Vapp Violence Appendix
Vapp?
A collaborative platform of individuals that use tools/concepts/systems like “gamification” and “crowd sourcing” as a solution development tool or model to solve real world community problems.
These are not buzz words!
Why gamification? Why crowd sourcing and crowd funding? What is a solution development model?
Gamification in simple speak, is the application of game elements to a process or, a way of doing things. Game elements such as a sense of adventure, obstacle avoidance or elimination, strategy, leader board rankings, rewards and, the idea of fun, are important to the definition of the concept of what we call a game.
All games like football, board games, digital games and even reality TV show games like Big Brother, to some extent incorporate one or some or all and more of the elements listed above. A class room teacher might for instance, reward the best performing student a with a gift as an incentive to performance. Yet these simpler forms of gamification are quite different from more complex ones like Game Theory where the optimal-lity of decision making against constraints and other players is paramount. Gamification as applied here, does not necessarily require game theory although that choice is left to the user. E.g using it as an internal tool for measuring team behaviors via pay-offs.
We focus on the more simpler forms of gamification based on challenges and rewards, etc, here.
Why do we need gamification? Why bring in fun in addressing the weighty issues of internally displaced persons? Primarily, gamification as we use it, is a productivity tool/hack. It helps to overcome the mundane nature of everyday activities by triggering responses to fun and healthy competition including the possibility of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Social care work can be particularly distressing and its overtly serious nature can weigh heavily on the mental build of a care worker. Thus, game elements predisposed towards fun and “lightness” offer much needed relief to mindsets and its strategy based elements are often helpful aids to innovation in work places. Gamification is also useful in driving user engagements & sustaining it, think of mobile apps like Duolingo and how they use the streak score concept to keep you engaged. It can also do one better as we shall see further on.
Crowd sourcing and crowd funding: Specifically, when we source for small quantities of funds from individual members of a body of people, we are actually crowd sourcing funds. When however, we are sourcing things like ideas and opinions, materials, and volunteers from a body of people, we are only crowd sourcing. Both concepts primarily involve the input of a large audience to achieve either a funding goal or a non funding goal e.g crowd sourcing books to build a local library etc. Often, to fund a goal such as the one we have identified, we start by building a campaign. Due to the recurrent nature of some campaign requirements it is often wise to set out a target and build a campaign to meet that target over a period of time. However, before that target is often met, any number of adverse factors could contribute to the campaign losing some steam or becoming stale. At such junctures or more sensibly, before that ever happens (at least from a design perspective), gamification elements are written into the campaign project to keep the teams and communities engaged, pumped and excited about the project until targets are met.
Gamification and Crowd sourcing are very powerful tools when used right. Further, we see how we can build communities we previously created into performing utility functions such as “oversight”. The involvement of the communities/audience/crowd, goes beyond just contributions and is often similar to that of fans of a football club. And just like a football club, it can often be very rewarding for members of these communities albeit in an altruistic sense. Experience often tells us that this is most rewarding as it helps to maintain, for members of the community, a balance in the social dynamics and foster a sense of identity and belonging towards the realization of a common altruistic goal. In order not to derail such goals, transparency and community participation contribute towards oversight. Oversight, in this case, is the involvement of the community in new goals and projects, KPIs, budget plans and expenditure as created by the teams instead of being merely spectators. In a sense, think of it as allowing fans into the board room of your favorite football team.
Solution Development Model: What is all that about?
The process we have outlined, the concepts and ideas that underpin them, do not necessarily have to be followed to the letter. Each team, in dealing with the differences of a “target group”, might come up with varying approaches to implementing their core processes in a manner that is best for their target group. Also, within a target group, slight differences may exist that would warrant modifications in delivery for certain unique individuals compared to what is obtainable for the whole. What is almost canon however, is the need to document activities that constitute public access documentation; a sort of repository of sorts for future teams. As the name implies, the solution development model is for developing newer models even if it itself is a “ready to go” one.
Below are slight expansions to some of the slides for further clarification purposes.
Slide 1:
What is Vapp?
A collaborative platform of individuals that use tools/concepts/systems like “gamification” and “crowd sourcing” etc, as a solution development tool or model to solve real world community problems.
Vapp first started out as an unnamed workgroup comprised of undergrad friends and idealists from different faculties though, primarily, from the Faculty of Engineering at Ahmadu Bello University. Its scope, capacity, structure, resources and members has since changed since it was conceptualized in 2008.
Slide 2:
Creating a team!
Before creating a team, we start off by identifying our target group. Target group may also be referred to as “data set” etc. In this document, we shall primarily use target group term. The nature of a target group closely determines the make up of the teams created for them. Again, choose team members based on ability to meet the needs to be provided to a target group.
What is a target group?
- A target group is a terminology used to describe a selection of Internally Displaced Individuals chosen for the purpose of benefiting from this Development Solution Model.
- A target group could be selected based on gender, age group demographics, location etc, or, based on a combination of one or more of these.
- Care should be taken to find out the most pressing needs of the target group using a combination of methodologies such as interviews, visual assessments, medical diagnoses etc.
After we have identified our target group for which we are to implement our 3 core processes we can look at teams in more detail.
Note: Generally, a study of the needs informs how fast the model can be implemented and the scope on which it operates. Other needs such as housing and shelter etc, may offer more technical problems that hinder speedy development. Likewise, there is a limitation on the extent to which interventions within a core process may be made. An example of this is psychological/mental health evaluation for persons who have suffered some form of PTSD as a result of exposure to violence in their communities which may prove too specialized for the readily available general health volunteer.
Slides 3, 4
Teams: a general approach!
When the target group has been identified and their needs known, a team is built around the three core processes.
Each core process has a maximum of 8 members and no more. This is to limit redundancies and prevent to a large extent, any hierarchical emergence in the organizational structure. Each core process team designates two members of its 8 to be the “process owners”.
Process Owners: The concept of a process owner is quite different from saying a “team owner”. Process owners do not own the team nor are they leaders of the team: they are regular members of the team and hand over the “process owner” duties to other pairs in the team after a period of time, usually monthly or after any such length of time as agreed to by all members of the team.
Process Owners, when they are not busy helping the team by contributing to its regular functions, act primarily as “Media Implementation, Coherence and Logistics Quality control”. This simply means they document the needs of the team and balance it against the campaign targets they require. In doing this, they design and monitor the campaigns and update constantly on the progress and status of the project. They also analyze, document and publish, the quality, quantity of donations, tag, document and ensure that the donated items get to the people who need them in the target group.
How can teams implement gamification?
There is no one true way to implement gamification. There can be any number of ways instead. It depends largely on the creativity of the teams and how collaborative they are. It is important team members recognize their strengths and lean on them to achieve their goals.
Teams could also ask, what is a fun activity that can get people engaged? How can this activity be packaged and deployed? Are there any rewards? If so do they decrease the common pool?
A tested way of boosting engagement is getting the buy-in of your local neighborhood celebrity to drive engagement and leverage star power for sourcing funds or any other “non-funds” goals. Rewards could be personalized thank-you messages from the celebrity to members of the participating community. It could also be a meet & greet event with photos and signatures.
Below is a hypothetical but creative scenario involving Bisi & Atinuke creating a campaign.
-Bisi and Atiuke happen to be members of a newly created team. This month they were nominated as “ process owners” of the health team. On the top of their To-do list is how to raise funds and get medical supplies donated to their target group of 25, adolescent girls.
-Bisi and Atinuke are both smart and resourceful but don’t make enough money, also, their shares on social media have not yielded much fruit as they weren’t strategic about it. Bisi and Atinuke both have a decent social media following of a thousand each and have decided to leverage on that. After some brainstorming, they hit on a great idea. The girls have decided to create a campaign based on a very nostalgic game they played as girls in primary school.
-In this game, girls compete singly, or in teams against other girls. A player favors a particular foot or stance and the other player tries to eliminate this player from progressing to the next round by correctly guessing which foot or, stance, every time an exciting chorus they dance to ends.
-The winner is the player who guesses right the most and has stopped other competing players the most.
-There are much less exciting variants in the world. One is called Rock, Paper, Scissors.
-This exciting one however, combines a maddeningly exciting chorus and dance. It is known as TenTen AKA, Olow-One.
-The girls shoot a few video clips of a competition between themselves and upload it to their profile on “Only-Stans”. They get good reviews from their friends who are just as nostalgic when they see an old game they used to play.
-The girls then invite some more women who saw the videos before and compete against them and share those videos too.
-Soon everyone is talking about these videos and looking forward to the next ones. The girls explain that the proceeds from subscribing to their “Only-Stans” account goes to their target group and this gets more people helping them to share and arrange a subscribe-only Ten-Ten World Tournament.
-A while later they find that celebrities are joining in and competing too. They also help Bisi and Atinuke share their message and get other people interested in donating to their target group and subscribing to the “Only-Stans” account.
-Bisi and Atinuke are finally able to meet their targets.
Do you think you can do better or as well as the girls?
Do you think a Ten-Ten campaign is a great idea or can you come up with better?
The above story of Bisi and Atinuke might be too far fetched for some or just suitable. Whatever the case, a campaign requires a great idea but often, a very simple one. It also requires creativity and discipline in execution and planning.
Finally, slides 5,6,7.
We have just looked at how to create teams with examples for campaigns too. Next we look at what we mean by “build, deploy & monitor volunteer resources”.
Volunteer resources describes all the resources needed by the target group which includes human volunteers (the teams and the communities), and the material supplies eg, sanitary supplies, donated learning devices like tabs, utility equipment like solar panels etc.
To build and deploy the above is really the culmination of what the entirety of this document has sought to explain from the go. It involves how best to recognize what the target group and the team needs, how to create a successful campaign to supply this need, how to document and catalog the donated resources and how best to distribute and match the resources to the teams and target groups that need it the most.
Cheers!
