Acorn is an organisation that believes in “grassroots community organising to run adaptive, locally-driven campaigns in our communities and cities.” The team at Acorn consists of community leaders, members and activists running groups and campaigns across the UK. Acorn believes that the inequalities and indignities we face as part of our personal and social problems are about power.

Acorn feels that the only way we ever see meaningful action is if “we can counter the power of money and big politics with the power of people taking collective action.” This is a view that we also support and have followed Acorn’s work within our community in Bristol for some time.

They feel that online tools and resources can be used to “increase and leverage” power within our communities and to help facilitate offline actions. When Nick Ballard a local organiser for Acorn approached us to discuss an idea he had for a “panic button” mobile application to alert members and groups of friends about illegal evictions and street harassment we were happy to assist.

Being a socially responsible business ourselves we understood the importance of an application that allowed users to send alerts to a group of friends in the event of illegal eviction or other such emergencies. Acorn wanted the app to work across both iPhone and Android platforms.

We knew that this project would require a specialist development team used to work with organisations such as Acorn and who had a strong skillset in mobile application development. We were working on a consultative basis and took the specifications/ requirements for the project before approaching both international and domestic development houses.

Working closely with Nick we searched for the best match for Acorn in line with their budget expectations and requirements, working as a point of contact and beginning initial conversations with prospective companies before finally opening up a dialogue with City Web Consultants in London.

With City web’s experience around mobile application development and most importantly with working with organisations in the same space as Acorn we knew they’d be a great fit, offering not only technical services but support for crowdfunding and fundraising activities for their project.

Acorn’s project is still in early stages but has the potential to become a solution that is used nationally and for us that’s exciting. Now more than ever it’s important that we stand together in our communities against injustices and always strive to do the right thing.

We’ll be sharing fundraising links on our Facebook and Twitter accounts when Acorn has got that side of things together just to show a little solidarity with some of our favourite people and because we believe that everyone deserves their place on earth.