Greenside wiz’s app gives gems for generosity

David Shields’ app, Gem, a mobile payment system and a digital mobilisation platform for volunteers, was the incentive behind the recent massive Greenside cleanup operation along Gleneagles and Greenway roads, Rosebank Killarney Gazette reported.

“Essentially, we reward people for doing good deeds, whether it’s for a business, at an event or just the community at large,” Shields explained. He came up with the idea with his friend and business partner, Camilo Ramada, and they have, for now, hosted a series of pilots to gauge how the public responds to Gem.

Their apps turns sponsorship from various organisations into “gems” and shares them out between those organisations, so when volunteers offer up their time and effort to these organisations, they are rewarded with the equivalent number of gems. Volunteers can then choose to spend their gems on data, airtime, movie tickets and even prepaid electricity.

Shields said he and Ramada, who has been involved in mobile payments for 10 years, built Gem on to the software, Cyclos, because it was a payment platform.

“We use it with time as a commodity as opposed to money as a commodity,” Shields added.

The partners have held pilots in Hogsback, in the Eastern Cape, Sweetwaters, in the south of Johannesburg and the cleanup in Greenside. With more upcoming projects on their schedule, Shields said they had spotted potential bugs and planned possible improvements to perfect the product before launching it on to the market.

He added: “Everybody wants to do something for the greater good. There are always these ideas, these ambitions, but people are often just bogged down by everyday, mundane activities.”

“So we created a platform that enables people to go that extra mile and make it convenient for them and to reward them. Before you know it you’ve got the community networking and interacting with each other and helping each other in ways they wouldn’t have done before.”

– Caxton News Service