Students Develop App for Low-Wage Worker Co-ops in Company Challenge

Every fall outside organizations come to Cornell Tech and challenge our students with a problem to solve or question to answer. Last semester, the Robin Hood Foundation challenged a group of masters students from the MBA, Computer Science and Connective Media programs with the following: “How might we create a new online marketplace that harnesses the power of the “sharing economy” to benefit low-income wage earners?”

Students developed Coopify, an app seeking to revolutionize the business of co-ops for low-wage workers, Co-operative News reports.

Melina Diaconis, an MBA candidate who helped develop the app, said the businesses could grow and “won’t have to rely on the bottleneck of office managers for bookings”. It therefore removes the middleman. She also assured that “the money is going to the worker, not the business of the Coopify platform.”

The partnership has been in the works for two years. The developers from Cornell and cleaners from Si Se Puede! connected via Robin Hood, an organization dedicated to fighting poverty in New York.

Together, the developers and workers have been collaborating to create unique features on the app such as multiple languages, ease of use (they believe ordering a house clean should be like booking an Uber), and a connection with Facebook to allow people to easily spread the word.

Read the full article on Co-operative News.