Technology serves large enterprises making them efficient, and able to turn over a high profit. It also connects people together seamlessly to socialize. But there are still a number of people who have yet to benefit from technology, one such group are the precariously housed, who make make up the majority of large cities like San Francisco.
Working in the Mid-Market Tenderlion neighborhoods, she heard many frustrations and time lost whenever the homeless had to line up every morning to have their names entered in the city reservation system for a bed. To add to the frustration, she saw the amount of paperwork and phone calls required by social service organizations to find availability and to make a reservation.
Rose discovered that a huge amount of time was being wasted on checking availability and making reservations on certain shelter services, like beds. She knew that some kind of information portal between the two would help save time and reduce needed paperwork.
With this knowledge, Rose and her team set off to put together a product at the Creative Currency Hackathon, an event that brings together developers,designers, and social finance experts to hack a product that helps social service organizations.
After many hours, they were able to put together a prototype called BRIDGE, that would allow shelter-seekers to make and check reservations themselves, and also check availability of other needed services like food and financial management at other local shelters as well via kiosk.
BRIDGE became a finalist in each of the demo days that is was presented, and was mentioned in the SF chronicle, The New York Times, Forbes, and Fast Company.
Although some time has passed since their initial launch at Creative Currency Hackathon, Rose is determined to complete a similar product called, MY CONNECT that would be a step up from BRIDGE that would also help the precariously housed as well as the social service organizations.
