Yesterday, the fourth and final day of the sessions organised by iSocial was held to let the fundation’s members get to know the immersive technology of Broomx. After the initial presentation made in the Innovation Coffees in social services, about twenty professionals from the member entities of iSocial have participated in the four sessions, held at the catalan start-up’s office in Poblenou (Barcelona). During these visits, they have been able to discover how the MK360 projector works and then discussed the possible uses in their work fields: dementias, intellectual disability, youth mental health, addictions, behavioural disorders and gender violence, among others.

The applications of immersive technology, which have long been present in sectors such as culture or tourism, have already shown good results in other sectors like health or education. The projector created by Broomx offers advantages that can allow this technology to spread to the social field more easily. Some studies at medical centres such as Vall d’Hebrón Hospital, the Guttmann Institute and Olot Hospital have proved the advantages that this new technology can offer both to users, their families and also to the professionals who take care of them.

The entities involved in these sessions will now jointly explore the possibility of testing specific applications of this immersive technology in their services, centres and resources.

IDEA Foundation’s board has recently approved to become a partner entity of iSocial. With this new addition, iSocial counts with  11 social entities members, including  founders, patrons and partners-couplers.

The IDEA Foundation (Insertment, Development, Accompanying) is an entity from Sabadell founded in 1985 that has as its fundamental goal the promotion and attention of children, teens and young people in social exclusion conditions. It develops its activity in the areas of education in leisure, non-regulated training, child protection and social diagnosis. Its activity takes place mostly in Catalonia, but it also carries out cooperation projects in Mozambique in the field of at-risk children.

By 2020, a total of 6,327 children, teens and young people have benefited from the socio-educative services and programs of the IDEA Foundation in Catalonia, through 218 professionals.

The IDEA Foundation has been at the same time, since 2019, one of the drivers behind iSocial’s FLAPP! project, and a large number of professionals and teenagers from the minors centers that it manages have participated in the co-creation workshops of this digital platform and in the pilot tests to experiment and evaluate it.

At the same time, IDEA professionals have participated as teachers in some of the training courses for municipal social services teams that iSocial Foundation has taught in recent years.

FLAPP!, the app for teenagers and young people with emancipation and inclusion needs developed by the iSocial Foundation, is increasingly arousing interest among social organizations, administrations and international organizations. After being born in Catalonia in 2019, with the support of the General Directorate of Child and Adolescent Care of the Catalan Government, and having been developed, tested and evaluated during the year 2020 in collaboration with the University of Barcelona and six Catalan social NGO, since 2021 the samples of interest from other territories and institutions have multiplied.

We highlight the presentations made to the network of municipalities FAMSI of Andalusia; to the Ministry of Social Policies of the Basque Government; to the National Institute for Social Action of Morocco; to the UNICEF-Mexico migration team; or to UNICEF-Europe. Likewise, in Catalonia it has aroused the interest not only of the collaborating entities of the protection system, but also of other entities linked to the programs of new opportunities or to programs of attention to the mental health of young people.

Another noteworthy fact is that we have also received proposals to develop variants of FLAPP! for other areas of social intervention. Based on these, the iSocial Foundation has decided to develop a variant of FLAPP! aimed at homeless adults, considering the interest expressed by some catalan municipalities such as Barcelona and Girona. This new app, which does not yet have a name, will be developed by iSocial during 2021 and 2022, and will offer people in a situation of homelessness and the Administrations and specialized entities, a set of digital tools to improve support and accompaniment. to these people and facilitate their empowerment. Like FLAPP!, it will be tested and evaluated in collaboration with a research team from the University of Barcelona and various NGO that are members of iSocial.

You can find more information about FLAPP! on the explanatory webpage of the project and also on the Web version of the application.