# Sony and YouthNet develop mobile volunteering app +U

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2011/06/01/sony-and-youthnet-develop-mobile-volunteering-app-u/
- Published: 2011-06-01T10:23:39+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

Sony and YouthNet are working on +U (“plus you”), a mobile volunteering application
that uses YouthNet’s volunteering database Do-it to deliver “bite-size” or microvolunteering
opportunities to a wider audience.

 

“+U” (formerly known as Greenbook) was the final concept to emerge from Sony’s crowdsourcing
platform, Open Planet Ideas. It will combine mobile volunteering opportunities with
social and gaming benefits. Potential volunteers will be matched with local projects
through geo-location technologies and then awarded points based on the volunteer
opportunities they fulfil. Users can then share their experiences via social networks
such as Facebook, “making volunteering faster, easier and more social”.

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Emma Thomas, CEO of YouthNet, the charity that runs Do-it, said: “Do-it is the most
comprehensive database of volunteering opportunities in the UK, offering more than
one million opportunities to volunteer from 28,000 organisations, so there is huge
potential to develop the way in which we encourage and motivate people to volunteer”.

 

Sony and YouthNet aim to share the preview version of “+U” in the coming months 
to test and trial the system. It will then be released as an open source application
for any organisation to use. The date for the final application will be announced
in September 2011.

 

The Open Planet Ideas community platform, launched in September 2010 in partnership
with WWF, invited the public to imagine how existing Sony technologies could be 
repurposed to tackle environmental and sustainability issues.

 

www.openplanetideas.com

 

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