Summer Crowdbacker
June 2017
Last summer we teamed up with Year Here for our bi-annual Crowdbacker, funding the latest ventures from Year Here's cohort. Ahead of this summer's Crowdbacker event, we're pleased to bring you the impact reports from last year's ventures
Ally raised over £3100 to develop their work using a chatbot to provide essential information to vulnerable people in precarious housing situations
With the funding they raised, Ally was able to hire a member of staff and deliver two pilot programmes, supporting around 300 people
They worked with vulnerable people on an estate in Stamford Hill. They helped 8 people move into employment and 15 people applied for Universal Credit using key advice provided by the Ally chatbot
A Good Life raised over £3000 to work with frontline workers and the people they support, to identify what a good life is and to take steps towards realising it
A Good Life worked with three clients in the homelessness sector on the learning and development offer to their staff, focusing on use of personal budgets and asset-based working
These workshops involved 30 people and identified some challenges for A Good Life, such as smaller service providers not having the budget to pay for the product. This caused A Good Life to pause and is currently evolving to focus on the challenging relationship many homelessness service users have with money, using digital app banking
Migrateful raised over £3300 to support refugees and asylum-seekers struggling to access employment, the opportunity to teach their traditional cuisines, with the addition of English tuition and career support
They now run weekly training sessions for refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants. They start with an English conversation class, move on to take it in turns to teach a traditional cuisine and ending by sharing the meal, making connections and practising their English
When ready, the chefs are supported to deliver cookery classes across London to 6-8 paying participants
In the past 12 months, Migrateful has:
- Recruited 12 chefs who regularly delivering cookery classes across London
- Ran 100 classes to date, teaching 800 participants
Migrateful has positively impacted the chefs' employability and wellbeing, with 100% saying delivering classes has improved their confidence, and 86% saying their English has improved
Migrateful is continuing to grow: they now have 6 part-time staff and 90 volunteers. They operate throughout London and are exploring options for expansion into Kent
Career Accelerator raised over £2900 to help students in Years 10-12 in state schools and academies to learn about and prepare for a career in the digital technology economy
They ran a pilot programme at an academy in Elephant & Castle, working closely with 10 year 12 students over 4 months, as well as funding office space, business insurance and transport costs
Career Accelerator worked received positive feedback from the students, who were taken to workplaces such as LinkedIn and RBS. This has allowed the programme to scale up to more schools and businesses in the next academic year
As a result of Crowdbacker, Career Accelerator's founder made connection to two employer volunteers as well as a business adviser. He has also been accepted on to three accelerator programmes to scale Career Accelerator
InCommon raised over £3300 to support older people to live independently, focusing on building capacity, social capital and confidence
They ran two pilot sessions, consisting of 12 group session in Brighton and Stratford, reaching 85 older people. The sessions included intergenerational letter writing and clinics on using smartphones and other technology
Attendance increased as the project continued, and some residents who had lived near each other for years met for the first time.
90% of participants felt that the sessions had a positive impact on them as individuals, and 100% wanted to see something similar in the future
InCommon worked with housing associations and local scheme coordinators to pass on learning from the project and feed into their understanding of how to develop strong, sustainable cultures in older people's communities. They also brought together groups who had historically been in conflict and helped to alleviate tension
Both founders now work full-time for InCommon and are developing a new project to improve the wellbeing of residents in sheltered housing through creative, intergenerational programmes
Appt raised over £3900 to build a text message platform that will allow GP surgeries to hit their targets around managing long term conditions more efficiently
The funding was used to build a prototype of the service and to run two pilots in east London. This automated the booking service for 400 patients who were eligible for appointments that managed long term conditions or screened for chronic diseases such as cervical cancer
This had a noticeable impact on reducing health inequality. The people who interacted with Appt's service were hard to reach because they faced language barriers or other difficulties with using the phone
As a result of Crowdbacker, Appt received free office space for 3 months and raised £17,000 through Investec's Beyond Business programme. They have since been able to hire a developer to build a scalable version of Appt's service
