Apps for Good
www.nesta.org.uk/feature/8-social-innovations-making-it-big/apps-for-good/
Ambitious targets are only good for growth if you know what is achievable.
Apps for Good’s five-module course takes young people aged 10-18 through a process of building mobile, web or social apps to address issues that they care about.
Apps for Good’s central team co-ordinate and drive the spread of the model, while courses are delivered locally by ‘education partners’ – schools and other learning centres.
Teachers can use the course content free of change and can access support and training from Apps for Good’s expert volunteers and ‘Ninja Education Partners’ – other learning centres acting as champions for the programme. The organisation’s funding comes from trusts, foundations and corporates, who can sponsor schools or categories in the Apps for Good Awards.
“Innovate to the point that it scares you, but not to the point where it fails and you don’t know why. You need to be able to intervene if things go wrong.”
Debbie Forster, Managing Director, Apps for Good
After a pilot phase, Apps for Good launched in 2011 in 38 schools. Three years on and it’s running in over 200, with ambitions to double in size year-on-year over the next three years.
Apps for Good’s strategy is to take risks – but only up to the point where it’s still possible to tell what’s gone wrong. This means not changing too many things at once.
For this reason, Apps for Good has revised its 2014-15 growth target down from 700 to 400 schools – a challenging target, but one that Managing Director Debbie Forster describes as “crazy, but not insane!”
