Komino : Transtioning from a Passive to an Active Approach

We are working to solve the lack of productivity in social and civic initiatives despite young people’s interest in taking action. Indeed, in our hometown of Montreal, 71% of 15 to 25-year-olds are invested to a certain level in civic and social movements, and 19% of young Montrealers are actively invested in a cause. Still, most of them are not satisfied with the impact of their actions and are left powerless and frustrated. When we look globally, 75% of the youth worldwide feel anxious, powerless, and frightened about the future.

But where does this lack of productivity come from? Essentially, when a young group of activists wants to create a social and civic initiative to enact real change in their community, they need to organize concrete actions AND communicate with the community they want to serve/defend/improve. Most social and civic initiatives will fail or “water down” because the activists can’t do those two actions in tandem. The fact is that there is no support to communicate effectively with a community AND organize concrete actions.

The bottom line is that most social and civic initiatives will water down to conscientization campaigns without concrete actions to follow them. We believe that each member of the activist teams and the community they serve could be utilized to create and make concrete actions to improve their respective community and thus enact change.

In addition, When the actively invested youth were asked about their level of satisfaction with the digital platforms they use for their activism. They weren’t satisfied with the level of support they were provided, stating they had a 3.3/5 level of overall satisfaction and 3/5 for organization capacity.

In the classrooms, the youth were and are told about all the problems they need to fix in order to save the world. However, they are not adequately provided with a “how to” take action and a platform to help them take action. This results in a lack of impact from their efforts, followed by a feeling of disappointment.

This problem is not limited by initiatives led by youth (even if our primary target is young activists) but all of the social and civic initiatives. That lack of productivity hinders the social progress of our societies. To illustrate that, look at the biggest social issues in the 80s; we are still trying to solve most of them.

This problem is a global problem. The cumul of civic and social initiatives make up the social movements that create the social progress of our global societies. However, the need for support for the needs of communication and organization in order to mobilize a community is a very localized need.

Komino is a digital platform that supports civic and social initiatives to reach their goals. The platform hosts the activists and their respective communities while giving them the tools to fill their need for communication (with their teammates and community) and organization of concrete actions. With this platform, the initiatives will be able to firstly communicate between them with the community, and the community will be able to communicate with themselves. Secondly, the team leading the initiative will be able to see the need of their community and organize concrete actions in order to enact some change.

The platform was made to support all social and civic initiatives from creation to their end goal and/or formal establishment. In the platform, we have tools that support the internal development of an initiative. The tools are proven tools that worked for social movements/organizations/initiatives combined with created tools based on our research of the needs of civic and social initiatives.

The platform has a built-in tutorial and templates to teach the new activists how to organize their initiatives and ease the learning curve. We also have an outreach program and a community that will teach young people to invest themselves in social change and civic actions!

In addition to the platform, we will need to implement an AI that will flag groups in the platform that doesn’t respect the limits of free speech (Hate or Violent speech).

The first target population is the activists: the platform allows them to communicate and organize their initiatives effectively to enact the desired change. The platform allows them to transition from learning about the challenges and talking about them to enabling them to provide real change by organizing concrete actions. As seen in the problem section, they are currently underserved by a lack of tools, platforms, and support that allows them to reach their goals. The main lines of this profile are people who express their opinions, have volunteered for past civic actions, and have the willingness to lead.

With this target population comes the community they serve, often underserved, the victim of a systemic problem, or just needing betterment. They need to communicate their needs and coordinate actions/events; the platform gives them a place to communicate and coordinate.

Our secondary clients are NGOs and student associations needing coordination and communication with their respective volunteers and community members. The platform gives them the necessary tools to fill their needs.

We also have a program and community that will teach young people how to invest themselves in social change and take civic actions.

Our team is not only the perfect team for the project because of our complementary professional profile but also on how we engage with our target audience.

Stéphane Beaulne (CEO): Has previously founded two start-ups, one in tech and the other in video production. He is the perfect team leader for this project because he has experienced the problem Komino is trying to solve while doing social initiatives as a student for mental health and BLM at his university. He also volunteered for ENACTUS HEC, a sustainable development in entrepreneurship student association, where he was tasked with vetting all incoming projects regarding their viability and desirability. Additionally, he is in contact with and familiar with the Black-Afro-Caribbean and ecological organizations in Montreal. This proximity allows Komino to develop the application in partnership with our target audience.

Nat Fakhri and Muzzamil Sultaan (Head of Design, UX/UI and Front-end Dev) : The design team of Komino, they conduct interviews and test with different organizations, activists, and community to understand their need in the platform. They then transform those findings into the necessary modification or add-on the platform needs to support civic and social initiatives. These two are at the heart of the creation of the solution, not only thanks to their respective formation&experience in Design and Front-end but also to their understanding of our target audience.

2 Sociological students from Udem (long-term partnership/contractors): We partnered with those two students to better understand the phenomena of social and civic initiatives, their characteristics, and their challenges from a theoretical point of view. 

Karim Gargouri (CTO): With a passion for AI and software infrastructure, Karim leads the back-end and algorithm efforts. His determination to make relevant AI tools will drive our ‘’ethical AI’’ that will ban initiatives with hate and violent speech.

We already have a functional Alpha version that just finished testing. We are now working toward a Beta version (Pilot) to host our users.

• 1)Templates: The network and staff of MIT Solve can support us in implanting in different countries for us to become worldwide. We would want to know the do or don’ts of implanting outside our home country.
• 2) Scaling: After we complete our Beta version, we’ll need to scale up our enterprise and our team. This is a big endeavor; coaching/mentoring will be crucial to avoid the traps.
• 3)Network: Access to MIT Solve’s vast network will help us support more activists and students invested in civic and social initiatives.
• 4)Raising funds: As most start-ups, we need support in raising funds to be sustainable. We are used to the Canadian financial ecosystem; we want to explore alternative ecosystems that might answer more to our needs.
• 5)Impact measurement: Even if we have good ways to measure our impact. We are sure more precise methods are in place to measure it accurately.

The platform proposes a new way of enacting changes in our societies! Transitioning from a passive approach where social and civic initiatives learn about the problem, create a conscientization campaign, and manifest for exposure. Waiting for enough interest the be gathered so that an institution finally enacts some change.

To propose a more active approach where initiatives gather&learn the need of their communities and communicate with each other to organize concrete actions that improve their communities.

The passive approach is still necessary, but we propose complementing it with an active approach. Thus, it proposes a new, more active type of impact.

Additionally, our solution is innovative because it is the first to tackle this problem and tackle it at its core making it an on-of-a-kind platform. Furthermore, it creates a new sub-sector for digital platforms.

See the theory of change for outcome indicators.

The activists: We’ll help them organize concrete and communicate with their communities with the free version of our platform. We will measure the outcome with the following: The number of initiatives that answered 70% of the needs of their communities and the number of tasks and projects completed by an initiative.

Benefit: Initiatives that are more productive and reach their goals.

Communities: Usage of our platform to express their needs. We will measure the outcome with the following: The number of initiatives that answered 70% of their communities’ needs and the platform’s Satisfaction (0.1 over the 3.3/5 current level).

Benefit: Need of different communities are answered.

Student Associations&NGOs: Help them mobilize their communities and volunteers with our premium and free version of the platform. We will measure the outcome with the following: Satisfaction with the platform (0.1 over the 3.3/5 current level), number of initiatives that answered 70% of the needs of their communities, and number of tasks and projects completed by an initiative.

Benefit: Mobilization of communities and volunteers.

The youth: Our outreach and community program will educate them on how to invest themselves in social and civic initiatives. We will measure the outcome with the following: % of youth reached a certain area (goal of 36%).

Benefit: Increase in the level of youth actively invested and decrease in the level of powerlessness and frustration

Long-term vision: A socially just world.

As a hiring strategy, we hire from already diverse applicant pools, which made, in turn, easier for us to hire from diverse backgrounds. Our team is fully composed of minorities (except one).

Our value proposition is to increase the productivity of social and civic initiatives by filling their communication and organizational needs.

We also increase activism in communities and in our target: the youth.

Our customers: Activists and NGOs; A platform that allows them to reach their goals and mobilize their communities while filling their needs.

Our beneficiaries: Communities and the youth; Allow them to mobilize and voice their needs.

We provide the platform via a web application or phone application. The platform is a freemium, completely free for an initiative except if they want to pay for additional tools to organize their cause. 

Additionally, we are building an outreach program and community that focus on teaching the youth how to invest themselves in social and civic initiative.

Our revenue model is a freemium: To have access to more specialized tools when your initiative has matured or for our secondary clientele, NGOs and student association, you'll have to pay a premium. The premium costs 159$ per month per organization which is cheaper than most of our indirect competitors.

If we follow our current prediction, we should be sustainable two years after the launch as we need between 324 (low-cost strategy) to 1116 (high-cost strategy) premium organizations.

In the last year, we were completely financed by governments organization and grants as we were able the lower our costs of operation.

Moving forward we have a clear strategy involving grants, working with NGOs and raising funds.