localinnovation
unityaid.com STEPHEN BOIKE CREATOR AND FOUNDER STEPHEN BOIKE 0413 294 465
HERE’S THE COOL PART
‘Businesses and individuals can nominate an amount of their product or service to their beneficiary, this is a win-win situation for all.’ Once the master of residential development, builder turned philanthropist Stephen Boike is now the face of (and more importantly, the brains behind) a different kind of enterprise altogether. He wants us to be a force for social good - resulting in stronger communities and more reliance on the kindness of others through the ‘social good economy’. With the recent launch of his new platform, Unityaid, Stephen is on a mission to empower businesses and individuals seeking financial support for individual causes - even if it’s their own. “Unityaid came from many thoughts about the economy,” explains Stephen. “Why is it that when the economy struggles, as it recently has post-recession, society falls apart? We still have the same amount of skills, services, and resources - arguably an abundance of most of these - so isn’t there another way we can move things around? And that tapped into the idea of using technology to point out those possibilities in our increasingly complex societies”. Stephen didn’t know how, what or when but with his passion, desire and enthusiasm accelerating full speed; Stephen’s answer was to create a platform. He had researched blogs, forums, articles, web sites, charities, traditional methods of fundraising and brain storming constantly for answers to his burning questions. Stephen discovered crowdfunding and realised how life changing crowdfunding is, but there had to be some kind of difference incorporated, something innovative, something that hasn’t been done before, something that would set ourselves a part from others and something that would benefit the fortunate and unfortunate businesses and individuals at the same time - something where people can help themselves or others. After sixteen months of strategy and development 6 ISSUE 64
