Civic Duty, Wellness @ College

Access to quality education is a global challenge that perpetuates cycles of poverty and inequality. According to UNESCO, more than 260 million children worldwide are out of school, many of whom live in impoverished areas. In the United States, the cost of college has been rising for decades, far outpacing inflation, making it increasingly difficult for many students to afford. This has resulted in many students taking on large amounts of debt to finance their education, impacting their financial stability and overall well-being.

California has one of the highest poverty rates in the country, making it particularly difficult for low-income families to afford college. Senate Bill 11, California State University (CSU), Mental Health Counseling highlights the mental health crisis affecting nearly 20 million college students annually. Suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students, claiming more than 1,100 lives each year in the US. One in four students has a diagnosable mental illness, and 40% of students do not seek mental health services when needed. Students of color may face even more acute challenges.

In California, there is a shortage of licensed mental health counselors, and the CSU system is woefully understaffed to address the needs of its campuses. As a result, wait times for students to secure appointments for mental health services can range from four to eight weeks on some CSU campuses.

College is a transformative place for students, but the newfound freedom often leads to emotional and social trauma, requiring students to develop the habit of advocating for themselves. Breaking down barriers to enter the workforce and bridge the growing wealth gap is increasingly difficult for first-generation college students, and students from low-income and marginalized or underserved communities.

Overall, the challenges in providing access to quality education, addressing the mental health crisis, and breaking down barriers to entering the workforce are significant, especially for students from low-income and marginalized communities.

Our solution, Civic Duty, is a mobile web application designed to help college students thrive by providing comprehensive support for their mental health and overall well-being. Our approach is based on understanding the unique needs of each student and leveraging the strength of community connections on campus.

To get started, our app provides a personal assessment that helps students set goals and track their daily habits. This information is used to create a personalized plan for each student, including mental health resources and wellness programs. To keep students motivated, we offer an interactive, gamified reward system that is sponsored by campus organizations. 

We launched our minimum viable product (MVP) in Quarter 4 of 2021, and we're excited to announce that our soft launch is starting this quarter. Our app is designed to be a freemium direct-to-consumer model, with premium options available. We also offer a business-to-business model, with colleges subscribing on behalf of their student populations.

Our multi-faceted approach includes informing college administrators for better decision-making on Key Performance Indicators, optimizing student engagement for campus programs and mental health counselors, and meeting legislative mandates such as SB11.

By reducing drop-out rates and increasing graduation rates through personalized support and promoting healthy habits, Civic Duty can ultimately help to reduce healthcare costs. With Civic Duty, we aim to provide a comprehensive solution to the challenges facing college students today and help them thrive both academically and personally.

Our latest version of the technology-based solution utilizes cutting-edge web development technologies, including React and Javascript. The solution is hosted on a secure AWS server for maximum reliability and data protection. The unique approach of Civic Duty is centered on the concept of the eight dimensions of wellness, which provides a holistic view of individual wellbeing. By assessing and measuring these dimensions, our platform can match students with the most suitable campus organizations, services, and programs to meet their personalized needs. This personalized approach ensures that students can achieve their goals and improve their overall wellbeing, leading to better academic performance and personal growth.

Our solution, Civic Duty, is designed to serve college students who may be struggling with their mental health and wellbeing. These students are underserved in a number of ways, including limited access to mental health resources, stigma around seeking help, and a lack of personalized support.

Through our solution, we aim to directly and meaningfully improve the lives of these students by providing them with a comprehensive, personalized approach to wellbeing. Our solution uses the eight dimensions of wellness to establish measures of individual wellbeing and match students with campus organizations, services, and programs that best fit their needs. This approach helps to break down barriers to access and reduce stigma by empowering students to take ownership of their own wellbeing.

By addressing the unique needs of college students, Civic Duty has the potential to make a significant impact on their lives. We hope to help students achieve their academic goals, build meaningful relationships, and develop lifelong habits of self-care and wellbeing. Ultimately, we believe that by investing in the mental health and wellbeing of college students, we can create a ripple effect of positive change that extends far beyond the college campus.

Civic Duty aims to make a meaningful impact on the lives of historically marginalized or underrepresented college students in California State University (CSU) campuses. Our target population includes nearly 500,000 enrolled students, among which half come from underrepresented communities, nearly half receive a federal Pell Grant, and almost one-third are first-generation college students.

Currently, these students face significant challenges in accessing and utilizing existing resources for their mental health, emotional well-being, and academic success. Furthermore, SB 11 highlights the need for campus-wide surveys and focus groups to understand these challenges and address them effectively.

Civic Duty's Wellness @ College platform aligns with SB 11's requirements by providing personalized measures of well-being and tailored recommendations for students. By partnering with existing campus organizations and conducting collaborative outreach, we aim to reach as many students as possible and empower them with the resources they need to thrive in their college careers. Our solution will enable students to access existing college resources more easily and help campus administrators better understand and address the needs of their student populations.

Our team is well-positioned to deliver this solution to the target population, thanks to our firsthand experiences and market research conducted to date. Our team of four California college student graduates, spanning across three decades, have faced emotional and social trauma while enrolled, which brings us together and helps us understand the needs of today's college students.

We have conducted campus surveys with CSU students and engaged community leaders to understand the needs of those we're serving, and we have incorporated the feedback into our design for a true market-product fit. Our business model focuses on a student-centric solution that is accessible for free through college enrollment verification.

Our founder, Stephen, has a robust background in entrepreneurship and sales, and he currently works as a Civil Engineer, managing the state of California's drinking water program with a passion for bringing alive the human right to water. Stephen also serves the community through volunteering, teaching yoga, and facilitating community events.

Our lead developer, Evarista, is a first-generation college student who resonated with Civic Duty's mission to empower students to develop the habit of asking for help. She joined the team after working on the Prototype as part of an eight-person team during her eight-year path to graduation.

Jocelyn, our subject matter expert, brings over 30 years of experience serving the greater Sacramento area through community outreach and counselor certification for others to serve as Grief Counselors. She graduated from UC Davis and is a leader in the Grief Recovery Institute.

Lexi, our lead marketing strategist, graduates from UC Davis this year and brings a history of successful social media management for students to find housing and connect on campus.

Our team's experiences and market research, along with the support of the SEA community, connect us to necessary college administrators and faculty to broker the agreements necessary to reach our goals. With the achievement of receiving Best Company Pitch and Business Plan with SEA, Civic Duty's Wellness @ College platform is positioned to receive the exposure supported by the academic institutions sponsoring SEA and the momentum built today, supported by legislative drivers.

In 2020, we started drafting the concept for our solution and conducted initial market research with friends and family, resulting in a wireframe. The following year, we partnered with a team of eight seniors from California State University's Computer Science Department developed a prototype as their senior project.

The prototype served as the basis for market research from 2022 into 2023, during which we refined our pitch three times and participated in three Sacramento-based accelerator programs, including 1 Million Cups Sacramento. In May 2023, our team won the Best Company Pitch and Business Plan at the Sacramento Entrepreneur Academy.

We are excited to announce that our web-based application is scheduled for release in Q2 of 2023. Initially, we will offer a freemium business model, available directly to students, with plans for expansion to a business-to-business model in the future.

The prototype is demonstrated here. To try it for yourself, please visit www.CivicDutyWellness.app.

Our prototype web application has attracted more than 50 users who have completed our onboarding wellness assessments and provided valuable feedback. While we encountered challenges with maintenance and growth due to a stubborn bug, we didn't let that stop us. We collaborated with a team in India to develop a new and improved web application, which has already garnered interest from over 100 users signed up for our Soft Launch later this quarter. We're excited to offer a platform with reliable maintenance support to better serve our community and achieve our goals.

Civic Duty is applying to MIT Solve for support in overcoming specific barriers that we face in reaching our goals for our web application. One of the main challenges we face is optimizing our software for monitoring and evaluation of college communities. We believe that with the right resources, we can successfully deliver existing college resources to students in need while simultaneously providing college administrators with a measure of success around community engagement.

As a social enterprise, we also face financial barriers to achieving our goals, specifically in reaching $1 million in revenue within 12 months of our soft launch. We believe that with aggressive marketing and strategic partnerships with campus organizations, we can broker agreements with colleges to pay for campus-wide access for enrolled students during the 2023-2024 academic year.

Additionally, we face legal barriers related to meeting the requirements of Senate Bill 11, California State University: Mental Health Counselors, which mandates campus-wide surveys of student populations by January 1st, 2025, and every three years after, with specific guidelines for data collection. However, we believe that our Wellness @ College platform can meet these requirements and help colleges evaluate campus well-being and efficacy in community engagement around existing services or programs.

Through MIT Solve, we hope to receive support and resources to help us overcome these specific barriers and achieve our goals for Civic Duty. We believe that Solve's expertise and network can help us optimize our software, develop strategic partnerships, and navigate legal requirements to successfully bring our platform to colleges and students in need.

At Civic Duty, we believe that our solution is innovative because it takes a student-centric approach to prioritizing mental health and wellness. We are not simply providing information or resources - we are creating a platform that empowers students to take charge of their own wellbeing. Our freemium model makes our platform accessible to all students, regardless of financial barriers. By incorporating a wellness survey that prompts users to take action based on their results, we are also providing personalized recommendations and resources that are tailored to each individual's unique needs.

 Our approach is significantly different from traditional campus mental health services, which are often understaffed, overburdened, and difficult to access. Our solution is designed to supplement and support these services, providing additional resources and support to students where they need it most.

We believe that our solution has the potential to catalyze broader positive impacts in the mental health space by setting a new standard for how colleges and universities prioritize student wellness. By making mental health and wellness a top priority and providing accessible, personalized resources, we hope to inspire other organizations to follow suit and prioritize the mental health of their own communities.

 Overall, we believe that our solution has the potential to change the market by shifting the focus to student empowerment and accessibility. We believe that the traditional approach to mental health on college campuses is outdated and in need of disruption, and we are confident that our innovative solution can lead the way forward.

At Civic Duty, our impact goals for the next year and the next five years align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. In the next year, we aim to onboard 10 college campuses to our platform, providing nearly 200,000 students with the tools and resources to improve their health and well-being, gain access to quality education, and reduce inequalities. Over the next five years, we aim to scale our impact, reaching 2,000,000 college students and expanding our services to promote sustainable cities and communities, advance peace, justice, and strong institutions, and foster partnerships for the goals.

To achieve these impact goals, we will continue to focus on our subscription-based model, offering a freemium platform that incentivizes students to engage with our wellness survey and provides access to personalized health and wellness resources. We will leverage our existing partnerships with CSU campuses and college organizations to expand our reach and build relationships with college administrators to broker service contracts to roll out our product campus-wide.

Additionally, we will seek partnerships with like-minded organizations and institutions to advance our mission and maximize our impact. We recognize that achieving our impact goals will require a collaborative effort and we are committed to working with partners across sectors to create a better future for all.

At Civic Duty, we take our impact goals seriously and are committed to tracking and measuring our progress toward achieving them. To do so, we are using a range of specific indicators that are aligned with our six impact goals.

For our Good Health and Well-being impact goal, we are tracking the number of students who report an improvement in their mental health and overall well-being as a result of using our platform.

For our Quality Education impact goal, we are tracking the number of students who report an increase in their academic performance, as well as the number of students who feel more engaged with their coursework due to our platform.

For our Reduced Inequalities impact goal, we are tracking the number of low-income and first-generation college students who are able to access our platform, as well as the number of students from underrepresented communities who feel more included and supported on their campuses due to our platform.

For our Sustainable Cities and Communities impact goal, we are tracking the number of students who report a reduction in their environmental impact through our platform, such as by using sustainable transportation options to get to campus.

For our Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions impact goal, we are tracking the number of students who report feeling more connected to their communities and who have participated in civic engagement activities through our platform.

Finally, for our Partnerships for the Goals impact goal, we are tracking the number of new partnerships we are able to form with colleges and universities, as well as the level of engagement and collaboration with existing partners.

By regularly collecting and analyzing data on these indicators, we are able to evaluate our progress and adjust our approach as needed to ensure we are effectively working towards our impact goals.

Our theory of change is based on the belief that by providing students with an accessible and user-friendly platform, we can help them achieve better academic outcomes, reduce healthcare costs, and ultimately improve their overall well-being. Our platform is designed to provide a range of tools and resources that help students stay organized, manage their time, and stay engaged with their coursework. By streamlining access to these resources, we believe we can help students build the skills they need to succeed academically and achieve their long-term goals.

We believe that partnering strategically with academic institutions will offer the best chances to pilot our product and conduct research to be validated as an evidence-based approach. Through this partnership, we will gain valuable insights into how our platform can be optimized to meet the unique needs of students and institutions, while generating data to support the long-term sustainability of our solution. Our immediate outputs include the number of students who sign up for our platform, the number of users who engage with our tools and resources, and the level of satisfaction reported by our users. In the longer-term, we aim to see improvements in academic performance, graduation rates, and reductions in healthcare costs and dropout rates. We plan to measure these outcomes through surveys and interviews with our users, as well as by analyzing data on academic performance and healthcare costs. Additionally, we will seek third-party research and evaluations to validate the effectiveness of our approach and refine our theory of change.

The core technology that powers our solution is a combination of AI and Machine Learning, Behavioral Technology, Big Data, Crowd Sourced Service, and Software. Our AI and machine learning algorithms allow us to personalize the user experience for each student and provide them with targeted resources and support. Our behavioral technology enables us to analyze user behavior and adapt our platform to better meet their needs. The use of Big Data allows us to track student progress and outcomes at scale, while our crowd sourced service enables us to leverage the collective knowledge and expertise of our user community. Finally, our software provides the technical infrastructure to support all of these components and deliver a seamless user experience.

In addition to our core technology, our methodology relies on the Importance and Performance Assessment (IPA) scale. This approach allows us to identify the most pressing needs and priorities of our user community and tailor our solution to better meet those needs. By combining cutting-edge technology with a data-driven methodology, we believe we can deliver a truly transformative solution that helps students achieve their academic and personal goals.

Incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity is one of the core values at Civic Duty. We recognize the importance of these values in our mission to empower college students to prioritize their mental health and wellness. To ensure that we are living up to our values, we have implemented a student-centered approach to all our work, where we place the needs and experiences of students at the forefront.

We also hold ourselves accountable to our values, regularly evaluating our progress towards our goals and making necessary adjustments. As a team, we strive to foster a culture of inclusivity, where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to share their ideas and perspectives.

In addition, we are always seeking new and innovative ways to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusivity into our products and services. This includes conducting market research with diverse groups, seeking out partnerships with community organizations, and engaging with students and other stakeholders to ensure that their needs and perspectives are represented in our work.

Lastly, we understand that creating a culture of inclusivity requires collaboration and ongoing effort. That's why we are committed to continuous learning and growth in this area, as we work towards our goal of making mental health and wellness accessible to all college students.

At Civic Duty, our key customers are college students seeking support and resources to prioritize their mental health and wellness. Our beneficiaries are the broader student community, as well as college organizations and staff who work to support student wellbeing.

We provide our customers with a freemium platform that offers a range of resources to support their mental health and wellness, including personalized assessments, self-care tools, and access to mental health professionals. We also offer a monthly subscription service that provides additional features and benefits, such as live support from mental health professionals.

We provide these products and services through our online platform, which is accessible to users on desktop and mobile devices. Our platform is designed to be user-friendly and accessible, with features like in-app messaging and personalized content recommendations.

Our customers want and need these products and services because they recognize the importance of prioritizing their mental health and wellness, but may face barriers to accessing traditional mental health services. Our platform provides a convenient and affordable solution that empowers students to take control of their mental health and wellness. Additionally, our platform provides college organizations and staff with an additional tool to support student wellbeing, and helps to reduce the burden on existing support systems.

At Civic Duty, we are committed to becoming financially sustainable by utilizing a combination of funding sources and revenue streams. Under the mentorship of Doug Younger, founder of 3Steps4ward and Twist of Fate podcast, we plan to launch four initial rounds of $50,000 Kickstarter campaigns this summer. Additionally, we are actively seeking investments totaling $200,000 through grants, loans, and investments to gain the traction necessary to reach colleges directly.

We are also open to a strategic partnership of $600,000, in which the investor would receive 5% equity and a 3-year payback period with a 20% return on investment. This would enable us to achieve our goal of generating $1 million in revenue within the first 12 months.

Our sustainable subscription model is based on a student-centric approach that prioritizes scalability and market share. By onboarding enrolled students at individual campuses, we aim to demonstrate the value of our product to college administrators and collaborate with them to broker service contracts that would allow us to roll out our platform campus-wide.

To date, Civic Duty has been entirely bootstrapped from our founder. Our company won it's first monetary gain through winning the Best Pitch and Business Plan through SEA earning the paid invitation to participate in the UC Davis Mike and Renee Chile Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship cohort in September 2023. 

Additionally, we have received a special invitation for Civic Duty to participate in Five Star Bank's funders and founders program connecting Sacramento based startups with a network of investors. 

Moreover, we are interested in exploring grant opportunities available to Campus Organizations like the one at CSUS through it's Enterprise service.