GB Queen’s Award Buddy

By

Rebecca, Ceara, Matthew M, Matthew S, Calum

• WHO? Girls’ Brigade members

• WHAT? GB girls taking part in the Queen’s

Award programme

• WHEN? Takes place over two years between

the ages of 16 and 25

• WHERE? Girls’ brigade International

• WHY? To aid organisation and help girls

working on their Queen’s award

In the Girls’ brigade, many girls who work on their Queen’s

award certificate find it extensive hard work. This leads to

many girls not having time to do it, and they give up, losing

their qualification. Some GB groups have a dropout rate as

high as 20%.

THE BIG QUESTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How can we lower dropout rates and help girls through their

Queen’s award?

The Queen’s award is made up of varied components which are often hard to keep track of. If we can help girls to

organise their work, we can make it easier for them to complete it, lowering the number of dropouts and

increasing the number of girls achieving the qualification.

Our Team, Opis, is developing an app for mobile phones

to help GB members doing the Queen’s award who have

trouble organising and keeping track of the numerous

sections of the award, so that more girls are able to earn

their qualification.

Our target market is GB members between the ages of 16

and 25, who are taking part in the queen’s award programme.

From talking with some of these girls, we discovered that

they agreed with our problem: it was almost impossible to

organise and work through the award in addition to their

normal, busy lives. They thought the app was a great idea that would really help any girls who tried it.

Through research, we did not find any other technological alternatives,

probably due to the very specific market. The GB currently provides paper booklets for recording work, but this is easily lost, broken or

mistaken, and still doesn’t provide any way of notifying deadlines or tracking progress through the programme. In addition, the use of a

mobile app will reduce paper use, helping the environment.

Our main selling point for the app is that the app is

completely unique for this programme. There are

currently no other similar solutions.

There are four main features to the app:

• Hours counter

• Word counter

• Reminders

• Secure chat function

Login

Main Menu

Chat Hours Counter

Word Counter

Reminders

Register

The data needs to be technically viable. The data

must be protected, as the app will have a chat

function with under 18’s and therefore they need to

be protected. This will be done using the login, as

GB provided login and passwords ensure that only

GB girls and approved leaders will be able to use the

app.

The business model we have chosen is the parallel stream model. This means that the users themselves will pay a small amount of money

(about 69p) to be able to use the app. All possible users we interviewed agreed that they would be willing to pay a small amount

of money such as this for the app.

Within the Girl’s brigade organisation, there is already a newsletter in place which is distributed to officers throughout the year. We would

hope that we could spread the word about the app using this medium, as well as the GB headquarters possibly recommending the app to girls

entering the queen’s award. On top of this, the GB organisation website could be used to inform new users about the app.

App Design Mock-up While creating this app, we had very positive reactions from

all the apps for good experts that we spoke to. We also

spread this idea around some of the GB groups we are in

contact with, who were equally enthusiastic. We would hope

to create this app soon in order to help our possible users,

with the extra possibility of expanding the app for the use of

the parallel organisation, the Boy’s Brigade, with their similar

programme, the president’s award.