Knowledge
An app that lets your shopkeeper donate your balance change for a cause
4 girls from New Horizon Public School have come up with an android app that will rid people of undesired toffees which they receive in lieu of loose change. The app will allow shopkeepers to transfer the loose change to a cause.
How many times have you gone to a local convenience store or stood at the toll plaza and handed over a toffee for lack of exact change? Chances are more than once. So rampant is this problem across India that recently a mobile payment platform leveraged this situation as a selling point.
Shopkeepers complain that there is a general shortage of ₹1 or ₹2 or ₹5 coins to give to their customers; so they are forced to offer toffees in lieu of change. While the change shortage is definitely debatable, customers don’t see merit in wasting time haggling and usually walk away with toffees they probably would have not bought otherwise.
But now there is an alternative to this; a positive, constructive alternative that has the potential to fund the education of girl children in rural India. This innovative thought flashed across the minds of a few school girls from New Horizon Public School, Bangalore, who went on to develop an app for it.
“Leave Change, Live Change” – say this team of five Class IX students – Nidhi Nair, Aanchal Agarwal, Suchrithaa Rajkumar, Vidhi Kothari, and Anushka P Nair.
The idea was born during a brainstorming for a tech idea that can create social impact and ultimately took the form of an Android app. They call it ChangeEd, an acronym for ‘Change for Education through Donation’.
The way ChangeEd works is simple. The shopkeepers have to download on their Smartphone and inform their customers that the small change they are forgoing is being used to fund a good cause. While the absolute denomination of such transactions would be miniscule, however, the sheer volume of these transactions when aggregated will amount to a considerable fund. Money so accumulated will be given to chosen NGOs working in the field of educating girl children. ChangeEd is already integrated with a payment gateway and the money transfers can happen effortlessly.
By taking a mundane transaction which has become an accepted norm and giving it a meaningful twist, these girls have secured a berth in the finals of the international technology competition, Technovation. Technovation challenges young girls to develop mobile applications to solve real world problems in their communities. The team from New Horizon School had the privilege of being mentored by experts from Goldman Sachs to develop the app.
This simple idea found great appreciation and recognition in the competition and has now made it to the final round of Technovation. The girls’ team is among the 4 finalists of the event and are headed for the final which will be held in San Francisco in July.
The principal of New Horizon Public School is all praise for the girls: “I am delighted that the girls have put technology to great use by addressing illiteracy challenges in India.”