How do we make an impact? We’re so glad you asked!
What is your mission?
Florida Community Innovation empowers young innovators to build social services technologies for their communities. We have pioneered a research-into-practice model that is grounded in university-level experiential learning for social good, with a focus on community listening. In plain language, we mentor college students as they learn by doing — engaging in research that they then act on with community partners, by building technology and running programs to address social problems.
What are your primary programs and activities?
We work with universities and individual students to create tailored experiential learning that addresses real problems. Every student we work with, whether they are part of our main internship program or doing FCI work in a capstone course, gets a personalized experience to make sure they are achieving educational goals in the fields of tech, research, and community engagement.
We proactively bring in volunteer mentors and community members, especially social workers, to co-design and deploy the projects with the students.
This is especially illustrated by our flagship project, the Florida Community Resource Map. Students from multiple universities did the primary and user research to scope the project, and Florida students have worked in interdisciplinary teams to iterate and shape the Map as a tool for social workers to find and manage resources about critical needs, including food and shelter. The pilot of the resource map is underway in Holden Heights, Orlando!
Why do you do it? What problem are you trying to solve?
According to both the Knight Foundation and the Rita Allen Foundation, civic tech — tech for social good — has not scaled because of underinvestment in core capacities. Florida Community Innovation answers their call by empowering young people to scope out innovative research and tech projects, with continuous community listening to make sure we are building with communities, not for them (this phrase comes from one of our mentors, the technologist Ben Trevino).
On the other side, for students, it is hard to break into tech careers and multiple literature reviews have demonstrated that first-generation colleges, women, and members of minority groups especially struggle to create a career in tech and research. These barriers — in both incentivizing the development of tech for good and providing mentorship to students to enter tech and research careers — are why FCI exists. We are a kinder, gentler introduction to tech, and we have routed students who would have pursued other jobs into a tech career path, while helping the students find funding for and actively build civic tech products and social good programs.
How are you unique?
The educational experience for civic technologists in training makes us unique. Unlike other internship programs that limit their creative input, we give students the freedom to take the lead on projects they are passionate about and work directly with community partners as leaders. By giving them this level of autonomy along with continuous mentorship, we empower them to create meaningful, lasting change in their local communities while honing their skills in an environment that fosters their independence and creativity. We are also distinguished by our commitment to community listening and an iterative process. Rather than the tech motto “move fast and break things,” we strive to listen and build WITH, not FOR, communities.
What does success look like?
Success for FCI is two-fold: it’s when we successfully implement and maintain a project in a community, and when our students go on to meaningful careers. We measure the projects through our community listening process and continual evaluation from graduate students in their capstone courses (where they do surveys and user interviews) and student outcomes through regular mentoring and tracking of their career outcomes.
Give one example of a constituent that has been positively impacted by your organization.
One of our former students, Meryem Yuksel, is a survivor of an abusive relationship. After she switched her major to computer science and began to excel academically, she gained the courage to break a years-long cycle of abuse. She joined FCI and enrolled in six course credits with us to use her software development skills to help domestic violence survivors who do not speak English have better access to resources, giving back to individuals who suffered struggles similar to her. After she graduated, Meryem worked with her FCI mentor and used letters of recommendation from FCI to assume a teaching position in computer science, continuing to give back.
What is your 3-5 year vision?
In 3-5 years, we hope that Florida Community Resource Map is scaled to every county in Florida, being used by every social and community worker in Florida to find and manage information about resources, with participation (and annual recurring grants) from community foundations, hospitals, and community organizations. The map will be maintained by FCI students, who will be funded and mentored not only by these organizations, but also funded and mentored by tech companies around the state who make FCI (building tech products alongside students and mentoring students) a keynote part of their corporate volunteer programs. This will also allow the students to continue to dream up and implement new projects, in addition to the resource map, with communities. We also hope that we have regular, set experiential learning classes at all public universities in the state of Florida, taught by a network of volunteer mentors who affiliate with FCI.
How do you use donor money to advance your mission and strengthen your organization?
Currently, all of FCI’s funds go to support students with semester honoraria and to community partners to compensate them for their time on certain projects. We have funded our organization so far through a mix of mini-grants from foundations and individual donations. We are currently going through the Rally Social Enterprise Accelerator to scope out how we can become financially sustainable through a subscription model for the resource map (for community centers to get extra features — beyond just the free ones — to find and manage information about food, housing, employment, and more) as well as through a corporate volunteer model with time and money volunteered on an annual basis by tech companies. As we ideate this process, we still have to rely on our current models to support the students and community partners, and that is what the prize money will be used for.
How does your organization support and promote diversity, equality and inclusion, both internally and externally?
Internally, we support diversity, equity and inclusion by paying the majority of our students a semester honorarium. Most social good internships are unpaid, and paying students has empowered more participation from first generation college students and other underserved groups. Externally, with our tech products, especially our flagship the Florida Community Resource Map, we are committed to advancing equity by reducing gaps in resource access — especially regarding housing, food access, and employment —across all communities, and we actively recruit partners that come from underserved communities, like Holden Heights in Orlando, to make sure our tech products serve those communities and reflect their values.