Leap

With the growing risks of Climate Change, Regional Conflicts, Violence Against Women, and other global crises, we want to create solidarity and empower like-minded individuals to take action and make the world a better place one step at a time.

 "Leap" enables youth and motivated people to drive action and make a measurable impact in their community. We would be using gamification strategies to drive action and motivate members to:
- Learn about global, national and local news and issues
- Lend their skills to NGO's around to reach their goals
- Lead their own campaigns and project members to deem as important for the community.

The platform focuses on mobilizing people to create a better future.

The modern world needs a modern solution. Environmental challenges are growing, there is abundant misinformation, mental problems are increasing, extreme behavior is being more acceptable and journalism is more commonly influenced. But the good thing is that our world is more democratic than ever. We have millions of young members on various social media doing their best they can do to raise awareness, support social and environmental causes.

Social media have penetrated over 30% of the population in India with 90% engagement just in 1 month with an average time spent is over 2 hours and it is rapidly increasing every year.

We solve the problem of how members of communities can communicate, raise awareness, drive change on a local and global level. This is where we come in with a social media platform “Leap” where members can connect, learn, lend their skills to help projects with a social-economic  impact  in their community and give them the opportunity to lead their social projects and provide them a platform to stage their campaign/project and acquire resources and make it work. Our goal is just one thing, it’s to drive action and make the world a better place than yesterday. 

Our project aims at mobilizing the energetic youth to actually contribute towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals that is the answer to the global crisis that we are facing. Our platform provides those people with opportunities to make the change and to drive change and for the courageous few to lead the change. 

We will serve the NGO’s to find the resources needed to finish their projects. We will serve communities with active participants from the community. Ideally, we serve the entire nation and (world) with our active members spread all over demographically.  We serve those who are motivated to do something for their community and we serve in motivating and inspiring the others.

Our solution is to create a digital platform with the idea of “think globally, act locally”. Our platform is divided into three parts: Learn, Lend and Lead. This assists individuals in creating and driving social impact locally. We aspire to use gamification strategies to motivate them to do good in their immediate surroundings, share it with others and feel good/proud about it.

- Learn: In this part, the users will learn about the various global, national and local challenges, which will help them understand the needs of the hour. Under this segment, we will also create awareness and tracking abilities for the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (the answer to the global crisis). We will also educate the individuals about their local and governmental laws which will help them better understand their approach towards the solution.

- Lend: In this part, we will provide the user an opportunity to volunteer for the various ongoing projects we have in partnership with local and national non-governmental organizations and nonprofits. In this phase, the user benefits of implementing change and our partners benefit by achieving their targets efficiently. We aim at categorizing the opportunities based on skills required to help volunteers be efficient in their contribution and that our partners achieve the best results. We will also provide e-certificates to the users for their contribution and use gamification strategies to give them trophies and badges on their personal profiles upon their completion of projects. Moreover, this will also be accompanied by a personal Sustainable Development Goals tracker showing what impact an individual has had on specific goals.

- Lead: In this part, the users can collaborate with other users and create a campaign/project of their own with a focus on the social sector of their choice. This, however, will be accompanied by professional screening and selection of the detailed plan submitted by the user/team. We will also provide digital tools and other resources to help implement the campaign.
Using the data that we accumulate from our users and their contribution, we will make it available for the use of international organizations such as the United Nations, and the national/local government to keep a track on the grassroots impact on the Sustainable Development Goals.

Social media platforms have proven to be successful for businesses, marketing, artists and even social awareness campaigns. There is no doubt that social media is highly effective in mobilizing people to do something (buy, like, share or even do the challenge). 

Our team has realized that there is a huge gap between being aware of a social problem and being able to do something about it. The maximum level social media platform has taken is to be able to share awareness or unproductive, but interesting actions (like, share, doing the challenge, etc). But it has been ineffective because of the rate at which new content is produced. A social cause post does not survive for a long time.

Moving further, our survey has made us realize that there are a lot of people motivated and inspired to do something to help and give back to the community. All they needed to know was how and where. 

Our solution is aimed at making a social media platform called "Leap" only to drive social change. No businesses,  only non-profits, and no click baits or gimmicks to drive actions. We would use modern gamification strategies, social media strategies and AI strategies showing relevant causes, content to people with based on their social interests and causes that inspire them. 

The technologies we would be using are:

- Social Media

- Gamification Strategies

- Artificial Intelligence

- Natural Language Processing

Leap gives it's users an opportunity to raise awareness about global challenges such as: Climate Change, Regional Conflict, Disaster Mitigation, etc. It also gives them an opportunity to lend their skills to help projects with a social-economic impact in their community and provide them a platform to lead their own social campaigns/projects and acquire resources and make it work. By these activities we aim to solve the problem of how members of communities can actually drive change on a local and global level and contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Currently, Leap is in it's concept stage and by the next year, we aim at serving 3000 people.

In the next five years, Leap will be serving 300,000 users and create a sense of responsibility to take action on global crisis and help accomplish the Sustainable Development Goals.

Our goals for the next year:

1. Release the application.

2. Conducting pilots and collecting data.

3. Marketing and Branding.

4. Acquiring Partnerships.

Our goals for the next five years:

1. Make provisions for regional languages in India.

2. Measure impact of the various activities using the personal/campaign-based sustainable development goals tracker and release reports.

3. Make provisions to release Leap in other South Asian countries and the United State of America.

4. Adapt to the new local and global challenges.

1. Financial support to transform this solution from concept to product.

2. Adoption by users is a risk as it is a disruptive idea and such an application has not been used in India previously.

3. Potential of pressure from religio-political institutions to stop awareness and outreach activities, and face scrutiny.

1. Strong partnerships and sponsorship can overcome these barriers. MIT solves these barriers and also provides credibility for future partnerships.

2. We plan to take a client-centric approach and encourage feedback and incorporate them in our solution as we move ahead.

3. We plan to address this by collaborating with partners and community leaders to understand concerns to make sure our content is culturally and religiously sensitive.

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Currently, there are 2 members working on the solution team

The team is led by Meghana Kasula who is a Data and IT specialist. She has diverse experiences in a wide range of domains – Programming (SQL, Java, HTML, CSS); the ability to manipulate data effectively; Data visualization; processing and analyzing qualitative and quantitative methodologies, survey analysis and statistical analysis using R, and Python. She is currently working full time at RecycleBank and has previously worked with UN Women, Digital Nest and various local NGOs.

Cherie Singh is a second-year graduate student who focuses on International Development and Gender Policy. She has field experience of working with NGOs in rural India and Sri lanka, and has also worked with refugees in Australia. She is the co-founder of an NGO,Youth2Youth, which focuses on education and empowerment of youth in India. She has also worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Andhra Pradesh, India. She was selected as the Graduate Fellow for the United Nations Association (UNA-USA), and has strong skills in leadership, strategy, negotiation,development and gender advising.

Collectively, the two members of the team can speak 6 national and international languages: English, Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, French and basic Spanish. We are committed to social change and are strong advocates of human rights for everyone.

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Problem:

1. Growing global crises: increasing conflicts, mental problems, influenced journalism, etc.
2. Untapped youth energy:  we aren't investing in things that will produce beneficial results.

Solution: A platform for people to Learn, Help and Lead with the idea of "Think Global, Act Local" towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals.

Key Metrics:

1. Number of users and applications downloads
2. Time of user's interaction with the application
3. Number of activities completed
4. Overall contribution towards SDGs
5. Customer feedback

Value Proposition: To create solidarity and empower like-minded individuals to take action and make the world a better place one step at a time.

Channels to engage customers: chat box, videos, articles, workshops and Leap campaigns. 

Marketing:

1. Online Marketing: Social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization, and personal branding.
2. Offline Marketing: Networking events, workshops, leap campaigns, using partner organizations to market our product, contests, use poster and pamphlets.

Costs/Expenses: Conducting pilots and testing, marketing and advertising, technology investments, legal, and payroll.

1. The application will be free to download and use. However, we will provide premium access to users at a nominal yearly fee.

2. Grants, Sponsorships and Donations*

3. The reports of activities and progress will be available to everyone for use for a nominal fee.

*We will not accept government funding to assure the organization does not succumb to the one or many governments.

1. To connect with other teams working on similar projects and MIT Solve alumni to learn and gather knowledge and feedback.
2. To receive guidance and support on running a social enterprise and funding. To gain access to investors and grant providers in the MIT network who believe in the scope of LEAP and can invest in the idea financially or advisory.
3. For the opportunity to be mentored by experts in the MIT network.
4. Acquire technical expertise to transform LEAP from concept to product.
5. Media coverage and credibility.

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1. Artificial Intelligence firms.
2. NGOs with a similar aim such as LEAP for the purpose of collaborating activities and expand our outreach.
3. United Nations

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Social media platforms have proven to be successful for businesses, marketing, artists and even social awareness campaigns. There is no doubt that social media is highly effective in mobilizing people to do something (buy, like, share or even do the challenge). 

Our team has realized that there is a huge gap between being aware of a social problem and being able to do something about it. The maximum level social media platform has taken is to be able to share awareness or unproductive, but interesting actions (like, share, doing the challenge, etc). But it has been ineffective because of the rate at which new content is produced. A social cause post does not survive for a long time. Moving further, our survey has made us realize that there are a lot of people motivated and inspired to do something to help and give back to the community. All they needed to know was how and where.

Our solution is aimed at making a social media platform called "Leap" only to drive social change. No businesses,  only non-profits, and no click baits or gimmicks to drive actions. We would use modern gamification strategies, social media strategies and AI strategies showing relevant causes, content to people with based on their social interests and causes that inspire them. 

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