‘Save Our City': High School Students Develop App Idea to Change Chicago's Violence

As Chicago’s violence continues to spike to historic levels, high schoolers facing a harsh reality in the city are hoping their idea for an app can help save lives.

“Living in Chicago, we see a lot of the violence that’s going on every day,” said Michelle Vega, a student at De La Salle Institute.

Violence is producing a record number of shootings on the city’s South and West Sides, including near De Le Salle’s Bridgeport campus.

That’s what prompted the group of kids to come up with an app, one that would combine GPS data and real-time crime data to reroute students away from areas as violence happens.

“We picked the concept of violence for this app because we wanted to help other people in the city of Chicago to avoid violence because we see our peers and others get innocently killed every day and we wanted to help the police department with the violence,” said student Sydney Roberson.

“Save Our City is an app that helps Chicagoans be alert of shootings in their nearby area, then it helps them find a safer route to their destinations,” said student Morgan Lawson.

The app is only in its idea stage, but the students hope to turn it into a reality.

“When you open this app and you are going to, if there is going to be any crime activity, you get an alert,” Vega said. “For walking somewhere, if I’m walking to my friend’s house and I type in her address, it will pop up, ‘Oh, there had been a shooting two minutes ago,’ and it will give me a safer route option to get to my destination.”

The app’s concept has already won a best in region award and $5,000 as part of a Verizon Learning App Challenge.

Now, the students are hoping to win one of eight “best in nation” awards, which would give them an extra $15,000 for the school and a chance for the students to work with experts at the MIT Media Lab. With their help, the young coders hope to make the jump from app concept to app store.

“I hope it becomes an actual app so that I can change more than just my life, but everybody’s life because it is designed to affect lives in a positive way,” Vega said.

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