OutSystems Digital Volunteers make the world a better place

As a tech company, we feel that it is our duty and responsibility to ensure that technology is used for social good. Moved by the amazing social impact of some of our customers' work, in 2020, we challenged our Developer Community and Partner ecosystem to a hackathon. The goal was to create a set of applications to support a small group of nonprofits' amazing work and help them bring their service to those in need. Not only was the Hackathon a success, but it gave rise to a new program.

Launched in December 2022, the OutSystems Digital Volunteers Program has already supported 13 nonprofit organizations around the world by making digital transformation or digitization easier for them. This blog provides an overview of this program and its impact.

About the program

On our Digital Volunteers web page, members of the OutSystems Developer Community can nominate nonprofits that they think OutSystems should support. There is a review process, the organizations are chosen, and then we offer them OutSystems Developer Cloud to use as their application development platform. Our amazing community provides selfless volunteers, skills, and time to build those impactful apps. As a result, the organization can focus on what they do best - helping communities and people in need.

This program has enabled developers from all over the world to help nonprofits and make a social impact. Let’s take a look.

What apps have been built?

Here are some of the apps that OutSystems digital volunteers have developed.

Helping the homeless

Comunidade Vida e Paz (Life and Peace Community) helps people who are homeless. They have a system in place that helps organize the daily tasks of their volunteers. However, they needed a digital solution for organizing their events. The biggest event is their Christmas party, which is funded entirely by donations, and costs over €1 million (~$1.08 million USD). OutSystems digital volunteers built multiple applications to help. This video has all the details of what they did.

Fighting hunger

An organization dedicated to eradicating hunger wanted an efficient way to deliver food to those that needed it the most in Malaysia. With a focus on speed, OutSystems digital volunteers proposed a solution that would connect people who wanted to help to those who needed it. The solution called Digital Samaritan supports the organization without increasing their costs by raising donations, supporting more people in need, optimizing the logistics behind the whole process of food delivery, and decreasing the time needed to get to those requesting help.

Supporting cancer patients

In the rural areas of South Africa, people tend to ignore important information about cancer and cancer treatment. Instead, they focus on the common fears and stigma prevalent across communities. That’s the problem the Center for Community Technologies of Nelson Mandela University wanted to help solve. OutSystems digital volunteers built an app called C-vive that can be downloaded on Android. It has a visual, intuitive, and easy-to- understand user interface that can work offline. It is based on gamification components: as users go through the app journey and increase their cancer awareness, a flower grows and blooms.

Assisting survivors of domestic violence

Strength United focuses on supporting people of all ages who have been victims of child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual assault, They needed a solution that would help them reach, connect, with and support survivors. So, OutSystems digital volunteers developed an app to be used by different stakeholders: victims can request help for themselves, but third-parties can also request help if they know someone that might be in danger. It provides useful resources like where victims of violence can get the support and help they need, and a chat feature and get directly in touch with the Strength United phone line (open 24/7) in case it is not safe for them to call.

Supporting a wide range of social causes

OutSystems digital volunteers have also built apps to support:

• Children in foster homes
• Diversity and inclusion efforts
• Regreening initiatives in Africa
• Education in the U.S.

The advantages of the Digital Volunteers Program

Besides getting to using your creative mind to help others, the benefits of getting involved in this program are:

• Helping a nonprofit organization you believe in
• Learn or leveling up your OutSystems skills with OutSystems Developer Cloud
• The satisfaction of contributing to building software that matters, making the world a better place.
• The opportunity to participate in Build for the Future Hackathons

Build for the Future Hackathon

As mentioned previously, OutSystems held its first Build for the Future Hackathon in 2020. This Hackathon partners OutSystems developers with nonprofit organizations to build unique applications that benefit communities. It brought great joy to the OutSystems Community and non-profits.

So we organized a second Build for the Future hackathon to make this experience even more meaningful. The goal of our most recent hackathon was to have 20 teams–and the nonprofits they wanted to support–compete for six days. Our expectations were blown away because 58 teams ended up participating and submitting 48 fantastic, fully functioning application solutions. Needless to say, our jury had a tough time evaluating and announcing the winners in a very tight competition.

Winning teams received licenses to continue their great work for the nonprofits and secured donations for their organizations. The winning apps included:

• Team Quirky Hackers from OutSystems partner NovioQ won first place. The team built an app for Justdiggit supporting farmers around Africa as they address land degradation and climate change. This app will have an impact on millions of people who are learning how to “re-green” their rural areas to future-proof agriculture from rising temperatures and drought.
• Team Sourceful Pocket Knives from OutSystems partner Sourceful ICT took second place for building an app for the Polish-based foundation "Sport Connects Us” to unite people who want to support young athletes.
• Team Xebia Maximus from OutSystems partner Xebia was the third-place winner. The team created an app for the nonprofit dOt in India to facilitate the donation of clothes and essential items to those in need. dOt ensures that NGOs can continue to give, despite geographical limitations.

We will be hosting a new Build for the Future Hackathon with AWS and Microsoft around AI in 2024, so there will be more opportunities for OutSystems Digital Volunteers to participate, practice skills, and change the world.

One app at a time

Technology with purpose, a community led by strong values, and organizations with amazing missions are making a difference and changing the world, one app at a time.

If you want to join us, check out the Digital Volunteers Program page for details.