Depaul UK using it to raise awareness of young people on the streets.
A virtual pet-style iPhone game that aims to raise awareness of homelessness has been downloaded more than 276,000 times in a matter of weeks in the UK.
The app is called iHobo, and was launched by UK youth homelessness charity Depaul UK on 10th May. It is only available on iPhone in the UK, making that downloads total even more impressive.
The free app gets people to care for a virtual homeless person for three days, using video footage to show the effects of lack of shelter, food and money, emotional distress, isolation, drug use, crime and physical and mental abuse.
Push notifications alert the user when their virtual person needs help, and at the end of the three days, they're invited to make a donation to the charity. Agency Publicis, which created the app, says it's been a success on the latter front.
"We wanted to reach that elusive new generation of affluent donors," say Publicis executive creative directors Tom Ewart and Adam Kean in a statement.
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"The kind of people who walk down the street, glued to their iPhones, oblivious to everything around them. The intimacy of the medium creates a good opportunity to connect young people with an old problem. They might be able to ignore the real homeless people in front of them, but it's impossible to ignore the virtual one in their pocket."
