Dublin college uses carpool app to help vulnerable

Ireland’s largest university, University College Dublin, is using the Faxi carpooling app to connect vulnerable members of the University community with trusted volunteers able to support them.

Faxi is now enabling the college to mobilise communities of trusted volunteers, making them visible in a map-based social network.

UCD has more than 29,000 students coming from all over the world, as well as over 4,000 academic and support staff. The University has mobilised its resources in response to the coronavirus pandemic, with ‘community’ very much at its heart.

Mark d’Alton, Chair of the UCD Smarter Travel Group, said: “The aim was to launch the App to our community during the Spring/Summer term to encourage people to journey share to the campus rather than travel individually. But with a community of students and employees in lockdown, many of whom are from overseas and are therefore even more alone at this difficult time, we saw that there was a more immediate use we could make of the tool.

“Faxi will give those members of the UCD community who are vulnerable or self-isolating the ability to see the locations for the numerous other members of our community who have indicated they are willing to volunteer. This will enable the volunteers to provide support such as picking up prescriptions and delivering essential groceries, as may be needed.”

Established in 2013, Faxi Software as a Service (SaaS) enables organisations to set up closed, private groups available only to employees, with a route-matching algorithm which suggests potential carpooling partners based on similar routes to work.