Catch 22 – Finalist in the Google Impact Challenge
Posted: 23rd Jul 2014
The social business Catch22 is one of ten finalists in the UK short-listed for the 2014 Google Impact Challenge. Winners will be selected by a panel including entrepreneur and Dragon, Peter Jones CBE, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. The award recognises the ground-breaking potential of Catch22’s social action app that supports young people to gain work skills and make a difference in their community.
Today there are over 800,000 young people out of work and around 200,000 have been so for over a year. Employers are struggling to fill the 655,000 vacancies with the skills they want.
Catch22’s app aims to bridge the gap between young people and employers by using social action to build evidence of the skills that employers look for: teamwork, organisation, communication and the drive to make things happen.
The app is new but already has 700 users, registered through Catch22’s own projects, The National Citizen Service (NCS) Network and partner organisations such as UK Youth and Affinity Sutton.
The app is part of a programme of work seeking to rethink public services and explore how integrating technology into our services can support young people, families and offenders. Catch22’s relationship with digital is about putting the user first, making better decisions and driving a more person-centred approach to public services. One that has the potential to deliver better outcomes, reduce costs and reduce wasted energy of complex bureaucratic structures that serve the provider but have little transformational impact on the service user.
Vote for Catch22’s social action app here:
https://globalimpactchallenge.withgoogle.com/uk2014
Chris Wright, Chief Executive, Catch22 said:
‘We are really excited that Google has recognised the potential of our app. Catch22 is all about supporting young people to make positive transformations in their life. Google’s investment will help us to harness technology to support the thousands of young people denied employment opportunities because they lack work experience, the right connections or the confidence to articulate their skills. Our app empowers young people to create change in their community and in doing so demonstrate their skills to employers. The investment from Google will help Catch22 realise its ambition of reaching out to even more young people and to invest in the technology to make it engaging and relevant to young people.’
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