Fundación Sanders wants to help schools prevent bullying. Our social mission is to help children at risk of social exclusion, and kids who are victims of bullying are suffering from this abuse. They miss classes, they have lower grades, they lose faith, and in the worst cases, they are at risk of committing suicide. Families suffer as well. We have been developing an app, SchoolMode, that any school can implement to fight this problem.
We are collaborating with Sagrado de Corazon which is a network of 15 schools across Spain. The goal is to develop and pilot our App in April 2016 with one of their schools in Madrid (1600 students). We also have partner schools in the Czech Republic and Austria that want to pilot the App this year.
We need an angel investor to help us fund the development of the App and make it possible to market/sell the App to schools on a global basis. The investment we seek is 50.000€ and it would give our angel investor 35-50% equity depending on the conditions. I am the founder and I will contribute 10.000€ in the new entity if we can raise the initial amount of funding we are seeking.
SchoolMode was recently selected as one of 36 high potential innovators in education by Fundación Botín (2015) in a competition with more than 300 projects in Spain with a focus on improving education. We have already completed a three month intensive business model development program.
Here is our Pitch:
Current Market Tools to Prevent Bullying in Schools: there are bully prevention apps that kids can download on their smartphones to stop bullying. Kids can take pictures or video tape an incident at school and then report this anonymously to the school. Kids can also call or chat with a social service help line. Schools are paying money for this service. If the issue is about cyber bullying, kids can take a picture and report this to the schools.
Big Challenges:
1) Studies show that 30% of bullying happens in the classroom and the majority of schools do not permit students to bring their smartphones to class. Therefore, the current apps cannot provide a comprehensive bully prevention strategy.2) Current apps have no strategy to prevent Cyberbullying and cannot be used to help identify students who may be responsible for the abuse.
Why is SchoolMode Innovative?
1) Smartphone control technology that gives teachers the ability to temporarily block any student's smartphone from accessing popular social media apps or putting controls on web browsing while in the classroom. This creates a tremendous opportunity by allowing students to use their smartphones in the classroom for educational purposes and also make it possible to anonymously report the 30% of bullying abuse that may go unreported.
2) Detection Science technology that works by registering any smartphone a student brings to school in order to create a digital fingerprint of their camera device. This innovation creates an opportunity to trace the source of cyberbullying images (eg. Instagram) or offensive YouTube videos back to a specific smartphone device.
3) Locator technology that works by helping a teacher determine if there are any unregistered smart devices in their classroom. Wearable technology, smart glasses, the iwatch, and now smart shoes (imagine the potential abuse of shoes with cameras) are all new devices that can take photos or videos and are accessible to students. Schools and teachers need technology to help them stay aware of the potential abuses of emerging and undetectable smart devices.
There is a social return to this investment, but we have also projected a yearly financial return on investment of 30% within two years. We believe this is achievable because of the large market of schools in Europe, the US, and Latin America that would benefit from this app. There will be competition in the market and It is necessary to establish a leadership position early, but we have already been developing connections with school systems in Spain and we have a strategic partnership with a United Nations (UNESCO) global organization called OPEDUCA who has committed to introducing our app to their network of schools in more than seven countries.
Our non-profit has more than five years of experience working with regional governments in Spain and several of the leading social non-profit organizations like Fundación Tomillo, Associación Paideia, and Las Salesianos. We have a strong technology partner, Fusion Communities with offices in Spain and San Francisco, and they have built the fan app for Real Madrid and are creating apps for Banco Santander's Santander University network. We are supported by the Impact Hub and participate in their European scaling program so we have access to teams and resources in eight European countries....
Very best,
Rob
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Robert Lee Sanders
Email: rsandershi@gmail.com
