Tech4SocialChange: Technology for all

Abstract

Universities and other educational institutions are sometimes accused of not being involved in real world problems, focusing more on the scientifically value of the work produced and not on the humanitarian value. A way of encapsulating the second with the first is the main goal of the Tech4SocialChange that is described here. An innovative database/repository of challenges with real impact in the world is created and given access to people with skills and knowledge to tackle them. Also the work made by researches can be stored and used in a project and the researcher gets recognition for it by becoming referenced in that project. A web application has been built as a prototype for this process and can be accessed in www.tech4socialchange.org. It has been planned and developed by a team of students and researchers of the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra and is currently being constantly altered according to feedback received by the testers in the same team. This paper presents an application that aims to help people that face certain challenges every day and motivate those that have the skillset, to tackle these challenges, into doing so.