Three San Antonio high school students last year created Apps for Aptitude, a nonprofit organization aimed at kids helping other kids combat illiteracy by creating mobile apps.
Joshua Singer, a junior at the International School of the Americas and Abhinav Suri, a junior at St. Mary’s Hall created the organization and brought Canzhi Ye, a senior at Reagan High School, on shortly afterward. Silicon Hills News did a story on the organization when it was just starting out. Since then, they have won some additional funding, secured nonprofit status through an affiliation with FreeFlow Research and brought on some more students to help with the development of their projects.
Cards for a Cause is Apps for Aptitude’s first iPhone app, Ye said.
“It is the premier way for students to study flashcards while making a difference in the community,” he said.
Apps for Aptitude plans to donate 100 percent of the proceeds from the app sales to local illiteracy fighting organizations.
“San Antonio’s illiteracy rate is astoundingly high, and we’re out to bring it down as much as possible,” Ye said.
The app provides access to the largest flashcard database in the world, Quizlet, according to Ye. The app also lets students study flashcards using a scientifically proven memory algorithm, SuperMemo2, he said. It also lets students print flashcards to use offline. It features a beautiful user interface designed for iOS7, Ye said.
The Cards for a Cause app costs 99 cents and will be available in the Apple App Store on Tuesday.
Tag: Apps for Aptitude
By LAURA LOREK
Founder of Silicon Hills News
Five nonprofit teams pitched their ventures at the Nonprofit Technology Summit Friday at Rackspace.
The teams went through a 3 Day Startup program at Geekdom to prepare their presentations.
Patrick Currie with Boy With a Ball San Antonio pitched a youth mentorship program to reach young people and transform them to be leaders.
Boy With a Ball San Antonio is seeking $70,000 in seed stage funding, Currie said. It plans to make money by charging companies a $5,000 program fee to train 15 young people to be employees.
Joshua Singer, 16, and Canzhi Ye, 17, two high school students, pitched Apps for Aptitude, which uses mobile phone apps to fight illiteracy.
The company’s first app is Flashcards for a Cause to help students study their course materials. Students provide the content to other students. The market is high school and college students with smartphones, Ye said.
Revenue comes from in-app purchases, Ye said. The company plans to market its apps through teachers and bloggers, he said.
Apps for Aptitude was seeking financial support, additional volunteers, legal support and help with marketing and advertising.
Charles Lewis Blunt pitched RoTenGo, a portable game that is a hybrid of ping-pong and tennis. He is seeking to get the game adopted at companies as well as schools throughout San Antonio.
The game originated in Barbados, Blunt said. It’s called “poor man’s tennis,” he said.
The equipment costs around $3,000 per company and RoTenGo can either train coaches at the company or they can facilitate it, Blunt said.
Five nonprofit teams went through the 3 Day Startup program at Geekdom and then pitched their ventures at the Nonprofit Technology Summit at Rackspace
Gemini Ink already has a loyal audience of 15,000 annually and creating a literary lounge will allow it to expand its space and readers and writers in San Antonio need a space of their own, she said.
Gemini Ink needs a capital investment of $20,000 and estimates that it can generate net revenue of $19,800 a year.
Potential neighborhood competitors are Madhatters, Halcyon and Starbucks.
“We’re trying to be an art space that is also a café,” said Sheila Black, artistic director.
Lastly, Bob Deschner and Dottie Goodsun pitched Veterans Team Recovery Integrated Immersion Program, known as Vet TRIIP, to provide stress reduction massage services to veterans for free. The company wants to branch out into the corporate world and charge them to bring paid staff into the corporations to conduct massage programs.
