The Nie Musi Boleć Foundation (It Doesn’t Have to Hurt Foundation), the Flâneur Research and Animation Association, and the Internet. Time to Act! Foundation have been named winners of this year’s Sector 3.0 Fund, which supports creation of innovations aligned with the #TechForGood initiative. In total, the organizations received PLN 170,000 to develop and bring their social technology solutions to the market.
The Expert Committee, consisting of Mirosław Czyżewski (Polish-American Freedom Foundation), Jacek Królikowski (Information Society Development Foundation), Patrycja Walencik (Zendesk), Bartosz Borowiec (Deloitte Digital), and Dr. Magdalena Andrejczuk (mBank), selected three winning organizations this year that, in its opinion, developed the best social solutions implemented with the use of new technologies.
“Selecting the winners, the Committee focuses on three main criteria: social need and the achievable benefits for the recipients of a given solution; the potential for product or service development; and the maturity and effectiveness of the creators themselves, which will allow for the efficient acquisition of partners and funding for the project’s further development,” — explains Mirosław Czyżewski, Program Officer at the Polish-American Freedom Foundation.
Interwar art, privacy, and support for young patients—discover the Fund’s winners’ solutions
The Nie Musi Boleć Foundation received the maximum grant of PLN 75,000 to develop the “Pain Diary” mobile app. Its primary users will be children suffering from chronic pain of various origins, and their parents. The app will enable the systematic recording of information about a child’s pain, serving as an organized source of information on young patients’ condition and supporting the exchange of information between caregivers and doctors.
“The fund was a tremendous support for our project. The mentors helped us define the direction of the app’s development that we wanted but weren’t necessarily sure of before the incubation process began,” says Maciej Dybowski of the Nie Musi Boleć Foundation.
The Flâneur Research and Animation Association has developed the “Oko na Sztukę” (An Eye For Art) portal, which aims to catalog post-war art available in public spaces in Poland (specifically mosaics, polychromes, sculptures, and sgraffito from 1945–1989). In addition to cataloging and browsing, the tool is designed to engage a community of art lovers, researchers, and historic preservationists, who will be able to collaboratively create a map of the locations of these artworks. The association received PLN 49,000 from the Fund to develop the project.
“The incubation process allowed us to focus on developing our product within a specific timeframe and enabled us to work under the guidance of mentors who shared their expertise. We also met wonderful people from other organizations participating in the incubation program, as well as UX designers, without whom our work on the digital solution would not have proceeded so smoothly,” emphasizes Natalia Szelachowska of the Flâneur Association.
The “Rentgendroid” app by the Internet Time to Act! Foundation addresses the problem of widespread practices that violate the privacy of mobile app users. The tool, which received funding in the amount of PLN 46,000, is designed to quickly and automatically check whether a given mobile app processes users’ advertising identifiers without their consent. This will allow users to know how their confidential data is being used, decide whether to continue using the app, and contact the app provider or the Personal Data Protection Office (UODO) directly.
“The entire incubation process at the Fund was a lesson in humility for us. We made a major pivot with our concept, simplified our vision, and simultaneously expanded the scope of our solution. We are very pleased with the form our project has taken,” says Kuba Orlik of the Internet. Time to Act! Foundation.
The summary of the three-month incubation
This year’s Sector 3.0 Fund was once again coordinated by a team consisting of: Karolina Walecka and Jakub Gruszecki of the Sector 3.0 Team, Paweł Nowak, Katarzyna Drożdżal, and Agata Nowak of WUD Silesia. Additionally, the participants had the opportunity to deepen their knowledge, under the guidance of experts, in the areas of experimentation and research, creating a business model for a social project, concept sketching, building user flows, prototyping, communication and marketing, intellectual property in IT, and public speaking.
The teams participating in the incubation program were also accompanied by mentors: Anna Jadwiga Orzech (Láska nebeská), Adam Liwiński (Seriatim Foundation), Aleksandra Maciejewicz (LAWMORE), Bartosz Narzelski (Future Finance Venture Lab), Ula Mitas-Drozdowska (ING), Van Anh Dam (social entrepreneurship educator), and Martyna Bielak (Cancer Research UK).
The entire process involved a total of 38 workshop participants and 10 experts as well as 18 UX designers – volunteers supporting the teams’ project design process. In total, they had over 90 hours of workshops, lectures, and meetings.
The winning projects will be implemented
The winning teams will continue working on their prototypes, preparing them for market launch thanks to the funding received. Soon, the Sector 3.0 Portal will feature in-depth interviews with the winners, during which they will present their solutions and development plans in greater detail.
Partners
Substantive Partner: WUD Silesia
Honorary Patronage: Kozminski University
Media Partners: Mam Startup, ngo.pl, Startup Voice
Partners: Landingi, Laska Nebeska, LAWMORE
The Fund is part of the “Sector 3.0” program of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation, managed by the Information Society Development Foundation.
