Meeting with Cataki March 20, 2019

Present: Mundano, Trebor, Michael, Jutta, Dana, Michelle, Cheryl

Summary

Needs:

  • Need someone on the team to benefit from the co-design - haven't hired full team yet, so don't have designer or developer to take what comes out of co-design - aiming to have this person here in one month
  • Would need to raise funds to be able to hire full team
  • Need better performance of the app, better communication - would enable the organic growth that is happening in the movement
  • There is a tech team in Colombia who might be able to help
  • Might be able to scale to Mozambique, Argentina
  • Need long term funding as an organization so that profit can come in steadily

Co-design plans

  • Wait until May to start something
  • Connect with Colombian team to see if there's an opportunity for collaboration
  • In the next few weeks, we can figure out whether to start something now or wait until Cataki hires someone to benefit from the codesign - by then there will be more insight on whether funding might be coming in
  • If we do it in May and June, when there is a full team, it may be more efficient
  • IDRC to be in touch about codesign and timing

Agenda

  • Mundano, give an update on work and opportunities
  • Coordinating Trebor’s travels
  • Embedded codesign

Mundano’s update

  • Cataki the app
    • Cataki is going well
    • Scaling naturally, growing 10% of numbers
    • Has $100K+, 400 waste collectors connected across 300 cities in Brazil
    • 1000 calls each month
    • Cataki is a platform to connect people who want to recycle to people who actually recycle to make a living, who are marginalized
    • 800 people doing that just in Brazil
    • Why so many? 
      • Unemployment, inefficiency of waste collection system
      • 85% of Brazil don’t have connection to recycling
      • There are people, called waste collectors, Catadors, who do that
    • In the app
      • List or map of closest waste collectors
      • See profile of these people
      • Connect by WhatsApp or give a call
      • App is so simple and primitive, the development part is not following the ability of downloading and connecting
      • Primitive tool, high demand
      • What we’re not doing that we want to do is recovery of data from the call to recycling companies
      • This data is precious to companies in the world
      • We don’t believe our motto is charging the user - the user or the driver who is the waste picker
      • We believe the companies and government have the responsibility of waste management - they should pay for the service that the waste collectors are collecting
      • We want to gamify process so recyclers and catadors can earn points
      • Start talking to big companies like proctor and gamble, to recycle 100% of their packaging - they need to work with informal recycling systems
      • Our main gap is we don’t have a tech team, we don’t have money or much time to develop the app as fast as our scalability is happening


Embedded Codesign

  • We want to make a new design for a next version
  • Everyone in other countries can download the app, do it
  • You will see that we are very primitive, but also the design part
  • We have dozens of ideas for the next version, but we don’t have anyone here from tech and also design
  • This last version was made by a freelancer
  • We launched this version last month
  • We have two people working every day full time on Cataki \- 
    • Henrique - one is more in partnerships, writing proposals, looking for funds
    • Luiz - focused on community of waste collectors - he is talking every day to waste collectors, solving problems
    • We have gap right now for design and tech
  • What is co-design? Please explain
  • Jutta: we need to have local tech and design talent to help
    • We won’t understand completely what your needs are and of the waste collectors
    • Activity we need to do is collaboratively raise some funds to help support someone locally
  • Dana: We need to find commonalities in the things that we build among all of our partners
    • Agree that specifics of developing the app would be the best for someone there to do that work
    • What we’ve been doing is we did some co-design with SEWA in India, we were there in person - but we can’t be there in person this time
    • We want the leadership to come from Cataki - from your community
    • So we can collaborate on what activities look like
    • We can make suggestions of what activities you can do with the catadores that draws out the needs that you have
    • We can define the needs that you have, define tools that you need
    • What we need is the facilitation and leadership to come from your community 
    • I imagine a few more meetings with you to talk about the activities and process, and bringing in a few more participants
      • Mundano: I think the process now is clear
      • The problem is the person we dont’ have someone to benefit from the codesign
      • If we win this award, we will have full team to benefit from the codesign
      • It’s so specific, what we’re doing… it’s totally experimental because we’re dealing with really informal market
      • People don’t know how to use smartphones properly - a big part of them - but we know that’s actually working for them - but we need to be closer to understand… we have in a way a list of things we need to continue co-creating
      • From this process we could understand which part, right now without this person, we could start - if its in terms of design, the icons, the visuals, the UX… the app is not in English, but in terms of what we could make better
      • We have a map full of icons, but the icons go over another
      • Anything on the app that you can suggest to collaborate, we can do it
      • But I agree that we have to have somebody here
      • As Jutta here, let’s do the effort to try to raise funds to have someone here
      • We can have this person soon - in one month - we are really looking
      • Or we can try to have this freelancer
      • But we can’t stop - the dev and the design is stopped
      • Our app is going viral, our users are growing every day, we raise funds to do research to do impact of Cataki because we know there are some waste collectors who have improved earnings by 100% but others 30% because it depends on their skills, profile, cities, etc
      • But in a way we are making this invisible people - being recognized
      • Now we are impacting 1400 catadores
      • If we have a better performance of the app, better communication - we’d be able to have more
      • We have the opportunity to do it in Cali, Colombia
      • They already have a tech team there
      • If we could co-design with the tech team there… they have 3 people waiting for us
      • We could develop the Spanish version with the context of Colombia
      • We can make sure both Portuguese and Spanish can be easily swapped in and out
    • Jutta: there might be an opportunity from Oak to get some funding. We should see if we can put together a collaborative proposal for Oak - talk about the momentum, the need for strategic update of the app, the potential for diversified scaling across other areas
      • The timing is quite good to go to the Oak foundation
    • Mundano: 
      • One of the oak trustees was here last week
      • Oak foundation is supporting Pimp my Caroca, not Cataki
      • What if we could scale to Mozambique, Argentina, etc
      • Our interaction with just with Oak
      • We are totally open to work in a new project to try to raise these funds
      • Helping with human rights & environment, and the tech part is amazing
      • We need funding to develop locally
      • Want to make long term funding through selling data to the companies so we can earn profit


  • Jutta
    • Still should do embedded codesign in parallel with Oak foundation funding
  • Dana
    • I dont know if we want to wait until May? We can do something sooner
    • We probably want to organize something sooner
    • Get started and gather needs from you
    • Mudano
      • I will be in Amsterdam - I will know whether we won any money there - I hope to bring good news - then we have a lot of things to start
      • For us, it will not be a problem
      • To wait until May, to really start something… I think I will talk with this freelancer to understand if he could facilitate this codesign process before May, because he could share the needs, what we actually could start to a new version
      • In the perspective of Colombia - if we connect and see we can help them
      • In the next few weeks we can figure out whether it makes sense to start something now or wait until may to hire a person
      • And have a perspective on the oak funding
      • I believe in May and June we’ll definitely have people on the team
      • I believe the codesign process will be more efficient 
      • We’re looking to have a full team working here working every day
        • Developer who will be here and work us through the year 
      • One of the best UX and development - they chose Cataki as their students to work on
      • Maybe next month they’ll have a full report on the UX that we have
      • So we’ll have other university and 12 person from another university here working on the business part
      • So we want to have all this connection - we need to put the pieces together
  • Dana
    • We want to find out needs before May
  • Trebor
    • We’ll have diagnostic of next steps when Trebor comes
    • I want to bring him to see in person the waste collectors working - so he can understand what the real life is
  • Mundano
    • When trebor is here for 3 days
  • Dana
    • We’ll be in touch about the process of codesign and the timing