Apps for Good partners with Facebook to teach young adults how to build social applications

Earlier this month, the London based program Apps for Good splashed the pages of The Next Web in our story, Apps for Good turns teens into mobile app developers for a better future.

We interviewed the program’s CEO Iris Lapinski, a driven, brilliant entrepreneur who is literally changing the world through CDI Europe‘s open sourced education program that teaches underprivileged young adults how to build and market mobile applications. Today, Apps for Good is announcing its partnership with Facebook that will offer unemployed 16-25 year olds from across London the chance to learn how to design, code and build social applications that have a positive social impact on their life and others around them.

With social applications added to the mix, I imagine teachers from across the country will be knocking down Apps for Good’s doors, to add themselves to the already 100 schools on the waiting list, with requests from over 10 countries including the Philippines, Thailand, Denmark, Germany, France, the U.S. and Nigeria for access to its app development training program.

If you ask a student, “‘Do you want to learn how to program in HTML, PHP or Android?’ They’ll run away,” says Lapinski. “But when we say, ‘Do you want to solve a problem you’re passionate about, one that’s relevant to you?’ You reach them. Apps are the new Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

Apps for Good’s 50-70 hour course includes 5 steps: Identify the problem; market research; solutions through business models, technical ability and marketing models; product design; and build and test. To learn more about the program, watch this beautifully shot introduction:

Applications are open for the Facebook – Apps for Good course, which will run as a pilot for six weeks from October 17th 2011 at the A4e Brixton Vox, a vocational training center for young people who are unemployed or out of education. The course is open to young people aged 16-25 who live in London.

“Facebook is proud to work with Apps for Good to create a course which has the potential to help young people from all corners of the world improve their entrepreneurial skills, employability and technological understanding while building tools, apps and services that could transform the society we live in.”

-Richard Allan, Director of Policy of Facebook in Europe

The new Facebook applications course will be created by Apps for Good with the assistance of Techlightenment, an Experian company that develops social media social technology. Over the coming months the details of the Facebook – Apps for Good course will be made publicly available to developers and educators worldwide, via the Apps for Good online platform.

A short, skeleton version of the Facebook – Apps for Good course ran for a week at the Rich Mix in Hackney during the school holidays in August. Young adults designed and presented several social applications, one of which is a homework application that allows students to share insights about their homework via Facebook is now being developed by Techlightenment. Check out a screenshot of the app here:

“We are very excited about the Apps for Good partnership with Facebook which goes right to the heart of how young people use technology today. The course will allow them to create Facebook applications that address social and community problems they are passionate about in a truly bottom-up way.”

-Iris Lapinski, CEO of Apps for Good

And what are Apps for Good’s future plans? “Were going for world domination,” says Lapsinski confidently. Watch our interview with her here:

Featured image credit: Shutterstock/Zurijeta