The Voluntary Fire Brigade at Wiśniowa with its FireX application supporting Voluntary Fire Brigade commanders and Not Bad Art Foundation of Art Promotion with its Muzeana digital database of museum collections design were elected the winners of this year’s round of Sector 3.0 Fund supporting creation of innovations that fit into the #TechForGood idea. The winners were awarded PLN 85,000 and PLN 65,000, respectively, for development and implementation of their social technological solutions.
The Experts Committee composed 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 two winning organizations which in their opinion presented the best social solutions using new technologies.
“Selecting this year’s winners we paid attention mainly to the team maturity, both with regard to its readiness to introduce the change and the idea itself. Critical was also the diagnosis of need, preliminary vision of action, and belief that the project will keep on working also after Sector 3.0 funds will no longer finance it,” noted Mirosław Czyżewski, the Polish-American Freedom Foundation Program Officer.
ICT supporting the Fire Brigade efficiency and availability of art
The goal of FireX application is to support the Fire Brigade commanders all over Poland during fire-fighting actions. The software is meant as a source of knowledge for commanders at the time of action. Voluntary Firemen do not have the same scale of activity as the State Fire Brigade, and thus they do not have as much practice. FireX will offer them tips and checklists that will support them in helping others.
“We had a great, very engaged team that understood challenges faced by Voluntary Fire Brigades in small towns and villages very well and was focused on social activities and real impact. I would also like to thank our female volunteers who supported us, brought from a new perspective and helped to verify our ideas. This allowed us to confront various ideas and work even better,” Jakub Dziok of VFB at Wiśniowa says.
Muzeana is to be the first platform of its kind that will show the works and collections of museums, especially those local ones. Most of the works will be presented there for the first time. Not Bad Art Foundation managing the project is a community of art and free access to it lovers gathered around niezlasztuka.net portal.
“The support offered by the Sector 3.0 Fund has turned out to be critical. Not only for that project but for our whole foundation. That experience has impacted all our activity and is changing our history. When we started, we already had a general idea but refining the details turned out to be critical. Our project is addressed to a broad group of users. Segmentation of these groups has allowed us to create functions tailored to their needs. That was extremely important to us,” Dana Tomczyk-Dołgij of Not Bad Art Foundation of Art Promotion says.
The Fund – summing up of the 15-week-long incubation
This year’s Sector 3.0 Fund was again coordinated by the team composed of: Karolina Walecka, Jakub Gruszecki of Sector 3.0 team and Paweł Nowak, Katarzyna Drożdżal, and Agata Nowak of WUD Silesia. Additionally, under the eye of the experts, the participants could improve their knowledge of experimenting and research, creating a business model of a social project, sketching a concept, building a user path, prototyping, communication and marketing, intellectual property in IT, and public speaking.
The teams taking part in incubation were accompanied by Mentors: Anna Jadwiga Orzech (Láska nebeská), Adam Liwiński (Seriatim Foundation), Aleksandra Maciejewicz (LAWMORE), Sławomir Molenda (Roche), Van Anh Dam (a social enterprise educator), Jakub Jedliński (Startup Hub Poland), and Martyna Bielak (Cancer Research UK).
“What distinguished the participants of that program and their ideas is their real willingness to solve real problems. You can find various situations in business – sometimes artificial needs are created to sell the product. But here it is different. The teams are focused on real social challenges and therefore their solutions are more precise and easier to verify in practice,” Van Anh Dam, a social enterprise educator and mentor at Sector 3.0 Fund says.
The whole process involved a total of 53 participants of workshops, 10 experts, and 18 UX designers – volunteers supporting creation of projects by the teams. There was a total of over 110 hours of workshops, lectures and meetings.
“This year, participants of incubation understood key concepts and flowcharts very well. The nature of questions asked by them during our meetings convinced us that we were working with very mature teams, people who knew very well why they were there. That was a very valuable experience in cooperation,” Paweł Nowak of WUD Silesia says.
The awarded projects will be implemented
The awarded teams will go on with work on their projects to prepare them to be launched on the market thanks to the funds received. Soon the conversations with the Winners who will present their solutions and plans of further development will be posted on Sector 3.0 blog.
The Fund’s Partners:
Honorary Patronage: Kozmiński University
Substantive Partner: WUD Silesia
Media Patrons: Mam Startup, Startup Voice, ngo.pl
Supporting Partners: Landingi.pl, LAW MORE, Social Movers Hub, Tech to the Rescue
The Fund is a part of “Sector 3.0” program of the Polish-American Freedom Foundation and is managed by the Information Society Development Foundation.
