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The Challenge
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How might we restore vibrancy in cities and regions facing economic decline?
Concept
Pocket Change: Empower Youth to Improve their Neighborhoods
What if the City, local businesses, community members and youth could submit ideas for improving their neighborhoods, and we turned them into mobile micro-job opportunities for youth?
Monica is a 15 year old living in East Oakland. Between school and helping care for her younger siblings, she stays pretty busy. Last summer, she tried to find a job, but there aren’t many opportunities for youth employment in her neighborhood. In fact, the unemployment rate in her neighborhood is twice that of San Francisco, and over 50% in some areas. When she walks to school, she sees kids she went to elementary school with walking in the other direction, toward black market jobs, gangs, or violence. Monica wants to go to college, but she also feels pressure to make sure her younger siblings have bus fare, new clothes, and school supplies. Each day, it seems like her walk to school gets longer.
What if we could text Monica right now and offer her an opportunity to make some extra money this weekend by helping harvest a community garden in her neighborhood? What if, in addition to that little bit of extra money, she became part of a community of other youth working to improve their neighborhood, gaining real work experience, and connecting with opportunities for longer term employment down the line? What if Monica was motivated to “level up” within this community by committing to longer-term projects and submitting project ideas of her own?
Kids like Monica are the inspiration for Pocket Change, a network of micro-job opportunities for youth that offers the dignity of work, the pride of working together to improve ones surroundings, and added value to the community.
Across the globe, the mobile phone network is leapfrogging land-lines, and access to mobile phones extends from U.S. inner-cities to developing nations. Systems like Kenya's M-Pesa mobile payment service are increasingly making mobile phones the banking tool of choice, and the best way to make sure that the person who most needs to receive a payment actually gets it.
Pocket Change will offer an online and mobile platform of increasingly involved job opportunities for youth. Municipal organizations, non-profits, and local businesses can sponsor jobs that they’d like to see done in the community, and youth can bid for them with the “experience points” they’ve earned doing other jobs.
Level 1: First-come, first-serve job opportunities that are posted online and sent out via text to anyone who’s signed up to receive them. 10 ppl needed to help with graffiti removal at Hart Elementary, Saturday at 3pm.
If youth do enough Level 1 jobs successfully, they’ll not only receive some pocket money but also enough Experience Points to bid for Level 2 jobs in the future. Youth who need to earn community service hours as part of their high school requirements can opt to complete Level 1 jobs for no pay. Level 1 jobs will likely be supervised by volunteers associated directly with Pocket Change, because they’ll be an important first opportunity to interact with youth, share expectations about what makes for good job performance, and introduce youth to the ways in which the system works.
Level 2: More involved or recurring job opportunities that may require a certain number of Experience Points to do. Experience Points can be earned by successfully completing jobs or by referring other youth to participate at Level 1. Level 2 youth might also receive additional bonus benefits like prizes, downloads, invitations to events, etc.
Level 3: At this level, youth become eligible to submit their own job ideas for funding. They can help select the team they’d like to work on their projects, and see the real results of their ideas coming to fruition in the neighborhood.
Level 4: With enough successful projects and enough experience points, youth could become eligible for recognition from local officials, college trips, or scholarship opportunities.
By providing real opportunities for making money, Pocket Change will provide an alternative to illegal employment. The opportunity to earn money will be an immediate draw, and will help draw youth who might not otherwise engage in community service. Once youth are involved, they can opt to receive texts or emails about opportunities for academic coaching, college information sessions, financial aid, and more.
The game-like design of the system will encourage youth “level up” by participating in more jobs and referring friends to the network.
Donors, businesses, or city agencies who support the organization will be providing a double benefit: they’ll put money in the pockets of youth who desperately need it, and they’ll see improvements in their communities.
Early prototyping shows that youth are most motivated by the opportunity to earn money – much more so than points, etc. They are also motivated by the independence that receiving a text and responding to it signifies. While they had some concerns about how to make sure that youth don’t just sign up for jobs and not complete them, and how to navigate school rules about cell phone use while participating in this program, they were nothing but enthusiastic about the idea of making extra money while improving their communities.
Taskrabbit.com provides a service similar to this in the for-profit space. Members can post service job opportunities (i.e. “pick up my dry cleaning”) and participants can bid for jobs. Participants “level up” by submitting to background checks, receiving enough positive ratings for jobs well done, and completing a certain number of jobs.
Homebody Industries, working from the motto that “nothing stops a bullet like a job,” has provided job opportunities for youth since 1988. Their experience shows that working while building real work experience and skills lead even former gang members to more productive pathways in their communities.
Opportunities to improve our cities abound, as do kids like Monica, who are creative, hard-working, and ready to make a difference. With Pocket Change, Monica can get involved in building skills for her future, and make enough real money now to stay motivated along the way.
What resources (money, time, people, technology, etc) will your concept need to be successful?
In later phases, social orgs or businesses could sponsor our youth corps to do bigger projects (Level 2, 3, and 4 projects): revitalizing an urban garden, organizing a recycling drive, or tutoring younger kids in local schools.
What steps could you take to implement this idea today?
How can your idea be scaled so that it's implemented in cities around the world?
My Virtual Team
38 Evaluations so far
Login to evaluate this concept and to see the results.
How well does this concept restore vibrancy to cities and regions facing economic decline?
| This concept will definitely restore vibrancy to struggling cities | |
| This concept has potential to restore vibrancy to struggling cities | |
| This concept will not restore vibrancy to struggling cities |
How scalable is this concept across struggling cities and regions worldwide?
| This concept could be scaled for impact across multiple locations | |
| This concept will take a fair bit of work to build and scale | |
| This concept is not particularly scalable |
Does this concept require a lot of resources (time, money, people, etc) to achieve impact?
| Not really – few resources would be needed to get results | |
| Somewhat – significant resources would be needed to get results | |
| Yes – considerable resources would be needed to get results |
How easy would it be for our community to design an early prototype of this concept?
| Easy – we could start prototyping this today | |
| A bit tricky – but we could figure it out | |
| Not at all easy – we'd need help from outside experts on this |
Overall, how do you feel about this concept?
| It rocked my world | |
| I liked it but preferred others | |
| It didn't get me overly excited |
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