Every year, hundreds of NGOs and social workers take up various projects to eradicate social issues. Ever imagine the scale of the impact if all of them could collaborate? Tanya Elizabeth Ken, a 16-year-old from Chennai, did and she developed an app called Baton to help organisations work together to ensure maximum social impact.
Tanya already has several achievements under her belt, like being the Young Ambassador of Ariel Foundation International, Geneva and Student Ambassador of Technovation, USA. And this teenage tech enthusiast has always been of the opinion that technology should be used to make life easier for everyone.
Her idea for the Baton app stemmed from the baton that's used in a relay race. "In relay, you have a group of athletes who are required to pass the baton from one to the other in order to win the race. Similarly, Baton is an app that empowers institutes, NGOs, social workers and corporates to collaborate through a unique baton handover process that is designed to ensure optimal social impact. Here, the athletes are replaced by social workers, NGOs, corporates and volunteers. We called our team Social Relay," says Tanya.
Explaining how it works, Tanya says, "If there are 10 milestones or goals set by an NGO to create social impact, today, there is no tool that enables institutes, NGOs, social workers and corporates to collaborate towards achieving the end goal. As a result, an NGO does not collaborate with another NGO, institutes don't collaborate with other institutes and so on. It's a broken system. Baton fixes this by bringing these key stakeholders together achieving social impact. The uniqueness lies in the fact that any entity can join at any time and run to the next milestone. So, we are able to optimise social work productivity and ensure social impact," he says.
