Invisible to visible

As a city planner, I observed many neighborhoods around the world were not designed disabled friendly. Tactile paving ending in a wall or the sea or sidewalk-crossings without ramps are striking examples. Wouldn’t it be nice for a disabled to quickly seek help from a willing community member? An application bringing together the volunteer and the disabled on the same platform is the solution. Imagine a blind person who can request help from a volunteer in close proximity on this platform. The volunteer knows the exact location of the one in need.  Once help is accepted, everybody will be notified. In a quick and seamless manner, the disabled will receive help from a trusted known community member. According to the World Bank, 110-190 million people suffer from significant disabilities. This application would create a network of true volunteers for the disabled to improve daily lives of those millions.

As a city planner, I observed that the numerous cities I visited or ran projects are not designed for the disabled. For examples, the neighborhoods and the infrastructure in general are not welcoming handicapped citizens to participate in the daily life outside of their houses or making this very challenging for them. Roads or pavements are not designed handicapped friendly. In countries like Turkey where these problems are common, handicap need to rely on the kindness or helpfulness of the society which relies on the chance of such friendly people being near the handicap in need. There is a need for better and efficient way of connecting the handicapped in need with the friendly citizens willing to help.

I am aiming to improve the lives of millions of handicapped citizens who are not always encouraged or enabled to actively travel in the cities with no help due to poorly designed neighborhoods and infrastructure. While the handicapped citizens will be directly benefiting from my project the volunteer community members now connected with my solution to the citizens in need,will achieve social satisfaction having actively participated in this community network. This solution indirectly meets the needs of socially aware and conscious willing to serve the society and most needy. 

We aim to use technology to connect handicapped people to the rest of the community through innovative community building on smart phone application. Our app solution will create a healthy environment for the handicapped citizens of the society and enable their normal participation in daily life in a safe and reliable manner. Moreover, our app solution will create a healthy environment for all citizens to help and care for each other and thereby enhance community building in general.

This app will eventually create a network of volunteers for the handicapped and the volunteers willing to make a change in their communities. On this platform when a handicapped user requests help from a volunteer, all the volunteer users in close proximity will be informed with their exact relative geographical position to the user requesting help.  Once help is accepted, everybody will be notified. In a quick and seamless manner, the handicapped will receive help from a trusted known community member. There will be also a review system of both handicapped and the volunteer to create reliability for the new users and the rest of the community. 

We are very positive of our proposed application which will bring more care, will build core values for all of the citizens of the cities and will provide equality for everybody on the physical space and in the social structure of the city. 

This innovative way of community building will provide visibility to the handicapped and the volunteers in their communities and cities. It will encourage people to trust each other and make a significant change in the world. 

There is no platform delivering help to the disabled in real time during their daily outings in our cities and neighborhoods. Our phone application solution will be a first eventually bringing the disabled and the community of volunteers together in a real time basis. Internet and technology became must have tools of our daily life. In some communities, while handicap people are not able to participate the daily life outside of their homes, technology would be an important tool, an instrumental enabler to encourage handicaps and facilitate them to be active citizens in the cities. My proposed application would also encourage the sensitive and social conscious citizens to be more active in volunteering for the handicaps in their communities. The app will eventually connect the visible to non-visible citizens of the cities. 

I am proposing a new phone application of an existing technology to develop a new platform for community building. The application would be easily used on a smart phone. This application will provide service for all the handicaps including the blind by providing the special voice technology. The application will be connected to the GPS, thus the location of the persons in need and the volunteers so that help will be available and easily trackable on the application. 

In the countries like Turkey, people love to help each other, especially love to help handicaps. This relies on a pure coincidences. By chance people need to be each other and by even greater chance they need to recognize person in need.  For instance, if the needy is on the next street, the helper won't see the handicap and thus won't be able to provide help. But through our application, both parties, the handicap and the volunteer, will be notified about the need and the help. The information will be provided to both parties through GPS and voice technology and the helping volunteer will easily locate the handicapped in need. The help will be provided voluntarily and safely. Everybody on the app will be notified once the handicap gets the help.

According to the Turkey Disability Survey (TSI, 2002), 8,431,937 Turkish persons have disabilities; the disability population represents 12.29% of Turkey's entire population. Smart phone use generation is approximately half of the population in Turkey. Thus we estimate about 4 million people with disabilities should be able to benefit from our apposition solution. If we assume a similar number for the volunteers on this platform, approximately 8  million could be served eventually by our application solution. In the first year, our focus will be application development and deployment and thus at the launch we will be able to reach only a portion of our target community. In the subsequent years, we will work with local communities, municipalities and local governmental and non-profit organization to increase awareness and dissemination so that in five years our app is used by the great majority in our target population.

In the first year we need to develop application and in parallel start efforts to increase awareness among target communities, municipalities, local governments and non-profits. We need to generate a pre-launch demand for this application solution. By the second year the application should be launched and there should be increasing focus in strategies to increase its dissemination. In addition, real life user experience and feedback the application should be further refined and updated.

for the next year

funding to develop the application (financial, technical and legal)

funding my team (financial and legal)

for the next 5 years

funding the awareness project (cultural, financial and technical)

funding the project(legal)

having a good team

securing the funding

We are a team of two members on this project. I am a city planner and urban designer who has worked on projects in underserved neighborhoods of disfranchised citizens, including minorities, forced migrants and very poor. I will lead the concept development and implementation of the project through mobilization of communities and local organizations. My teammate is Ali Osman Selcuk who is a software engineer and computer scientist and will lead the technical development of the phone application and its dissemination online. 

I am very passionate about the development of the healthy environments which should be provided for all citizens of the communities. My teammate is an application developer and he too is a very sensitive person to the equality among all citizens. 

We will be connecting the City Halls, the non-profits and local communities to work on this project all together. I have done many projects in the past that involved similar stakeholders and required their convincing of participation and support. I am confident that we will be able to mobilize target communities and organizations with our application solution.

With the possible help I might get from the Solve’s team, will allow me to build a tech-based community where I will be able to improve my idea as an adaptable, innovative and easy to apply tool to the everyday life of the targeted community. 

By receiving a strategic mentorship from the Solvers, I will be able to make my solution available to the ones in need in the shortest and the most efficient fashion. 

By having support from the Solve team, which is one of the most reliable and prestigious platform, I will be able to access the media and conference exposure of introducing my application to the communities for the sake of a better future for all the citizens of the planet. 

As a recent graduate of one of the leadership and management programs at MIT Sloan, I came to appreciate the power and value having a well-connected network behind a successful project. Therefore, I am expecting that Solve will provide me the best access to mentors and advisors to guide me in my project. 

I would like to partner with the city halls, NGO’s, Media, schools and institutions and the community itself to create the awareness of invisibility of disabled in the community and to overcome this barrier all together by applying technology driven/based community building. 

My project idea is not suitable for applying the AI Innovations Prize. However, the technology I will be providing through this app must have an AI technology qualification in the second stage, as the entire World is going to integrate this improving technology to the everyday life. If the opportunity is given in future, I will innovate my technology, by providing an AI supported application to create a better service for its targeted communities. 

The disabled are the invisible in the communities like Turkey. They are not presented and the physical spaces are not designed for them, too. Through using my application, I will be mobilizing communities of volunteers as well as the disabled to come together and create a better community and environment for a better world. 

By creating and developing a digital platform through our advanced application, we will be using the most recent and reliable technology for our project to create an easily adaptable application.

With the help of this prize, our project will be one step closer to providing this app to every disabled citizen in the targeted areas. 

Although our project is not specifically designed for girls and women, we will be providing the innovative technology to improve the quality of life for everybody including the women and girls. We will make sure that we bring our technology to every girl and women in the targeted area, if the financial resources are available of course.