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An online social networking app, solely dedicated to empowering the community through voluntary work, aims to encourage people to spend one per cent of their time to positively impact the kingdom.
Bahraini one% mobile application was founded by Bahraini entrepreneur father-son duo Fawaz Algosaibi, a businessman involved in various fields such as logistics, distribution, manufacturing and tourism, and Fahad, a start-up investor experienced at working with start-ups across different industries.
Fawaz had been playing around with the idea for several years and Fahad helped translate that vision to reality.
Fahad said: “We began working on the project during the beginning of 2019 and launched it publicly in September. Our big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) is to help one billion people donate one per cent of their time on a regular basis.”
The events on their platform are being initiated by a wide variety of people with different goals in mind.
He added: “We aim to facilitate events that enable people to donate their time, as opposed to money. Any kind of event aimed at helping a good cause is welcome as long as it’s not connected to religion or politics, because we want to focus on things that bring everyone together.
“For example, we have large scale beach clean-ups that are organised by Cleanup Bahrain, but also smaller scale beach clean-ups that are facilitated by individuals with a desire to clean a particular shoreline. It’s been great to see the variety of events coming up recently, everything from animal welfare to caring for the elderly.”
The company’s first event was run in partnership with Cleanup Bahrain on World Cleanup Day last September. Within a span of two hours, with logistical support from the company, a whopping 1,752 volunteers, managed to collect 10,274kg worth of waste from 12 different beaches around Bahrain.
According to the company, the app currently has about 2,000 users and more than 1,900 volunteering hours have been logged over the course of 127 events.
Registration takes about three minutes and users have an option to pick their interests, including environmental, educational and economic empowerment. The app then provides each user with a list of upcoming events as well as groups they can join to connect with like-minded individuals.
The one% app is available for download on Android and iOS.
