Through innovative application the city of Gdansk helps homeless animals

Through innovative application the city of Gdansk helps homeless animals
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Innovative cities of the world are coming up with innovative animal shelter and care solutions. In Gdansk, an application for adopting pets from city shelter is a ground-breaking project, in which the city hall, hacktivists and a private company cooperate to solve social issues with IT tools. Cooperation of these entities is the model of action we are striving for in Gdansk. This way we solve problems and create innovative solutions together, sharing ownership of projects.

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Na4Łapy ("On4Legs") application connects animals residing in a city shelter with their future owners. It was conceived at the end of 2015, when a Gdansk branch of Code for Poland, a twin initiative with Code for America, was established. Coders and geeks from all corners of the world were gathering in STARTER business incubator, looking for IT tools solving social issues. The group of skilled IT individuals were discussing ideas which could improve quality of life in Gdansk.

That's when an idea was conceived to solve some social problems by allowing better interaction between potential pet owners and a shelter. My goal is to catch up with some well-developed societies, where residents, instead of buying pets, adopt them from city shelters. This goal can be reached by making the process friendlier and easier.

Thus a process had started in my city to bring together city volunteers, private enterprise and city officials to brainstorm, communicate and cooperate on a project. A breakthrough plan for our new shelter came from GdanskLAB, an informal group of partners from various city departments who work together on new ideas, improvements and innovation.

I observed the process with great interest and watched how the ideas were being negotiated into a reality. Finally, after many trials, the product was ready. I find the application easy to use and helpful. And it enjoys an added value of being created by multi-partner team.

We need the animal adoption process to be as short as possible and we knew from the beginning that technology could help. It is a brilliant idea, and quite a success that a group of city volunteers, including city hall employees, developed such an application.

2016-06-23-1466670846-1390447-konferencjana4lapyjpinkas.jpgThe team who created the application. Photo: J. Pinkas

Na4Łapy appears to be a success, because it has proved how to reach city goals for the in a co-operative model. I am sure there will be other, similar initiatives, developing in Gdansk.

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