From Sharing Good to Build a Common Good Society: Take the Mobility Platform for Vulnerable Groups as an Example

The problem of mobility for minority is always a social issue in many society, and Taiwan is not the exception. These minorities include disabilities, elders, and children. Taiwan government budgets a lot, including money and human resources, to solve the problem, but the effect is always a question mark. Recently, sharing economy has become a growing business model to reduce excess resource and further create innovative products or service. As a result, this model can solve some social problems. Traditionally, mobility of vulnerable groups is the focal point for government and the public. Vulnerable groups include the physically disabled, child, and the growing elderly population. In Taiwan, lots of channels provide transportation for these vulnerable populations, including Fukang buses (which are supported by the local government), taxis, and some private cars. For example, some disabilities would like to call the Fukang bus for taking them from home to hospital. However, it is hard to reserve Fukang buses due to limited resources, low efficient services, or other political or personal benefit issue. Therefore, there is a need to develop a platform system which makes full use of the idle resources including taxis and private service. Take the taxi drivers as an example, they can provide the services for these disabilities when their taxis are idle. The present study takes Taichung, a city located in central Taiwan, as an example to develop a platform system which combining multiple services so as to create the synergy for vulnerable groups and the public. Our team adopts three steps to implement the project. In the beginning, we developed the platform system which was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, and this system can be used through many devices, such as laptop, smartphone, or even just a phone call. This platform system is similar to Uber system, and the adopters included bus drivers, taxi drivers, and private car drivers. Second, we tried to analyze and explore the true needs of vulnerable groups. Moreover, we combined the relevant materials into the course design in our school (USR project, university social responsibility) to attract more attentions from the students, the teachers, and the public, to join the service in the future. The step was supported by the Ministry of Education. In the final step, we started to do the real business cases to run the system. In addition to testing the platform system in the real business case, our team aims to share the "common good" value for the society as well. This is an ongoing project, but we have some outcomes to share. Now we have a platform system, and plan to build up a social enterprise-DonkeyMove Lab. This means that we want to limit our profit for contributing the issue of mobility for these vulnerable groups. In addition, we designed and implemented three courses each semester in the last year, over hundred students participated in these courses, and served over ten fields by these students and teachers. For example, the elders have difficult to deal with the humid heavy quilt by themselves. We took students to a community with about 70% elders, and invited a business which provided the drying services for these quilt or blanket. The object of this course (the course name: Social Detective) is teaching students to explore the subject's demand. Therefore, we helped the elders to take their quilt for drying, and the students sat with these elders, talked and listened to them, and observed and interviewed these elders' real demand for transportation. Generally speaking, we hope this is not just a platform system to solve the idle resources, or a platform only for business benefit. We hope we can build a common good platform system, invite more partners with the same value and perspective, to solve the social issue: the mobility for vulnerable groups.