Helping Go is a community interest company, recently established to drive digital improvements in the voluntary transport sector in Scotland. Our goal is to modernise practises in this sector and to raise the profile of micro-volunteering with your car.

Volunteer Car Schemes (VCS) offer support for people in the community who do not have access to safe and affordable transport. Unfortunately, with ongoing public sector funding constraints and cuts to bus services being seen across Scotland, car schemes are often finding that demand for lifts cannot be met. It’s therefore crucial to support the efficient running of these schemes as well as awareness raising (with both potential volunteers and those in need of a lift).

ShareLab Scotland funding has enabled us to develop our initial digital offering. Currently developing a prototype, we hope to progress to the point that it becomes a proven concept and can be rolled out nationally.

Helping Go is already seeing positive signs of how the voluntary car scheme sector can benefit from the initiative, with several car schemes engaging and expressing interest in working with corporations as well as using a booking platform and receiving digital best practice support.

We recently undertook a network survey with 45% of respondents saying they would welcome digital support and training and 40% were interested in exploring working with organisations to increase their pool of volunteer drivers.

We have sent out our first newsletter to the network we have established, to around 80 recipients. The newsletter was well received, particularly the Google Map which enables people to easily find their local scheme and for us to identify where there is no local provision. Where there is no local scheme, we will work with communities to help establish provision in that area.

‘I felt motivated to take positive action to help vulnerable people live the best life they can, after volunteering for a local car scheme myself. During my time volunteering I could see where improvements could be made to help schemes, and their users, from my experience of working in the digital sector.

I am very pleased that Helping Go is already making good progress with our interactive website, raising the profile of volunteer car schemes through social media and having signed up to the Digital Participation Charter.

Helping Go is also now a member of the Community Transport Association, MaaS (Mobility as a Service) Scotland, Social Enterprise Scotland and Social Enterprise UK. We feel that relationships are key and Helping Go is taking a very outward looking approach, ensuring its offering complements existing support for the sector.

We are pleased with the level of engagement they are now achieving with the sector and have identified key partners to test their technology with. The initial version of the collaborative digital platform has been developed and after internal testing is being rolled out to car scheme partners.’

Helping Go believes that this initiative will deliver a real benefit to car schemes and to the health and mental wellbeing of vulnerable users; building stronger, more connected, communities. However, progress has not been linear, which is perhaps to be expected when developing a new technology for a geographically disparate and relatively under the radar audience.

The ‘Helping Go’ branding and digital technology has brought an up to date look and feel to a sector that is historically seen as being for the older generation. The digital platform is key to underpinning modern methods of interacting that many take as a given these days.

However, it has been harder than anticipated to convince some schemes of the benefits of digital technology and some are wary of new technologies which will inevitably bring a change to their operating model, which may have been in place for years with no particular issue. Other schemes believe that they are just too small to justify its use.

At the opposite end of the scale, large schemes tend to be part of a much larger multi-disciplinary organisation and are not particularly keen to engage with a small start-up for their technology solutions. It has been particularly difficult to demonstrate the benefits of working with us with, as yet, no fully developed product to demonstrate. The old analogy of the chicken and egg springs to mind.

As a result of the above we have found that partners identified at the application stage have been less enthusiastic to engage than hoped and new partners with a drive for improvement have come forward instead.

This has required a change to the original strategy and we are now operating over a larger geographic spread than planned, but this has been very helpful in understanding a different set of issues than originally identified - particularly the needs of rural communities and a range of user groups, such as those with learning disabilities, specific medical conditions and carers.

We have readily taken up Nesta’s support and found the training courses on user centred design particularly useful. These helped the team to focus on the “why”, i.e. the end users, rather than being led by the digital platform itself.

This has resulted in an increased awareness of the social issues that some users face and has meant the team has become more focused and driven to develop a product and service that enables schemes to achieve positive outcomes by reducing wide-spread social exclusion in communities.

We are continuing to develop the product alongside partners and we expect the full prototype to be ready by the Autumn as well as putting the finishing touches to our Digital Support Best Practice Guide, which will be available on the website shortly. Digital training for car schemes will also commence soon.

Engagement with the corporate sector will now become a priority focus as the initiative moves into the second half of its first year and as demand for this service grows from car schemes.

Helping Go are already looking for funding for future years of operations, once the product has been proven and hopes to see volunteer car schemes using their platform by the end of 2019.

To support Helping Go or to find out about how you can volunteer in your local area, visit the Helping Go website or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

Car schemes can also request ‘Volunteer Driver’ car stickers for their drivers, which raises general awareness of this vital service across Scotland.