire to promote people's independence and ability to live in the least restrictive environment possible. When adequate resources don't exist, people require "placement" into places where their needs can be met. A huge gap exists in the availability of place as well for people who do not require such restrictive measures, yet still need assistance to meet their daily needs. At this juncture, our country lacks the infrastructure capacity to "care" for people "in facilities," which necessitates developing means to support people who require assistance to Live Well in the community.
Live Well will provide a technology platform to fill the capacity gap in a democratized way while supporting our deepest aspirations for promoting liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness throughout all stages of life.
This is an area that is ripe to grow. There is a real need for harnessing technology to meet the needs of those already aged, most importantly for those entering into this group. While this is local in the sense of meeting needs peculiar to the way of western development, transience, and independence; we are exporting a trend of geographically mobile and displacement from traditional social structures into the developing world as the transaction cost of 'economic opportunity,' so development of this kind of platform will be universally applicable, it is already a problem in China.
This project, the catalyst for change:
Every year in the US, millions of federal and state dollars allocated to low-income people and our communities are left on the table. Earned Income Tax Credits, Food Stamps and Enterprise Zone hiring tax credits are but a few examples. There are a myriad of reasons why the accessibility of these benefits is challenging, but what remains clear is that improving the takeup of these resources would release real dollars flowing into the pockets of low-income famillies, businesses and communities.
To address this complex problem, we need to engage and compel stakeholders from Community Leaders to policy makers at a local and state-wide level, from District Supervisors and other local officials, to Community-Based Organizations, and the Philanthropic Community. The ability to demonstrate graphically and in real time the dollar amount, type of benefit, and the neighboorhoods most affected will allow a transparency and richness of information which we have not yet been able to create.
As the project continues, we also see scope to add to the map other elements of public concern which characterize low-income neighboorhoods, i.e. costly check-cashing sites and pay-day loans, and other examples of money seeping out for expensive services.
Who we are:
SF Works is a catalyst for workforce success. We develop big-picture, innovative and practical solutions that benefit workers and their employers, delivered through our business and community network. Our programs respond to both employees aspirations for self-sufficiency and advancement and employers' demands for return on investment. Our goal is to create a vibrant, motivated and self-sufficient workforce in San Francisco.
Connecting poor people and rich through a SMS network in order to supply labour to rich for various community development services like cleaning, road marking, painting, security guards, etc
The Project: SMS alert for community development activities
How: Open invitation for individuals, communities, clubs, companies to register at a particular number via SMS
Free cell will be handed to beggers, street side unemployed poor people in different city areas who will be representatives. They will be informed about any activity going on such as cleaning a particular area, lake, etc. which will be sponsosred by those who registered.
Benefit: This will benefit poor people from earning some money, at the same time supplies cheap labour to areas, while companines can carry out promotion by sponsoring such programs with cash and other promotional tools like T-Shirt, banners, etc
The community gets the benefit of a clean area or any other task they wish to carry out.
Other Info: This plan can actually lead to a national level clean city campaign twice a year or more which can eventually lead to various other small scale services added to the package, all for the sake of employing poor street side people, especially in countries like Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan, India, etc.
Domestic violence is one of the most common causes of physical and emotional injury to women in the US. Emotional, financial, and educational barriers are often too great to shift away from domestic violence leaving thousands of victims trapped. Help resources are fragmented across states and have failed to achieve scale to overturn social conventions as well as provide proper resources. The R.I.S.E. (Reaching Information: Supporting Empowerment) Network will have the power to change that. It is the most ambitious effort in the U.S. to aggregate the right resources and technology to help men and women transform their lives and to initiate the process of healing from domestic violence.
R.I.S.E. is a multi-tiered online and offline community that provides safety, education, and donor-driven resources for abused victims, while also providing essential behavior modification, education and empowerment for families to usher in a new cultural understanding in our most challenged areas such as isolated immigrant communities. Taking full advantage of Web 2.0 and combining safe and secure device technology, R.I.S.E. will address the subtleties of anonymity while providing victims access to each other, experts, and community resources. Ex: Jane wants to leave this week. She has five minutes to check where a shelter is located in another city. She goes online to www.beckysfund.org, answers two questions about her location, need for shelter, and prints out the results at her local library. Then she clicks on the exit button which logs her out, erases the site from the computer's history, and takes her to a shopping site just as her abusive husband walks in the front door.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
TechSoup, CompuMentor. 2009. Share our content.
