Cracked It - Mobile phone repair for social good
by Startacus Admin
Cracked It, is a social enterprise staffed by young ex-offenders and at-risk youths, teaching them marketable phone repair skills and providing the means and opportunity to make money.
For things that can cost insane amounts of money, smartphones certainly tend to break a lot. Did you drop your phone? The screen is broken. Sit on it? The screen’s broken. Look at it too hard? Screen’s broken. Now you have to go trekking through town to find a place to repair it, or pay to send it off and have the people who should have built it better in the first place repair it.
Seemingly unrelated: 85% of violent offenders in the UK are aged between 16 and 29, and these young people are also more likely to be victims of crime. 
Often, these young people feel forced into crime either to provide for themselves and their family or simply due to their environment. They become trapped and need a way out.
Cracked It is a social enterprise bringing these two problems together to create a solution.
It is staffed by young ex-offenders and at-risk youths, teaching them marketable phone repair skills and providing the means and opportunity to make money. Cracked It offers repair clinics to large workplaces, pop-up shops where employees can conveniently have their phones repaired in 90 minutes or less, for a more reasonable price than elsewhere, with a 3-month warranty and the knowledge that their convenience has contributed to genuine social good.
As well as the repair clinics, Cracked It offers training programmes. The repair bootcamp teaches young people to repair phones, providing real-world experience of doing so, as well as breaking down attitudinal barriers to work. The team building workshops bring in a team of up to 10 of your employees to learn to repair phones together, complete with challenges and competition.
Cracked It has a multitude of awards and accolades already, including O2 Think Big Award, 2015; being hailed as ‘London’s Best iPhone Fixers’ by the London Evening Standard, 2017; Fellowship Award from School for Social Entrepreneurs, 2017; International Visitor Leader Award from the US Department of State, 2017; and Social Enterprise of the Year, 2018 (among many others).
So you don’t need to take our word for it that Cracked It is an impactful force for positive change. Book them!
If you like the sound of this social enterprise, you might want to read up on:
Bigmoose - great coffee served with social good.
Beam - crowdfunding to help homeless people get into employment.
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Published on: 18th July 2018
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