Hello to all the Surikatos!!!
We are Marlon, Valerie and Anderson, a team of volunteers from Peru who want to develop an application of our social entrepreneurship called Surikatos, a platform that will host all the volunteers in the world to give quick social help to people in vulnerable situations.
What makes us different?
We want to take advantage of technology to have a greater reach of the enthusiasm and effort of all volunteers, in this way, to cover many more cases of social aid in all communities.
The platform allows any volunteer to register cases of help (empowerment), as well as to visualize cases of help for their participation (total visibility).
To do this, we make a match according to (a) the location of the volunteer and (b) what they want to help.
In addition, there are characteristics that allow us to make a better decision, such as (i) the needs to be met, (ii) the location, (iii) date of the first meeting, (iv) level of urgency, (v) range of people to be assisted and (vi) how many Surikatos are already registered.
Why was Surikatos born?
According to Stanford - Center on Longevity, 90% want to volunteer, but 25% do.
We have researched the main reasons why they don't join the volunteer movement and why they drop out.
It is mainly because they look volunteering as a time-consuming job that does not fit into the rhythm of a person's life.
In addition, they see that the process of being part of a volunteer program becomes exhaustive and bureaucratic, which they feel as a lasting commitment and difficult to leave, because they want to experience other activities different from the mission of each organization (burnout), since the activities become monotonous and repetitive, for example, just cleaning beaches or visiting the same shelters over and over again.
Therefore, of that 25%, only 30% volunteer with an organization, and 70% decide to volunteer on their own, called "informal" in which they can be more autonomous with their time, effort, and allows them to manage the form of their help.
Thus, we came up with the idea of forming a project where all members are as close as a meerkat's den, where they have roles and constant interactions. And of course, to protect the most vulnerable.
Surikatos aims to help vulnerable people (end), employing the volunteer force (means) for the management of aid cases, either creating a case, registering for help or supervising the process, so we give volunteers the necessary tools to have a better visualization of the cases, freedom of participation, empowerment to lead cases, better manage their time and effort, and needs adjusted to their profile.
The help cases are open to the community and they can participate in squads, gathering profiles adjusted and complementary to each case. Likewise, they can be part of a Burrow (guild), as well as having the facility to leave and change to another (in this way we avoid burnout, however, they must apply to each Burrow for acceptance if required).
And all in a fun theme, gamified and fully visible to everyone.
What will we do with the proceeds?
The proceeds will be used in this way:
1) Three full-time professionals will be hired to support our activities and make the money raised make sense for our project in the long term, (a) the first professional will become our CIO, who will be in charge of helping us be our internal developer; (b) the second will be our CFO, who will be in charge of connecting us with funding sources and auditing our financial statements; and (c) the third will be our CMO, who will have more time for media contact and setting up attraction strategies for both volunteer talent and potential partnerships.
2) Develop the application with a development agency, although we are going to hire a CIO, we need to move forward with the implementation to have a more prompt and meaningful help with the world, also, it will allow us to ensure the proper functioning of our platform.
3) Promote the platform and our proposal, we know that we can grow organically, but we are aware that we can grow in a more viral and exponential way if our proposal is exposed in the media, so we will have more volunteers to join the project, and from this, many more cases of social aid for the community to get involved.
It's time to be a Surikatos!!!!
Thank you for helping to help those who help.
Sincerely
Marlon (CEO), Valerie (CCO), & Anderson (CHRO).