By Fergus Knight | Business Development Executive
As we move closer to spring, Apps for Good looks set for another successful year powering a new generation to change their world with technology.
Whilst our hugely enthusiastic students are still knocking it out of the park with some really impressive Apps, one particularly special thing about 2016 is that it's our five year anniversary!
We began delivering our programme to only 34 students in two centres in London in 2010/11. Over the past five years we have grown within the UK and internationally and are now delivering in over 850 schools worldwide and have positively impacted over 50,000 young people! This rapid growth has enabled us to inspire students to use technology creatively and open their eyes to the wealth of opportunity tech and entrepreneurial skills can bring. This has been our core focus for the past five years, and will continue to be for the next.
Besides continuing to deliver the Apps for Good programme, we also have big plans for the future; we want to continue developing into a truly global movement, introducing students to problem solving with technology all over the world. Some of our goals for the next five years include:
Growing our reach over the last five years has been a great achievement, but it could never have happened without the dedication of our teachers, experts and funding partners. We want to celebrate those relationships and the achievements of our students this year by running a fifth anniversary social media campaign using the hashtag #AFG5years. The campaign began alongside our 2016 App Launch on February 4th and saw over 1,500 related Tweets and millions of potential impressions across social media on the night, further drawing attention to the wonderful digital creations the winning student teams were presenting at the launch and the wider Apps for Good movement.
The event itself was a great success. It took place in an excellent location at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that brought together a truly diverse room of students, fellows, teachers, parents, experts and corporate partners all sharing ideas and praise for the fully developed products the students have created.
It was an evening of forward thinking with a focus on progress in technology education, spearheaded by speeches from Apps for Good Chairman Charlie Leadbeater, Founder and co-CEO Iris Lapinski, Chair of the London Legacy Development Corporation David Edmonds and last, but by no means least, Apps for Good Trustee and Fellow Mohima Ahmed.
Representatives from our Fellowship Community were no small help in making the evening a success; several former Apps for Good students attended the event to talk to our guests and raise awareness about how participants of the course can continue to develop their new found interest in technology after completing the initial Apps for Good journey.
We have so many people to thank that have helped us to get this far and deliver the impact that we have, but we would like to extend a special thank you to all those who have donated through Global Giving and particularly the money raised by the people at Nokia and VMware. Without vital fundraising like this we may have never made it to five years delivering Apps for Good, and events like our App Launch may never have been able to go ahead.
Your continued support is so valuable both to us as an organisation and the students that receive the Apps for Good programme. Make sure to tweet with the #AFG5years hashtag, and stay tuned for our annual awards this June 20th!
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