W
hen app developer Mark Mussman started a course to teach Cincinnatians how to build Android applications, he also saw opportunity to help out LGBTQ youth experiencing or on the verge of experiencing homelessness.
Mussman had recently launched the Creative App Project, or CAP513, a project dedicated to registering community members as app developers in the Google Play store. Kickstarted by a $10,000 grant from philanthropic organization People’s Liberty, Mussman knew he wanted part of his class to work with a nonprofit.
“I wanted to make sure that there was some sort of component that would reach out to nonprofits or at least an organization that does something good in the community,” Mussman says, “because I know it’s hard to get funding for technology stuff sometimes.”
As part of his long-standing involvement with the LGBTQ community, Mussman was aware that Cincinnati had been chosen as one of the two communities to participate in Safe and Supported, a federal program aimed at reducing LGBTQ homelessness by 2020.
That project, backed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), already involved about 40 local agencies. Led by Lighthouse Youth Services, Human Rights Campaign, Strategies to End Homelessness and GLSEN, it also has the ear of the Cincinnati Police Department, Mayor John Cranley’s office and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
These interested parties had been meeting over the previous year to develop a lengthy collaborative plan to combat the problem of LGBTQ youth homelessness.
“I knew for sure that this would be a good collaboration,” Mussman says.
Mussman knew Safe and Supported was interested in building an app to help connect homeless LGBTQ teens to resources in the community.
And both sides knew the problem was big enough to warrant all the energy going into the HUD-backed project. LGBTQ youth are overrepresented when it comes to homeless youth — they make up just 5 to 7 percent of the general population, but one study estimates that they make up to 40 percent of the youth homeless population.
When Mussman approached Melissa Meyer, director of the program, about using some of his class time to have his students build the app, she jumped at the chance.
“A large number of youth have access to smartphones on the street,” Meyer says. “And while they may not have minutes, they can access free wi-fi, using that to connect to services and to connect to home and to connect to case management and other things that are beneficial to them.”
Mussman and Meyer both knew building an app would include a wealth of information to help those who are already homeless or about to be homeless to find resources around the city. It could be a one-stop-shop for anything from finding a shelter, a free meal, free wi-fi or a public bathroom to information on how to start hunting for a job or what government documents they should take with them before leaving home.
According to Meyer, many of these kids get kicked out of their homes by parents who don’t accept their sexuality; others run away from abusive households or have aged out of the foster-care system. Often when the teens leave homes, they don’t have much, but research shows that more often than not, they have a smartphone. A 2013 Nielson poll found that 70 percent of teens ages 13 to 17 and 79 percent of young adults ages 18 to 24 own a smartphone.
Meyer spoke to Mussman’s students about the unannounced, unexpected philanthropic project they were about to take part in — working in teams of three to design a logo, name, tagline, description, layout and features for an app directed at connecting homeless LGBTQ youth with community resources, the first of its kind in the country.
“Melissa came, and I’m holding my breath the whole time like ‘Oh, let’s see what everyone does,’ ” Mussman says. “But everybody embraced the project, and the people I was most concerned about were the people that were actually the most excited about it.”
Following input from the Lighthouse Youth Services advisory board, Meyer gave the app-development students pointers on what to include in the app’s design — or, more importantly, leave out. Meyer instructed the students not to include any indication that the app was for LGBTQ youth.
“If you have people in a situation where they’re in a home where their parents might be trying to kick them out because they think they’re gay, or they’re in a space that’s not a safe space, we can’t have it saying ‘This is a gay app,’ ” Meyer says.
The students came up with a variety of ideas and designs, which Mussman and Meyer then took last week to the toughest critics of all: a group of 10 teenagers currently residing at the Sheakley Youth Center in Corryville.
The teens giggled over one team’s idea of naming the app “quiltbox,” which was designed to symbolize a box with all the necessary tools, like the resources one would find in the app. To them, it just sounded like a bad word. But they also offered input about what color schemes were most empowering to them, what resources they needed most and made a few important suggestions about how to get more teens to use the app.
“They pretty much said if there’s no customizable avatar, no customizable colors, if there’s no games and there’s no chat, we will not use it,” Mussman says.
Based on the group’s feedback, Mussman and Meyer ultimately decided to combine several groups’ logos together. One of the final logos chosen was that of student Derek Scacchetti’s team. Scacchetti, a graphic designer, joined the class to work on an app for cataloging buildings for historical preservation in Cincinnati. He said he really enjoyed working on the whole proposal and spent a lot of time carefully designing the simple arrow shape that will appear on the app.
“I think it’s an awesome project,” Scacchetti says. “I think it’s great to offer something like this to youth, especially youth that may be misunderstood.”
Mussman will now take the lead with finishing the rest of the app, which has yet to be named. It is scheduled to be launched along with the rest of the students’ personal apps on Sept. 14 at People’s Liberty in Over-the-Rhine.
Just this week, Mussman started working on customizable avatars, and he says he and Meyer are talking about putting in Buddypress, a Facebook-type program that would allow the kids to publicly post on each other’s walls, as an alternative to a private chat, which could attract traffickers looking for vulnerable kids.
Meyer says she hopes the app will be one of the elements developed from Safe and Secure that will extend to other parts of the country.
“Part of the goal of this HUD project is what develops here and in Houston will inform activities and perhaps grant funding for other cities to adopt our model,” she says. “It’s very possible that this app, which is likely the first of its kind in the country, as far as we know, will be something that could be utilized in other communities as well.” ©
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2015.
