StarHub Mobile is one of the largest telcos in Singapore with 2.2 million subscribers in a country of 5 million people. Leveraging on its reach, we partnered StarHub Mobile with the Society of Visually Handicapped in a micro-volunteering project called Third Eye. This initiative is designed to end the social isolation experienced by the visually impaired. The Third Eye experience can be likened to having volunteers sit with the visually impaired, spend time with them and describe the world to them.

A telco's first and foremost promise is to connect people. Third Eye, as a CSR initiative for StarHub Mobile, is a true celebration of that promise. The initiative exploits the omnipresence of mobile devices in our lives and turns the medium into a truly social network. Now anyone, anywhere, anytime can connect to a visually impaired person and help brighten their day even if he or she only has seconds to spare. This gives existing volunteers an extra channel to help and demonstrates to would-be volunteers that actually it doesn't take much to make a difference.

Third Eye is designed to crowdsource vision and care for the visually impaired. With Third Eye, we connected a community of micro-volunteers to the visually impaired. Using inbuilt iOS and Android's accessibility features, a visually impaired person can easily take a picture of anything with a touch. The image is then shared with micro-volunteers in real-time as a query. The volunteers can describe the image to the visually impaired, from wherever they are, making volunteering effortless, easy and instant. The replies are then converted from text to speech for the visually impaired.

StarHub Mobile has 2.2 million mobile subscribers. If just one in every hundred subscribers micro-volunteered 10 seconds a day to make a reply, the project would crowdsource over 60 hours of volunteering-time every day. The project has just launched, but the current approximate ratio of micro-volunteers to visually impaired is already 12: 1, replies within the first 20 seconds is 3.7 and incorrect responses is less than 0.004%.

“Project Third Eye demonstrates that together we can change lives. I believe it’ll open more than just eyes, it’ll open hearts.” Michael Tan, Executive Director, Society of the Visually Handicapped