CommHub

A job opening, a burst pipe down the road, a beach clean-up on Saturday: the news that matters most in a community is local, and it is easiest to miss when it is scattered across too many places. CommHub is our answer – a mobile-first community hub built with and for Ocean View, Cape Town, running on iNethi, the area’s own community network.

Residents can post and find jobs, services, events, polls and notices, and anyone can raise an emergency that is pinned to the top of everyone’s feed. A fact in South African economy is job scarcity, so now with CommHub jobs are more reachable and jobs show what matters up front: who is hiring, what it pays and when applications close. The hub speaks English, Afrikaans, isiZulu and isiXhosa. Members sign in with just their name and a four-digit PIN, and six short video guides walk new users through every step, because a tool for everyone has to work for people who would never call themselves “tech people”.

We also wanted research in Ocean View to happen with the community, not to it. Only researchers verified by an administrator can run surveys and book interviews, every post can be reported and is reviewed by a person, and nothing anyone writes is passed on to outside companies.

CommHub was built with Ocean View, but it is designed for any community that wants a hub of its own. For us, the biggest lesson was that good software for a community starts by listening to it.