CommuniCity Pilots: The Anti-Poverty Challenge

CommuniCity is a transformative citizen-centred initiative, funded by Horizon Europe, that aims to inspire tech-enabled solutions to digital, social & urban challenges. In 2024, Manchester become the only UK city outside of London to take part in CommuniCity’s third Open Call.

In this blog, the second in our three-part CommuniCity series, we share insights from the development of Community Connect, an AI powered WhatsApp chat designed to simplify access to essential poverty support.

Read Parts 1 and 3, or explore our Anti-Poverty Challenge below.

If you found yourself struggling to make ends meet, would you know where to turn for support? 
 
Manchester’s incredible array of voluntary, community and social enterprises are tirelessly committed to improving quality of life for local people. Take a tour of the city’s community spaces, and you’ll discover meal clubs, career advice, debt support, language classes, and even radio training!  
 
Yet for many people experiencing poverty, the volume and fragmentation of resources can be overwhelming. Lacking a single point of access, it can be difficult to find reliable information that meets their individual needs. 
 
Our second CommuniCity challenge, developed in collaboration with Manchester City Council’s Anti-Poverty team, aimed to explore how a centralised source of information could help people and organisations better navigate the often-confusing landscape of poverty support. 
 
Horizon Europe’s CommuniCity programme offered a valuable opportunity to explore how new technologies could simplify access to vital resources for people in need. In partnership with Anti-Poverty Strategy colleagues and the winning piloting team, Italian ‘idea laboratory’ Lotz, we were excited to launch a six-month pilot to develop Community Connect - a unified point of access for essential poverty support.  
 
Community Connect’s AI-enabled WhatsApp based chat aimed to help users easily access support through a trusted, familiar and mobile-friendly interface. Featuring an interactive front-end with multi-lingual support, and an intuitive backend enabling VCSEs to easily upload and manage their own services, Community Connect hoped to remove barriers and broaden access to support for a diverse range of users, including those with low levels of digital literacy.  

Community Connect’s front-end user interface.

Making sure that everyone in Manchester has access to good-quality, accessible advice is a key priority for the City Council’s Anti-Poverty team, and crucial for advancing social equity. Consolidating essential advice and support services into a single, inclusive point of access could help to mitigate the adverse effects of poverty by enabling more people experiencing poverty connect with the right support services before they reach crisis. Being able to easily access relevant resources at the time when they’re most needed can empower residents to make more informed decisions, safeguard their mental and physical health, and take meaningful steps towards a happier, more stable and fulfilling future. 
 
For Community Connect to meaningfully meet the needs of communities impacted by poverty, we first needed to understand the challenges by listening to the voices of those most affected.  
 
Situated just three miles south of the city centre, Longsight is a neighbourhood disproportionately impacted by economic challenges. Despite significant barriers to opportunity, the ward is deeply connected with a wide network of community organisations and charities that offer activities, support and advice to residents. By locating the pilot in Longsight, we aimed to engage VCSEs with experience providing poverty support in the development of the platform, and to evaluate the impact of the pilot in a local context before exploring next steps. This small-scale approach to innovation also enabled us to concentrate the pilot on the needs of a specific community and respond more flexibly to feedback. 
 
With its unmissable green façade, Northmoor Community Association is one of many independent charities offering vital support to Longsight residents – a home to community diners, homework clubs, crafting classes, and adult education courses, alongside a broad array of community advice and information services. With 25 years of service to the Longsight area, there seemed no better venue to engage with local organisations than a trusted space at the heart of the community.  

Northmoor Community Centre, an independent community charity set up by residents.

In March, Northmoor kindly hosted an initial exploratory workshop with VCSEs, facilitated by LotzArt’s CEO Riccardo Lozzi and Project Manager Giacomo Lozzi. With many competing demands on their time, and significant financial pressures, VCSEs are not always able to engage with co-creation processes. To reflect the expertise of participating organisations, and encourage buy-in, attendees were renumerated for their involvement. By meeting organisations in familiar spaces, and fairly recognising their contributions, we could enable a more diverse group of VCSE’s to engage with the pilot and shape the platform’s development.   
 
Opening a dialogue with VCSEs was crucial to the development of the platform, offering valuable insights on how to build a solution that would deliver active benefits to Longsight. While the Community Connect platform was originally designed with residents in mind, feedback from the workshop highlighted challenges around knowledge-sharing and awareness of other support services, alongside concerns about the pilot’s sustainability. In response, the scope of the pilot was refined to focus on how the platform could support VCSEs signposting resources to residents experiencing poverty.  
 
Discussions from the workshop also revealed other potential actions that the Digital Strategy and Anti-Poverty teams could carry forward. Community organisations were particularly positive about creating opportunities for regular meetings to share knowledge and discuss sector challenges, which could foster collaboration and improve co-ordination of services.  

LotzArt CEO Riccardo Lozzi introduces Community Connect.

A month – and plenty of development work – later, and LotzArt had returned to Northmoor with a fully functional platform!  
 
An initial challenge of the piloting process was effectively driving VCSE engagement. Working closely with colleagues from Neighbourhoods and local health services with strong existing community relationships, we were able to engage a diverse range of VCSE organisations to explore and feedback on the tool. Testing the platform with users during active development ensured that LotzArt could better consider the specific needs of organisations within a community context, ensuring that the platform’s design remained centred on users. While reception to the tool was broadly positive, with VCSE’s praising the platform’s accessibility and ease of use, multiple improvements were suggested during the workshop. 

Longsight VCSEs experiment with the Community Connect app.

A further webinar session, to showcase the integration of feedback from previous workshops and provide further training in how to use the platform, continued the process of iterative testing.  
 
For new technologies to truly serve people Manchester, it’s vital that communities are actively engaged in the design of technologies and services that affect their lives. Through engaging in an ongoing dialogue with Longsight VCSEs, Community Connect could address genuine barriers for community organisations signposting services, rather than assumed challenges. 
 
Throughout the piloting process, the Community Connect tool benefited immensely from feedback that improved its inclusivity, accessibility and relevance for the organisations it was designed to serve. Learnings from the project underlined the benefits of engaging communities in the design process, and the value of adopting approaches that build strong relationships with people and organisations in the local area. While the Community Connect platform will not be carried forward in its current form, insights from the co-creation process, including the importance of building trust, iterative testing and collaborative development, will be embedded in future projects.  
 
Ethical design shouldn’t be a nice-to-have. At Manchester’s Digital Strategy, we’re proud to advocate for human-centred approaches to technology that are of benefit to everyone in our city. Co-creation enables us to build technologies that better reflect the realities of the people they’re designed for. By integrating learnings from the pilot in our approach, and working in collaboration with Manchester’s incredible VCSE sector, we aim to build a more equitable future for everyone in our city.