Shortly, Found on Campus is a webservice where undergraduates from any campus in the world can report lost or found items. Just like sites where buyers meet sellers, here we reconcile people who have found items with people who had misplaced or lost them using correlation analysis
ABOUT (Longer)
Imagine losing your phone or a 3 semester physics note book and you get a text about a day later saying, “Hello, someone found your stuff!”
Many of us need not imagine it because we’ve been there somehow. During my 5 month course of developing this web service, I did lose my phone’s charger, found someone’s brand new calculator on the tricycle path, found a an umbrella lying carelessly, textbook, keys. I also did find quite some money and lost some. Also around me, there were lots of people losing things and finding things but there was no trusted channel or even any at all to say, “I’ve found something!” or “Oh I’m in trouble. Lost something!”. Once, I was in a lecture hall working; this lady had found a final year project manuscript (not yet typed exercise book version) belonging probably to a statistics finalist and I just saw her sympathizing for the owner of the book. I was working on this website that night so I told her to give me the book so I would report it on the site when I’m through with it. On my way home, my school ID card then got missing only to be reconciled to me days later.
Losing valuables and finding other people’s stuff is an everyday phenomenon. The inability to link a finder of an item to the owner of the item now becomes a social problem – one which we are glad to be solving starting from the campus society.
Police stations and security posts are doing great jobs to bridge this gap. We are not competing or replacing them. We are only creating an online, deeper and more academia platform to complement their service.
Do you report lost or found spectacles, exercise books, or umbrellas to the security? These things look cheap, irrelevant and replaceable. But they sometimes have great values attached to them. For example, a diary, exercise book or spectacles may come free or cost less than 50 cents. However the text contained in them and their attachment to the owner is priceless! Losing someone else’s inherited jewelry, your wallet containing almost all ID cards, recommended glasses. Is it?
That’s why we are here. We are here to bridge that gap. We are here to provide a very simple solution to an everyday underlying problem. We are here to connect owners of lost items to whoever has found it. The website is a place where users can either report missing or found items on a campus. The reports then pass through a match and correlation analysis that helps users find who has found their missing item or who owns a missing item they have found. We also create a platform for the owners to reward people who have helped found their items. We also reward them too.
Many people find things and choose to keep them to themselves. Such and cases of theft are off our reach. But most people, including those who would have kept it, are willing to return other people’s stuffs especially when there is a platform to.
For those who might not have lost or found something, the opportunity and news portal is a side way gig.
The greatest opportunities we ever get for being in a university comes while we are in it. There is a galaxy of opportunities for undergraduates in form of contests, challenges, essays, competitions, scholarships, internships, events, workshops etc. However, there seems to be little platforms for undergraduates to get the right and genuine opportunities they need. We are bridging that gap.
We report up to date and relevant news spanning from worldwide campus happenings to national policies that relate to the heart of the undergraduate community. We don’t do the junk of rumours, sex, look at this and you can’t believe that. We present to you the relevant.
In conclusion, Found on Campus is innovatively providing relevant web services to the Nigerian undergraduate community. We are developing and extending outer walls too. We are honored to have you around