A group of Grade 10 students at Parklands College have developed their own safety app to help other students and those within the community feel safe and at ease.
They entered The Technovation Challenge 2016, under the mentorship of Mala Naidoo, which is a global entrepreneurship competition comprising a 12 week curriculum. The challenge encourages young women to brainstorm, design and programme a mobile application and draft a business plan which addresses a specific need in their community. The Parklands learners made Cape Town proud as they won the Western Cape Regional event. The top ten semi finalist teams in the world are invited to an event held in San Francisco where a winner from each category will be chosen. Each winning team will walk away with a cash prize of $10 000, which will be used towards further development of their app.
When picking a need to address within their community, the Parklands students immediately agreed that crime was what they wanted and needed to focus on.
“Crime is something we want to stop proactively,” says Tara Pohl, one of Parklands learners. Recently on KFM, Tara explained that they created the mobile app, SAFELINE, to solve a problem in their community – crime. The app is intended to connect communities and neighbourhood watches in an attempt to reduce crime by allowing the user to report any incidents to the authorities and to their emergency contacts.
When you open the app, a panic button comes up and an alert will go out to the list of contacts that you have set up to receive this notification. The app tracks the user’s location, has a map feature and a list of customisable emergency numbers. There is also a newsfeed that will keep you updated on what is going on in your area and what you need to be on the look out for at that specific time such as break ins or gang violence.
Future plans include the implementation of an inapp messaging service, a profile feature and a detailed report function that will allow you to report a crime or any suspicious activity that you have witnessed.
Congratulations to the learners at Parklands for taking such an important social issue and working hard to find an appropriate and feasible solution. We look forward to seeing the future of SAFELINE.
You can listen to the interview with KFM’s Ian Bredenkamp here: https://soundcloud.com/primediabroadcasting/mon-113344-to-113920
