The Code for Clean Air Hackathon was a unique platform provided to
young technology enthusiasts wishing to contribute to the discussion on air
quality in India. Eight teams from the best technology colleges in India
(namely IIT-Delhi, DTU and NSIT) participated in the hackathon and coded
an air quality concept app. The best app was combined to create the Clean
Air Asia AQ app – VAYU.
VAYU stands for Value Air You Use, and is also a take on the Hindi word
Vayu, which means ‘Air’. It was designed with the objective of not only
providing information about air quality, but also for motivating people to
take small individual actions that contribute to cleaner air.
VAYU’s unique component – the “I Pledge” feature, encourages people to
take a pledge towards positive action to clean up the air. These pledges can
be tracked by location. Our VAYU app gained much popularity in cities so
we felt the need to highlight the pledge component. We have updated the
app to include a sharing option to the pledge feature which highlights the
city where the person is pledging from. This could also be used to drive
policy action. People who have taken a pledge can share it via social
media forums such as Instagram and Facebook so that more people can
be motivated to download VAYU and do their part for better air quality.
The app which was only available on Android previously has now been
made available on iOS as well.
Pledges from the VAYU app will be linked to cities that they are coming
from and displayed on the Clean Air Knowledge Network website’s ‘City’
page to showcase citizen engagement in fighting air pollution.