App Development Competition

🎉 The School of Cities is excited to announce the winners of its first ever app development competition. 🎉

1^st Place: VolunteerSphere

Volunteer Sphere transforms volunteering into an exciting experience by using a map-based interface where users can discover local opportunities, sign up, and earn points for completing tasks. With special missions and a leaderboard, the app gamifies community involvement, making it fun and rewarding. Admins can also post events, track participants, and help users build their experience across various settings, encouraging long-term engagement and growth.

Team Members: Vaibhav Lakshmi Santhanam, Tara Jorjani, Keerthiha Baskaran, Ashtian Dela Cruz, Matthew Wyne Wu, Bahar Oya Chidem

2^nd Place (Joint Winner): EventNest

EventNest serves as a centralized hub for students at the UofT St. George campus to easily discover and engage with extracurricular events. By aggregating real-time event information, the app simplifies the process of finding activities that match students’ interests, helping them engage in the campus community.

Team Members: Derek Yi, Kevin Li Chen, Eryka Shi-Shun, Grace Leung

2^nd Place (Joint Winner): ReWild It

Rewild it is a platform to organize, collaborate and inspire grassroots rewilding initiatives within local communities across Toronto. Users contribute to a collaborative map of Toronto, where regions with potential for rewilding can be marked with a relevant photo and information as part of a new “rewilding project”. A discussion board is created for each project so that users can discuss the best approaches for rewilding the area, and projects are tracked via a high-level timeline, which documents progress and facilitates high-level engagement.

Team members: Harvey Donnelly, Ewan Jordan

Runners-up: HotSpot

HotSpot improves civic engagement by creating a platform that transforms everyday activities into rewarding experiences. Through its gamified challenges, users are encouraged to explore their cities and local neighborhoods, promoting both touristy and hyperlocal discoveries.

Team Members: Lu-Wai Wong, Carina Rastarhuyeva, Razeen Ali

Runners-up: Co:nnect  

A mobile app that uses augmented reality (AR) to engage youth in active community participation and alleviate loneliness. Through Gamification, our application plans to transform social gatherings into immersive experiences by combining location-based AR technology with civic engagement.

Team Members: Ido Ben Haim, Sarah Kim, Jesse Han

The goal of this competition was to design a mobile application or website aimed at improving and fostering civic engagement in youth (ages 15–24).

Across Canada, loneliness in youth has become a significant issue, with nearly a quarter of those aged 15–24 reporting that they always or often feel lonely (Statistics Canada, 2021). This loneliness can take a toll on mental health and overall well-being, reducing one’s quality of life.

One of the best ways to address the challenge of loneliness is through improving civic engagement—getting youth more involved and connected with the cities and communities they are a part of.

Civic engagement has many other benefits too. It can ensure youth perspectives are more represented on key political issues like climate change and education. It can result in neighbourhoods that better reflect youth mobility and cultural interests. And early civic engagement can lead to continued civic engagement throughout life.

“Civic engagement” can mean several different things, such as:

• Taking part in a protest or other political activity
• Being part of a cultural or community organization
• Contributing to improving public space and the local environment
• Creating public art
• Volunteering with local organizations
• Welcoming refugees and new immigrants

And much more… The competition was particularly interested in apps that engage youth with their neighbourhoods and cities.

The School of Cities App Development Competition was held in collaboration with the University of Toronto’s MADLab, a facility dedicated to accelerating mobile software development at the university, and made possible with support from the Power Corporation of Canada.