OneStepAtATime

There are a lot of men and women willing to help others by boosting their confidence, provide tips, life-experiences and/or limited financial aids. There are also a lot of women who want a simple nudge. We build an app that bridges these two types of people using efficient matching strategies.

THE SOLUTION is based on the premise that an obstacle faced by one has already been crossed by another person. Let's call the former 'blockers' and the latter 'solvers'. An online app that matches a blocker with the right set of solvers for the blocker to choose from gives them a good jumpstart. Blockers will be provided solutions to interim troubles and not spoon-fed entire solutions to their life problems. Thus, they will be moving towards gender-neutrality one step at a time.

Examples of problems which can be addressed range from physical abuse and postpartum depression to ingrained/explicit sexism faced by entrepreneurs and employees. If required, blockers can request anonymity while searching for solutions.  

To match a problem with potential solvers, we get a profile from registered solvers with questions that are useful in determining whether they are a right fit. This task is automatable using features of solvers and blockers like positions held by them, demography, etc. For a prototype, the profile can start with a set of fixed questions based on common problems that women face across demographics. 

This solution will be ADDRESSING both connectivity and targeted bullying. Information is abundant. But the ones who need them seem to lack access. This app's solution mechanism will help them overcome this issue by connecting them to similar solvers. This will also help them subconsciously overcome bias since solvers are relatable to blockers.

 SCALING this problem is three-fold. 

• It needs more people for providing better solutions. 
• As the count of blockers increase, the type of problems grows too. This needs to be dynamic as the project/app scales. 
• As the count of members increases, we will need gamification strategies to engage the blockers and solvers. 

Scaling infra is relatively easy with predestined methods to scale cloud instances. 

This solution aims to correct the bias against women, in particular, the ones that stem from glass ceiling and misogyny masked by culture. It does so by: 

• providing information tailor-made to them.
• providing a wallet system for financial aids.
• hiding their gender/race to receive a neutral solution and to prevent internet bullying. 
• boosting their confidence to take the first step by enabling them to relate to solvers who had already walked their paths.

NOTE: This will not be an all-women application. To bridge the gender gap, people from all genders are encouraged to participate as solvers. 

This research paper explores bias against women wrt to leadership. It shows how an entire village eventually warming up to the idea of women in leadership positions. Rape victim Oprah has done more than merely surviving and the chairpeople of this competition are running successful corporates. The women who receive raised eyebrows have already appeared. To further this cause, one needs connectivity with as many supportive people as possible. This app makes such connectivity easier. With a 7.75 billion expected world population and 4.1 billion Internet users by 2020, people who are newly introduced to Internet will benefit immensely too.

One woman understands that many more people have faced issues that she is currently facing. Constructively, she has many solutions to overcome this issue apart from the mental boost of not being singled out. This will also enable her to help out more people thereby causing an avalanche of aspirants.

Any woman with access to Internet can benefit from this solution. We start with a web application where people can be solvers or blockers at a given time. Over time, depending on the requirement, this can be instantly accessible through mobile apps and IoT devices.

Track the number of people who have solved at least one problem using this app - 20000 women in North American continent have benefited from this app

Track the fraction of women who have both received and provided solutions by the count of women who have received a solution. This shows if people are spreading the benefits of this app. - 2/3rds of the women who have benefited from the app have shown interest to solve another woman's problem.

Usage of machine learning (especially deep learning) doesn't stop with dating apps. If it can work wonders on a simple problem, imagine what it can do to entire societies. The problem with bias in ML stems from the lack of more data and skewed existing data. This is no different from women whose hands are tied by environments they live in. The less data they have is skewed. This skew can be corrected by relating to similar people from different backgrounds, thereby seeding positive & financial changes. This app's usage of deep learning connects them to the aforementioned similar people.

This app's input data are people and their achievements on one side and people striving to achieve on the other. The automation this app does is putting them both in touch and doing it well.  People in underserved communities often fall victims to ingrained sexism. If such people can gain access to this app, they can start to gain light on this issue. The app's wallet system will also be of use to them. As the app grows, we can look for solutions based on affordable IoT devices in the place of Internet-fuelled smartphones.

It can start as a web application. Preferably as a freemium service, with the meat of the service being free. Post pilot, it can also be made an Android and Iphone app for faster access. 

To make it affordable, the app needs to minimize the loss using advertisements, donations, and freemium services. Additional services like the wallet system or access to counselors, etc can be offered at an affordable cost, to make the app accessible. 

Currently, I am the only one behind this solution. While I have a full-time job right now and can spend about 4-5 hours on this solution right now, while going full time, I can switch over to freelancing for my periodic requirements, thereby contributing more time and efforts into this project. 

When we pilot the solution, the freemium and donation aspects of the app can be leveraged to make some money. Initial setting up cost would include using an EC2 spot instance for prototyping. Until we reach the growth phase, there is no need for office space as well. 

1. As explained in the "Why Solve?" section, this technical solution is of no use without people using it. This solution currently lacks that kind of initial marketing strength.
2. Lack of finances right now is also another factor. 
3. Although the app has active users, some of them might be hesitant to post certain problems. But this hurdle can be overcome by anonymity feature.
4. Internet connectivity. As explained, when the project takes off well, affordable IoT devices in the place of full-fledged smartphones can be a solution to this problem.  

Currently, while I can build an application that meets the required solution standards, a little bit of mentorship on the business side and some practical knowledge on putting what looks like a theoretical solution into practice will help in marketing this solution and scale it. Solve seems to be an excellent choice in terms of these two aspects. 

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