1. Carpooling portal

    What problem are you solving?:

    Warsaw is a big city. Every day there are many traffic jams (every morning and afternoon/evening ). It takes a lot of time to get from the suburbs to the city center (and vice versa in the evening ) . But in 80% of cases there is only 1 person per car!

    Describe your idea:

    It will be mini social networking site, which would allow people to find the partners for carpooling.
    It will allow to find through the site, other people who live in the neighbourhood and who have to go to work like we. This site and this project would also affect the integration of local community:
    In Warsaw people living on the suburbs often even don’t know their neighbours!

    What country will this operate in?: Poland

    Who are you?:

    I’m a student of social sciences.
    I just have this idea.
    I have no skills and no experience
    in creating websites.
    I’m looking for the partner (team? ) to this project, but actually I’m alone.

    Anyway I have the vision and the POWER to do this project!!!

  2. Fund rising

    What problem are you solving?:

    NGO’s quite often can use SMS Premium services or online credit card payments as a means of collecting funds. Unfortunatelly the PSMS is very expensive – nearly 50% of the amount is taken by the mobile operators. It is possible to reduce significantly this percentage if one common organisation would negotiate the rates on behalf of the associated NGO’s.

    Describe your idea:

    I think that it could be beneficial for NGO if they have an access to a site that would provide them with technical, law, organisational expertise regarding collection of the funds: online and mobile. It could decrease their costs of obtaining the funds and could improve communication with the grantors

    What country will this operate in?: Poland

    Who are you?:

    I’m an individual person that gained some experience in payment processing. I used to work with charitable foundations and I think that this kind of solution could them.

  3. Initiative takeover

    What problem are you solving?:

    We struggle with lack of knowledge about what our local representatives (can) do and with lack of communication between people and their local representatives. They appear every few years to kindly ask for vote (one-way, temporary communication), but other than that – we don’t even know their names and activities. So we don’t trust them and we don’t vote, generally. Especially young people don’t.

    Describe your idea:

    We’d like to create a local social network, based on Facebook Connect, with How-tos, and Wiki. It would simply let everyone discuss, and post open/private, cathegorized (security, health, …) and localized geographically question (where is your problem, show it on the map), which would automatically send out an e-mail to the local representatives. It wouldn’t basically differ much from what is theyworkforyou.com or writetothem.com. I cannot tell if we could get records of how our District / City Deputies vote, but we can definitely get information what are their areas of interest (commitees). That’s – still – a start!

    What country will this operate in?: Poland

    Who are you?:

    PODGORZE.PL is a non-profit “Think globally, act locally” kind of an organization, localized on a right bank of Vistula river in Krakow, Poland. We work hard to make this small part of the world a better place to live. We started from a sratch in 2002 with a little wiki-website and one event a year. Today our strenghts are: everyday news, 1 event a month, good media relations and great public trust. Our weaknesses: small team for big dreams, lack of money and no professional management. Having said that – we’re desperate to make a difference, so here’s is another attempt…:) Take care and let us know what you think of our ideas! And best of luck to everyone else:)