Introducing bantu!
Because helping others should be easy.
It has been a very quiet few months from bantu.
Since September 2016, the project has taken so many different turns and overcame various obstacles, with changes made to the mission, direction, product, and even the team at bantu. All that would explain the lack of publicity on our various social media efforts.
But no longer.
Today, we are happy to announce the inauguration of bantu! What started out as an internship module has now evolved into a real mission shared by 4 very crazy individuals, each dedicated to changing the way we approach volunteerism in the (very near) future.
The past 4 months gave us the time to complete the bantu team, build out our MVP, and secure our first round of funding from NUS Enterprise. The latest milestone allowed us to dream bigger and go further with what we want to accomplish, and we hope that you would share that journey with us.
But before we go further…
What is bantu?
For first time visitors, bantu is a web management platform targeted at NPOs (Non-Profit Organisations). Specifically, the platform would allow NPOs to engage and deploy volunteers at ease.
We want to alleviate the issue of volunteer retention in NPOs, and hopefully aid them in cultivating a greater number of specialist and leadership volunteers within their respective institution.
The platform would allow the NPO to follow the volunteer throughout each volunteerism effort, completing the journey from pre-execution (such as sign-up and skills-matching), execution (training, communicating as a team), to post- execution (such as feedback and volunteer appreciation).
We hope bantu can champion a greater social mission shared by our team: to create meaningful connections between volunteers, NPOs, and people-with-needs in each local community. We envision neighbours helping neighbours, and every person integrating volunteerism into their daily routine.
And why do we want to start this?
Because we believe helping others should be easy.
We will start out in Singapore, but we believe we can one day roll out this dream across Southeast Asia, building stronger communities and cities both at home and abroad.
Who’s on the team?
Nicholas is the boss man, the guy who brings the team together and sets us on track. Having worked in the tech industry and started his own company previously, this man is the most experienced member on the team. A skilled coder, he brings much needed fire power to the development of our platform, headed by…
Han, the tech lead on our team! Our Burmese friend here is a passionate computing junkie who can work across any platforms, mobile or otherwise. When he is not jumping off a plane, Han deploys his brilliant problem solving skills to cracking features and fixing bugs in no time at all.
Janelle is our design lead, but that’s probably the biggest understatement of the year. She is well versed in UI/UX, worked previously in product management, and very, very well read. On any given day, you can expect market research papers to pile on your lap, courtesy of the only lady on the team.
Joshua (that’s me) is the residential hustler. Which is ironic, considering many would claim that I am a man of few words. I am in charge of all the small parts on the ship that keeps the team moving. And of course, look me up if you want to find out more about what we do at ban.tu (but not if I look you up first!)
As alumni of the NUS Overseas Colleges programme, all members on our team have experienced working in a US-based startup for a year. We are exciting mix of individuals, so do watch out for us as we launch bantu in the coming months!
What can you expect from us in the near future?
Launch bantu, of course. We are already speaking to service organisations to beta test our platform, primarily local schools for now (here’s looking at you, NUS/NTU/SMU!) Once our prime features are ready to be commercially available, we will start pushing out to NPOs both here and abroad.
If you wish to be a beta tester for bantu, please reach out to me at joshua@bantu.life!
As for this blog, it will be used as your lens into what we are working on here at bantu; expect more updates on our Facebook and Medium accounts moving forward. From featuring stories that inspire us, to product and partnership updates, we want to share with you our journey and our successes, and we hope you will join us along the way :)
Thank you for becoming a small part of our journey by reading this post. Your support means so much to us, so we truly hope you stick around.
Now, back to the grind. Cheers!
