Four AAU business students are developing an app for women and LGBTQ members which will allow users to rate the safety of different places on an interactive map of Prague.
The team, consisting of third-year students Shania Rodriguez, Liza Potts, Neha Pande, and Abby Witbeck, were partially inspired after a club in Prague’s Old Town shut down after allegations of clubgoers being roofied.
“The reason a lot of us knew about [the club] was because we talked to each other about it. And there’s a lot of people who might have not heard that, because word-of-mouth can only go so far. And this app would allow that for multiple things, not just clubs or bars or restaurants, but also alleyways that are sketchy,” Pande said.
The app, called Solace, will allow users to pinpoint streets, establishments, and other areas to rate their feeling of safety on a scale of one to five, and review their experience. The goal is to create an interactive map that can guide marginalized people navigating Prague.
“Nobody really knows the experiences or what other women and people in the LGBTQ community go through other than those people. So we thought it was a good way for everyone to kind of help each other out in the moments where they feel like the most unsure,” Rodriguez said.
The students started creating the app to compete in the Czech Junior Achievement contest as part of their entrepreneurship course, but were dissatisfied with the profit-orientated design of the class.
“A lot of the business school that we’ve gone through so far teaches a lot about profit, and it’s very oriented towards what you get out of it … that was the approach that we were trying to go against. And so we found ourselves in a position where we care about this, and we think that it has social capital instead of normal, monetary capital, and that was more important to us,” Potts said.
While winning the Czech Junior Achievement contest would bring exposure to the project, the students have been focused on raising money independently by collaborating with the non-profit organization Pangea and using social media for fundraising.
Additionally, the group filmed an advertisement with students from FAMU, which shows potential users how the app will work. The video can be viewed here.
“The timeline is in the works right now … because developing an app is really expensive,” Rodriguez said.“So hopefully, with what this competition will provide, and also this commercial, is exposure to bigger donors and investors that can actually help us create the app, not just promote it.”
