Inali

Our proposed solution is a Mobile Application where the user signs up, and they can register themselves as a volunteer and offer their support to others. The proximity will be defined up to a particular radius to reach out to the nearest people who have requested help during the crises. This message would reach nearby people who are providing voluntary support. Using the app, a user can share the right source of available hotline services, ambulance services, or people offering free meals, oxygen supply, pregnant ladies who might need assistance, elderly who have been left behind without assistance in a pandemic situation.Our goal is to bring the entire information floating around on one platform and build a community. The app will make sure the proper support reaches the needy and no one is left behind.There's nothing worse than seeing people suffering from Covid. We need to pay attention because millions of people are on the brink of food insecurity.

The current problem of lack of correct information about help available and other resources; We want to solve this by bringing all necessary information on a single platform. 

The problem and its scale

February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million 6,415 children lost one parent, and 135 lost both. March 2020 - present over 3 million people died during COVID-19 pandemics. Thousands of kids were left alone without parents. The Census' Current Population Survey and the Department of Labor show that tens of millions of people are out of work and struggling to afford adequate food.

The pandemic has been particularly difficult for people who have been living independently and are elderly. Besides being highly susceptible to the virus, their old age has also made it difficult for them to commute and socialize, adding to their loneliness and anxiety.

During the second wave in India, social media became a platform to combat Covid-19 hospital beds, oxygen supplies, blood plasma, and medicines running scarce. So, several people are taking to social media by posting urgent requirements on social Media. Users are flooding these platforms with appeals for urgent needs through posts, retweets, shares, and story uploads to help distressed citizens in several cities across the country. Also, individuals and organizations were coming forward to provide volunteer support. But this entire information was floating all over the internet without a single platform, which made it hard to reach the correct information. 

We aim to create a platform that prevents us from misleading information and connects people who have lost their families, kids missing parents, elderly left alone with the right resources. A community of potential people worldwide could be influencers, corporates, Nonprofits, or individuals who would like to give a shoulder of support during such a pandemic. 

Our proposed solution is "Inali" a mobile-based application using the Inali app; people could share essential updates such as nearby available free meals,  kids who lost parents because of pandemics, elderly left alone, and looking for support. Or users can register themself as organizations / Hospitals/individuals who would like to volunteer, such as a hospital could share the bed availability in the hospital. Nonprofits could share information about services they are providing during the pandemic, such as free meals, orphanages could share helpline numbers with the other user, so anyone can connect if they found kids alone due to the pandemic.

The Inali App is more than just an android application but a community-based platform that could play a significant role in a pandemic situation.

Our target audiences are the families affected due to pandemic situations like covid. They could be at risk of food or health emergency, older people whose kids are not currently living with them and are stuck and left alone and need hands of support. The app would be helpful for kids who lost their parents and need food or shelter support, Pregnant ladies who might need medical attention. But, because the pandemic lost their families and is left alone, there could be many more such people who might be looking for support, and our goal is to help them get the right help. 

Apart from this, thousands of people are coming forward to support, but both the needy and the supporter might not be connected or may not have any mutual connection. We are trying to bring them on one platform and help people connect to their nearest resource. The following instance could be best explained using the app as a kid who lost one parent and the other is admitted to the hospital because of the infection, and the kid is left alone with no one to look after for his meal. In certain instances like this, either the relatives, friends could post on the app that the kid is finding issues getting his meal and looking for support. Once the post is verified, the message will be displayed to all the nearby volunteers in the community who are giving free meal services near the Kid area, and they might help the kid get his meals until his mother recovers and comes back to him. If we can not stop the fire in the forest, let's save the life that could get hurt because of the fire.

We represent the following challenge: “ Prevent the spread of misinformation and inspire individuals to protect themselves and their communities, including through information campaigns and behavioral nudges. “

Our solution addresses the problems such as prevention of misleading information , bringing the entire community on one platform to support each other during any pandemic situation. Also promote the different communities / organizations by bringing their work in front of the world , which could give them a better platform to bring a bigger impact in the society and that’s justify our solution to the challenge.

The second wave in India of Covid-19 made us think of coming up with a specific solution to connect the entire community. So, it was a short period for us, and that's why we are at the beta version development stage, but we are already an established foundation and can move very quickly to our pilot testing, growth, and scale-up phase.

Several humanitarian organizations are working worldwide on several different issues like climate change, Malnutrition, Clean energy, Disability, and other SDG goals. And even during pandemics, these organizations gave their best to support people in their area of expertise. But,  even after having such nonprofit organizations, millions of people are still left alone, and the reason was a lack of awareness to those in need. There is no single platform for such humanitarian groups or organizations to know about the needy, or maybe the needy could learn about the support. If we look closely, we will find yes the cases of COVID-19 has reduced worldwide, but millions of peoples, Kids, etc. have lost their families and are left alone and need attention. Our goal is to make sure no kid is left alone because this could take him to a world of crime; our goal is to be there for the women and help them be at a right and protected place. Our solution is a hope for many like the transgender community who are now left alone and at are very high risk of food security. Our solution is a bridge that will help millions of people reach their proper destination, making our innovation innovative and different.

Currently, our solution is getting ready to use. So, for now, we don't have any users.

Our goal is to reach about a million families in India and the United States affected due to covid in 2020.

Our goal is to reach about 1 billion people and be a bridge to help the Humanitarian organizations address the most significant needs like malnutrition, Sanitation, Women's Care, etc.

We would use following to track our progress toward our impact goals 

1. Number of Non-profit got associated with the App

2. Number of People got benefited 

3. Number of new impact ideas came to notice 

A team of 5 people are currently working on the solution 

2 Full Time  Staff

3 Part time staff

Inali was started as a nonprofit organization to support people with disabilities, and we build up our capabilities and design advanced but affordable prosthetic arms. So, in our team, we do have specific expertise to develop app-based solutions. We have frontend and backend developers with the required knowledge for the development of the solution. While working with people and understanding their needs give us the value of this project, making it important for the entire team to develop this project.

Every Great Idea needs to be listened and needs a platform and we believe applying at solve will  bring a great opportunity for us and the kind of solution we are building and would help us to create a bigger difference in the society. It will also help us to remove the barriers that we are looking at and give us a entire new way to bring our solution for the community on a bigger scale. More important Solve believe in making this world a better place and that's what we too and this makes us to apply for solve.

MIT  Department of Information system and Technology  , Professor Abelson , Sharon Perl (MIT App Inventor Advisor) , Jessica Van Brummelene (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science PhD student at MIT aiming to empower young learners)

Looking after the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Prize , we found we fit best in the criteria because of the following reasons. If we look in 2020 the US was among one of the majorly affected countries due to covid - 19 . Over 900,000 people lost their lives during the pandemic in the US , nearly 43,000 Kids lost a parent, and many families were at a danger of food security and might need proper attention. So, an App like Inali would be a game changer which would help people to get connected to the right person/organization/Gov.Agencies and get right support and that's the reason we believe our solution deserves Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Prize for the year.

“ Only 36% of India’s 336 million menstruating women use sanitary napkins. And with the Covid-19 crisis, this number has gone down rapidly.

Menstrual hygiene has been forced to take a backseat during the times of Covid-19. Struggling to get even one meal a day, many women have gone back to practices of using ash and hay covered in rags during their period. Plus, adolescent girls from poor backgrounds have lost access to pads supplied to them in school, which have been shut since the first lockdown was imposed. “ A report by Give India 

Now , if we look non profits like Give india came forward to support millions of womens during the pandemic by providing free sanitary pads but this information could be available with  limited number of people and having a solution like Inali would help Ngo’s to share their information with every single users available and could help such initiative to scale up by spreading awareness and reach to millions of womens in need and that's the reason we believe our solution should be consider for the Innovation for Women Prize

The Inali App could change the way communities connect  with each other and  benefits include more efficient communication. 

We intend to build a platform with great organic reach so that requesters get responses from NGOs and support groups as quickly as possible, which requires the platform to be like social media platforms that feature posting requests and receiving requests from the requestor to the NGOs and support group.

With the use of AI and Machine Learning we intend to become a platform that is a place to get help from and a place where users can learn about various NGOs and support groups. Our solution will connect the humanitarian organizations with society and raise awareness about social issues and efforts to fight against them. And bring everyone on one platform that creates a sense of responsibility, a sense of being a part of the community, and makes people empathetic and rational about the issues others are going through and this makes the innovation to be considered for the prize.

The big Idea behind  creating the Inali App  to bring the entire community together that would help in making the supply chain more stronger and efficient which would support the community and the health workers by providing the essentials services.  

Our solution addresses the problems such as prevention of misleading information , bringing the entire community on one platform to support each other during any pandemic situation. Also promote the different communities / organizations by bringing their work in front of the world , which could give them a better platform to bring a bigger impact in the society and that’s justify our solution to the challenge