Global Community Cleaners

Global Community Cleaners revitalises North Lawndale by paying residents for street cleanup — money for every block cleaned. A model that pays per unit of work only holds together if each unit can be proven, to the worker and to the funder. Proving it by hand does not scale past a handful of people.

• Payouts depend on evidence: which block, cleaned by whom, when, and to what standard.
• Funders and the city need that evidence to be verifiable rather than self-reported.
• Workers need to see what they have earned as they earn it, or the model loses its pull.

We built the field application the model needs: assignment, verification and payment tracking in one loop, designed for a phone in a working hand on a street.

• Route assignment so a worker is given a defined block rather than choosing where to start.
• GPS-verified coverage with photographic evidence captured in the field, so a completed block carries proof.
• A bounty system that attaches value to specific work, and gamification — leaderboards and badges — that keeps crews returning.
• Transparent payout tracking, so earnings are visible to the worker throughout, not only at payday.
• Environment scanning that maps what was actually covered, building the record funders can audit.

Cleanup is now an evidenced transaction rather than an honour system: assigned, tracked, photographed, and paid against a record that stands up to a funder’s scrutiny. The application has been through field testing on real routes in the neighbourhood it serves.

• Every paid block carries GPS and photographic evidence.
• Workers see route, progress and earnings in one place.
• The coverage record is auditable rather than self-reported.