Social Worker on Mobile - a new application from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering that can help in an unfavorable life situation

Karel Zavadil, a student of the bachelor's program in Software Engineering and Technology, at Faculty of Electrical Engineering, developed a unique application Social Worker on Mobile, which aims to provide individuals in an unfavorable social situation with relevant professional assistance by filling out a simple questionnaire. The application was developed by the student Karel Zavadil himself within his diploma work, supervised by Ing. Martin Komárek from the Department of Computers. Its use is very intuitive. The application offers the user a number of simple questions and, based on the chosen answers, evaluates the situation and suggests further action, including contacts to specific workplaces in the area as social service providers, authorities and non-profit organizations.

The idea for this non-profit project arose in the head of Mgr. Jakub Marek, Ph.D., a social worker who teaches at the Hussite Theological Faculty of Charles University. The project underwent an acceleration program for social technology startups in the Laboratory of the Vodafone Foundation and at the same time received a contribution from the Vodafone Foundation for the further development of the application.

He received a grant from Vodafone for its implementation and approached Karel Zavadil, FEE student and his friend, to program the application. "The vision of the project was to create a free platform that will fully cover the issue of basic social counseling, connect the world of information technology with the world of social work and will operate on a democratic community principle. We wanted to offer people a tool that is not dependent on the state or one particular organization, and on the contrary is based on the ideals of civil society and good intentions, "said Karel Zavadil.

This is one of the reasons why the authors would like to invite other non-profit organizations to collaborate and create a community of experts who would be involved in formulating content for the relevant areas of social work in which they have experience and expertise. In the content part, there is still a lot of room for improvement and extension to other areas of social services, which are now missing (eg the issue of prisoners and released, abused people, alternative family care or the integration of foreigners).

The Social Worker on Mobile application can be used by people in social crisis as well as by social workers, government officials working with individuals in social crisis and anyone who wants to seek help for another person. Since the end of 2019, when the authors published it for free download for the Android operating system, it has been used by over 1,500 users. It is run daily by an average of 30 people, of which about 10 are new users and 20 are returning. In the future, in addition to acquiring new users, the project authors would like to offer an iOS version and program new features such as blind mode, offline version, navigation to searched locations on a map or a marketplace for offers and demands for things and services and many other ideas.