Hope Centre Case Study
About The Hope Centre
The Hope Centre is a helping centre for people experiencing challenges with housing, access to food, counselling, and other essentials.
The Situation:
With changing regulations limiting in-person interactions, people who usually could drop in to the Hope Centre needed other ways to access the information and services provided.
Many people accessing the Hope Centre services do not have reliable email addresses, physical addresses or phone numbers so it is hard to reach them with the needed information about food bank access, housing programs, etc.
Asking for help can intimidate some people away from contacting the centre directly, or asking follow-up questions to clarify the information.
Hope Centre receives donated smartphones to share with people accessing the services - these devices are not on a phone plan, but do connect to wifi.
An app with Apps Canada was the perfect solution, as all information is cloud-based, can be readily updated and can easily be shared with anyone via a custom QR code to access the app.
Results
The app saves time and resources that staff were using to communicate repetitive information, allowing them to have more meaningful connections with the clients.
The app makes the information available for people to access in their own time, as many times as needed.
“In the first six months, over 100 users downloaded the new app. In addition, we can check in the navigation report that most of these users are looking for information about our programs and services. Meaning that our goal to add a new tool to access information about our services is working exactly how we predicted.”
App Features
Push notifications to communicate key events or dates such as vaccine clinics or tax support
Showcases information about the Resources, Programs and Services for both donors and the people accessing the centre
Community resource directory acts as a ‘buddy’ for people who are not at the centre but need to find the information
Built-in mapping allows clients to easily navigate to the services from any location
The ‘Save’ feature allows app users to create a private, customized short list of the key information that they need from the app
