Passport for Good recently launched a new mobile app, allowing users to easily capture their community engagement experiences and share their data with schools and employers.
“This mobile application is years in the making, and was created by an in-house team of full-stack engineers,” said Gayle Farman, Passport for Good’s founder and president. “We are thrilled to be able to offer this robust functionality and assist users in quantifying and sharing the good they do in their communities.”
The mobile application, available in the iTunes and Android app stores, allows users to join institutions and groups; view institution and group calendars; log and submit engagement hours to groups; see the status of all stamp requests, and export a passport that includes a history of approved community engagement hours. Supervisors are able to supervisors to review and approve hours for events; log their own personal community engagement hours; and export their own personal passports.
The software and app capture three types of community engagement: community service, career development, and participation in school activities.
Passport for Good also made improvements to its software, redesign the user interface; restructuring and rebuilding the database; enhancing the dashboard and reporting functions; creating an institution-wide calendar; and allowing for a recording of attendance at institutional events.
“The software and mobile app provide an easy way for subscribing organizations to monitor a wide range of personal and professional activities in the community and generate reports that showcase authentic individual and collective experiences,” said Farman. “Passport for Good provides new data that celebrates the good and raises awareness of community need so that everyone can feel a sense of connectedness.”
Passport for Good was selected by the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) as an approved vendor to provide its service to public school districts across New York State. Passport for Good is the first and only software in its category statewide to be awarded this contract.
The service is in use in several school districts in the Capital Region, including Albany, Ballston Spa, Bethlehem, and North Colonie, as well as Green Tech High Charter School and Ithaca College.
Farman said that the Passport for Good platform captures a wide range of verified community experience – including internships — and provides comprehensive data on the positive impact of those experiences on students, the school, and the community. The service automates manual paper systems, saving time for students, teachers and administrators and providing an easy way to monitor requirements. “The organizations are able to generate reports that showcase authentic individual and collective experiences outside of the classroom and helps schools to better share resources that were previously in silos. It also helps the students to reflect on their experiences and document their service and skills for college admissions officers and prospective employers,” Farman said. “And of course, the service benefits non-profit organizations that are in need of community support.”
Farman is preparing her company for rapid expansion in New York State and beyond, and will be marketing its product to K-12 public schools, private schools, colleges and corporations. Farman and her team attended recent conferences held by the Council of School Superintendents, the School Administrators Association of New York State and the New York State School Boards Association in New York City and has plans to attend upcoming conferences to be held and the New York State School Counselors Association.
About Passport For Good
Passport for Good offers a first-in-class, subscription-based Software as a Service (SaaS) to address the growing challenge faced by schools, corporations and the criminal justice system to track time spent by individuals and groups performing community service activities. The robust tracking system and mobile application assists non-profit organizations by allowing them to communicate their needs. It also centralizes data, automates the community service experience, and aggregates data across individuals and events to allow organizations to demonstrate community impact and to enhance linkages between service learning, skill development, and academic and career exploration. Prototyped by students at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, it is now powered by a full team of senior software engineers. The company was formed in 2016 by Gayle Farman of Slingerlands, NY. For more information, visit www.passportforgood.com.