Svyatoslav Nayda named as the first-ever winner of SoftServe Social Incubator

SoftServe Social Incubator, which is the innovative educational platform to implement IT projects fostering urbanization and improving of citizens' well-being. Totally, 7 project ideas were admitted to the program, letting their creators attend the workshops on product and project management, marketing, fundraising and various tech nuances to launch a product.

Equipped with the new knowledge and skills, the participants updated their project demos and implementation plans to present them to the jury committee made out of Lubomyr Khodak, the Head of SoftServe DevCenter in Ivano-Frankivsk, Igor Popaduk, the Head of Investment Policies at Ivano Frankivsk City Council, Maryana Ozorovych, the Head of Ivano-Frankivsk IT Cluster, Alina Tokmylenko, the Growth and Development Lead at "Warm City" platform.

The main prize of 25000 UAH provided by SoftServe's Charity Fund "Open Eyes" has been awarded to Svyatoslav Naida for the project "Safe tourism". The latter is about launching the tech-backed informational platform with the extended communication functions for navigating in the Carpathians. That will be enabled by combining radio connection, GPS navigation and IT. A mobile app and a website, it will help users to plot the route and choose right equipment and provision. The users will also get the notifications about weather conditions as well as warnings of the dangers. The system will also call for help in case of need.

«Having wide experience in hiking and tourism, I can rate Carpathian navigation system as unreliable and poorly managed. Once, me and my friend got lost in the winter mountains and we were on the edge of death. That story proved me how dangerous the mountains could be for beginners. I wanted to change that and reached out to my colleagues from the local NGO "Radio Amateurs’ Club "Green Wave". We synergized our efforts and launched a number of projects to make tourism experience in the Carpathians more attractive, informative and safe. What we lacked was the knowledge of PM, and that was what I eventually gained at SoftServe Social Incubator. After the learning sessions, we developed a step-by-step plan to implement the project and find investors. We expect the beta-version of the system to be launched by the end of this year", says Svytoslav Nayda. Lubomyr Khodak, the Head of SoftServe DevCenter in Ivano-Frankivsk also shares: "The launch of SoftServe Incubator has proved that Ivano-Frankivsk hosts a dozen of activists who are eager to sacrifice their time and efforts to improve the lives of the residents of both, the city and the region. Their ideas are countless and the support of business is vital for their realization. And at SoftServe, we are more than ready to share the expertise we own and we definitely plan to expand our cooperation with the local community of Ivano-Frankivsk».

Here are the rest of the projects successfully launched at SoftServe Social Incubator:

• Urban Space Radio: the local based media sharing the stories about the city and the people living there. One of the Warm City's project, it’s now a integrative element of the public restaurants chain “Urban Space”
• A mobile application informing the citizens of the upcoming events and public spaces with the arranged time and location configurations
• The project aiming at integrating the mobile education and AR into the chemistry classes at public schools
• The project "One Hour of Charity" to raise costs for the severely ill kids
• The project to further develop the IoT Laboratory at University named after King Danylo Halytsky
• The platform mediating the sharing of cloths, and house items with those in need (vulnerable families, social institutions, charity funds etc.).