Pursuing social impact after Cambridge

December 5, 2016 | Jeevan Payaprakash

Jeevan Payaprakash is the BfE Consulting Director (2016)

“Once you finish university and embark on working life, you quickly realise just how precious your time becomes. Finding a fulfilling use for the little time you have is not easy. Thankfully, since leaving university, Bridges for Enterprise has provided me with the opportunity to help some brilliant social startups on their journey. Going forward, my hope is to be able to help nonprofits with what I believe is one of their biggest challenges but also their biggest opportunity – technology. 

Look through most early stage nonprofits and you can usually find time-poor employees preoccupied with mundane tasks that can be automated to some extent or a business critical product/service that can be functionally elevated to the next level. However, the lack of technical skills and cost are usually the blockers to achieving this. As a result, nonprofits are increasingly seeking out volunteer software developers of all experiences who are willing to devote their time and skills in order to create real value.

In light of this, the ambitious goal I have set myself is to learn software development in my spare time and I hope that one day, a non-profit will benefit from some piece of software that I was able to build for them. Admittedly, it is a long journey ahead but I really believe the returns are priceless. The most amazing aspect of all this is that truly anyone can learn software development and begin creating solutions that can make the difference. If you are looking for a way in which you can push yourself post-university (regardless of your background and previous experience), work intimately with nonprofits and above all, have a big impact, this is an area that is most certainly worth exploring!”