Greeley Grads Launch App for Sexual Assault Victims
By Andrew Vitelli
For Horace Greeley graduates Racquel Giner, Zach Csillag, Jack Zandi and Billy Sadik-Khan, post-college plans took an unexpected turn while playing the board game Settlers of Catan in 2014.
The group of friends began discussing the problem of sexual assaults taking place on college campuses and wondered whether technology could be used to help.
“We noticed that there was a void between students on campus and their accessibility and knowledge about the resources that were available on campus,” Csillag said. “We thought, okay, we can probably make an app for that, and we are probably pretty well fit to solve this problem.”
In June, the group released Reach Out, a free iPhone app geared toward providing college students with the information they need in the event of a sexual assault, ranging from an aggregated list of campus resources to a guide to preventing assaults to advocacy and support groups.
“Schools have a lot of resources, but it’s kind of tough to really narrow them down, congregate them in one area and guide students there and to form enough awareness about it on campus so that if something does happen, students know where to go,” Csillag said. “We realized we need to support students and give them a platform that they feel comfortable going to learn about the issue in general, learn about what’s available to them on campus, learn about where they could go in a crisis situation and make it as user-friendly as possible.”
“Reach Out’s aim is to empower students by helping them make informed decisions about the care they receive,” Sadik-Khan said. “It’s a resource for survivors, their friends and their families.”
But determining the need for such an app was just the beginning. None of the four knew much about programming; Csillag was an exercise science major, Zandi and Sadik-Khan studied political science and economics, respectively. While the team outsourced much of the programming, Giner, a psychology major, took on the role of chief on-site programmer. She designed the app’s primary website as well as marketing pages for many of the schools using Reach Out.
“I looked into website building, and I instantly loved it right off the bat,” Giner recalled. “So I just kept learning more and more, and I just got better and better at it.”
In addition to the technical skills, the project took lots of manpower. The four founders have spent the past two years finding a range of information from 2,400 schools in 30 states and entering it into the app, a tedious but rewarding process, Csillag said.
“It’s pretty much been a 24/7 job,” Csillag noted. “But we kept at it, and the more we researched, the more we learned about the issue, the more we dove into it and then really the more work we did, we developed a passion for it and we realized how much of a need there was.”
“Having just finished four years of college, it made sense for the four of us to tackle this challenge of developing a relatable phone resource for students,” Zandi added.
So far, the project has mostly been funded by family and friends. In the future, Csillag said he hopes to develop a monetized component, where schools can purchase an upgraded version of the app that goes beyond resources relating to sexual misconduct. The basic version of the app, though, will remain free.
With a new school year beginning, the app’s founders plan to keep plugging away in order to bring their app to more schools and more students. On Sunday, they released Reach Out for Android, which can be downloaded on Google play at this link, while this is the iOS link.
“We first started off working a few days a week, and once we got positive feedback from schools on this feature, we just decided we had to put our all into this,” Giner said. “And here we are with over 2,400 schools in our app, so it’s pretty awesome.”
For more information on Reach Out, search the iPhone store or visit www.capptivation.com.
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