hope.eco

Hope.eco is a web platform that allows people to find a range of help services. It aggregates local help from businesses, community groups and other organisations.

Comment 2

The problem our project solves

The problem COVID-19 is the greatest threat to Europe that most of the public will experience. Its effects and our response will impact us all, but in different, disproportionate ways. It is challenging our economy in unforeseen ways and exposing imbalances in society. For many it will be an inconvenience, requiring them to change habits and working patterns. But for significant groups it will cause major disruption:

  • In the UK alone an estimated 9 million are out of work due to business closures, furlough or inability to work from home. By extension, business infrastructure, premises and supply chains are dormant. This problem of dormant businesses, workers and supply chains is the same for all nations across Europe.
  • In addition, tens of millions are self-isolating, with some needing to do this for a period of many months as they are over 70 or have health issues. This represents a threat to their livelihoods and wellbeing.

Vision Combining these problems is at the heart of the vision for Hope.eco – a talented population and business infrastructure with spare capacity serving a population with complex needs.

The solution we bring to the table

Solution Hope.eco is a mobile-first web platform that aggregates local community help, enabling businesses to step up to support their communities now and in the future. It also matches volunteers with those organisations that can deliver help to people in need.

Benefits Hope.eco both taps into the labour supply available through “under-utilised” and furloughed workers and enables local businesses to step up to support their local communities, utilising their infrastructure, staffing and supply chains. The platform enables local businesses and organisations to better serve their community in ways we hope will last far beyond the current crisis.

Hope.eco provides short and long-term benefits In the short-term, Hope.eco:

  • Taps into the community drive to support those in need. It addresses the psychological impact on furloughed workers, providing them with a purpose and enabling them to step up and to gain new skills and perspective.
  • Addresses the needs of the vulnerable. Unlike other schemes, Hope.eco does not second guess the needs of the vulnerable or offer generic solutions. It provides an opportunity for the vulnerable (or their more technically literate family members) to detail specific needs and have them addressed.
  • Allows businesses to cement their place in society. Increasingly businesses are seeking a purpose beyond profit. By offering their facilities and staff to support the COVID-19 crisis, Hope.eco allows these businesses to invoke a new spirit of community action.

In the long term, Hope.eco can be transformed to address other societal needs. It will be adapted to challenges such as climate change and to show how business can give back in small but incredibly meaningful ways.

Hope.eco is innovative.

  • It uses “Uberisation” for societal benefit. It provides a platform for businesses to list what help they can offer with minimal transaction costs.
  • It will be sustained beyond the end of the crisis by transforming into an environmental and social action platform.
  • The platform can be rolled out to multiple countries inside and outside of the EU, recognising that our response to COVID-19 is only as good as that of our weakest neighbour.

Hope.eco has a unique proposition. Our focus on engaging with business to unlock how they can benefit communities beyond their core service offering is a unique proposition. Our proposition helps both improve social cohesion and businesses’ ability to survive the COVID-19 crisis. Beyond COVID-19 it taps into the increasing importance businesses are putting on their “purpose beyond profit”.

Hope.eco was originally conceived as an environment platform but has been adapted to address COVID-19. Much design thinking has gone into the platform and a ‘minimum viable product’ built, with a full development plan now underway.

The solution is scalable with a robust technical architecture. We have built this in .NET on Microsoft Azure, which we have significant experience in. The solution can be scaled to very large numbers of users, and will be internationalised to support multiple languages and local usage requirements.

The route to market is clear. Steer73, the company behind Hope.eco, owns other software that is being leveraged to ensure Hope.eco reaches market by end May 2020. We will build distribution through partnerships held by Steer73 with large corporations and intend to expand to SMEs. We would benefit from support for outreach and engagement from the EUvsVirus team.

What you have done during the weekend

We are well underway to release a fully functional platform by June. This weekend…

  1. We have improved on an MVP that is live at https://hope.eco.
  2. We designed a prototype for how organisations will use this platform, which is what we will build in May. This can be found at https://www.figma.com/proto/I5B99pvQVibqw9gNUqBa4Y/Hope.eco-portal?node-id=987%3A20797&viewport=-948%2C1216%2C0.5479862689971924&scaling=min-zoom
  3. We have developed a technical prototype for how volunteer matching will work, which is at https://hope-eco-hackathon.azurewebsites.net (This does not use the live data set, but data can be entered into this prototype via https://hope-eco-preview.azurewebsites.net/ )
  4. We have written our commercial proposition for how businesses can use hope.eco to engage with communities and other stakeholders, to help society during this crisis, and beyond.

The solution’s impact to the crisis

Areas of focus Hope.eco is solving very different problems to existing volunteer platforms, such as the UK’s NHS scheme. Existing platforms:

  • Match individuals with need but leave businesses and local organisations untapped.
  • Can leave areas unserved as they focus on solving a very particular problem.
  • Are expensive for government and councils to administer.
  • Are tailored to the current crisis but do not represent an opportunity to build a new social contract between businesses and communities that can be sustained.

Hope.eco will be available to help English speaking communities by end May 2020, and be internationalised following that. The project will have moved from the current live version, which is a “minimum viable product” (MVP) to a fully realised version 1 system capable of scaling across the UK and to English speaking countries by end May 2020. Following that we will be able to internationalise the platform for use across the EU.

Sustained relevance beyond COVID-19 Hope.eco will address this sustained opportunity, beyond COVID-19, through an ongoing focus on the climate crisis. With the UK hosting the climate conference COP26 this post-COVID opportunity will be immediate and important.

By the end of May Hope.eco will benefit three distinct groups:

  • Individuals will be able to volunteer locally, helping furloughed workers in particular, who can gain a greater sense of purpose from engaging with and helping their community
  • Businesses & other organisation will be able to list what community services they offer and address community needs
  • Those in need will be able to search for help locally

We will also engage with businesses that have furloughed workers. This will help drive volunteers to the platform, and help those businesses engage with furloughed staff and contribute to the community in a way they otherwise could not do.

Hope.eco will be live by end May with the following ongoing milestones:

  • Fully functional COVID-19 volunteer matchmaking platform by end May 2020
  • Platform available for international distribution by end Q3 2020
  • Platform available for addressing the climate crisis by end 2020, in time for COP26

Hope.eco will have significant and ongoing positive impact. As an established business, Steer73 is leveraging our proprietary technologies and our software development infrastructure to develop and scale up this platform in a short time frame. Our platform:

  • Will unlock unlimited resource from businesses, from furloughed workers and those willing to volunteer for both the immediate COVID-19 crisis and future needs.
  • Can be used internationally, recognising that our response to COVID-19 is only as good as our weakest neighbours.
  • Can be scaled up into an ongoing societal action platform to address the climate crisis ahead of COP26.

The necessities in order to continue the project

Hope.eco is designed and built by Steer73. Steer73 is a software development agency founded in 2014 and with 25 staff. Steer73 creates technology solutions for some of the world’s largest companies (such as DHL). We can build and launch this platform without external partners or funding. However, we have applied for a UK government grant to enable us to accelerate development to a pace beyond what we could fund as a business.

As a software agency Steer73’s team is uniquely positioned to develop this technology platform. Steer73 can build and maintain this entirely in house. The business has a very experienced senior team and has developed over 40 large scale, complex software products. We also have existing relationships with large companies that we can leverage to market Hope.eco.

Steer73’s homeworkers are unimpacted by COVID-19 and we already have a minimum viable product (MVP) deployed. The company has always been structured as a remote team of homeworkers. Therefore, the COVID-19 crisis has had no impact on our ability to develop and deploy technology solutions. Steer73 have a MVP live at https://hope.eco and would be able to scale this up rapidly by leveraging other proprietary technologies. Our business has a proven ability to develop and deploy complex software for large businesses and our timelines are underpinned by a detailed development plan.

The value of your solution(s) after the crisis

Hope.eco is designed for COVID-19 but delivers impact beyond. We will continue development of Hope.eco after the end of the COVID-19 crisis but shift its focus to the climate crisis. This will enable us to deliver significant positive outcomes by enabling communities to more effectively take action to reduce the impact of climate change and their own contribution to it. The UK’s hosting of COP26 also represents an important opportunity to make a positive societal impact through hope.eco.

Hope.eco is a long-term business for Steer73, beyond COVID-19. Steer73 is a profitable company and ongoing investment and development is planned for the platform. Hope.eco will remain free for use during the COVID-19 crisis and following that we will be developing the commercial model, which would be based on partnerships with larger corporates. As a technology platform Hope.eco is a natural extension of Steer73’s business and will form a key part of our long-term technology strategy.

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