Serve the City mobilizes volunteers to show kindness through simple, practical acts - supporting vulnerable people by helping them with errands, offering company to the isolated, and more.

It’s a movement which enables compassion to to be put into action. Toyota Motor Europe (TME) has supported Serve the City Brussels since 2005, with employees contributing through donations and hands-on volunteering. In 2024 alone, almost 300 TME employees took part in the Lunch 4 All initiative, distributing more than 10,000 meals. Toyota’s support also includes logistics: a Proace van donated in 2015 was upgraded to a Proace BEV in 2023, helping deliver thousands of meals to those in need. 

Now, Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF) - a non-profit organisation established by Toyota Motor Corporation in 2014 to advance mobility for all through innovation, collaboration, and social impact -

has expanded the support of the Serve the City Brussels on the occasion of Serve the City’s anniversary celebration in Brussels. As part of  action its commitment to inclusive mobility and community empowerment, TMF supports Serve the City expanding its reach across Europe demonstrating that the spirit of service knows no borders. 

A key element of this milestone is the newly enhanced ServeNow app. TMF has helped upgrade the platform’s digital infrastructure, making it easier for volunteers to discover, organise, and coordinate service opportunities. The app now supports multiple languages and features a browser-based interface, ensuring accessibility for all - regardless of location or device.

Voices from the partnership:

This anniversary isn’t just a celebration of the past - it’s a call to action. As Serve the City looks ahead, the partnership with Toyota is a powerful example of how innovation and compassion can come together to build stronger, more connected communities. 

Do you want to make a change? Join the Serve the City's volunteer movement and discover how your time, skills or small acts of kindness can create real impact in your own community.

• If you are in one of the following countries, contact Serve the City Serve the City International – Showing Kindness in Personal Ways: Germany, Latvia, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Australia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Kosovo, Malawi, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United States, Zambia
• If you are in Belgium, France or Ireland, download ServeNow app:

Link to the app for Android: ServeNow - Volunteering – Apps on Google Play

Link to the app for iOS: ServeNow - Volunteering on the App Store

This partnership brings together complementary expertise and a shared vision to expand the reach of accessible mobility solutions across urban environments.

After a first experimentation in Marseille, Tourisme & Handicaps, the French national association dedicated to inclusive tourism will play a central role in developing the platform in new cities, ensuring the platform’s quality, reliability, and alignment with the needs of people with disabilities. The association will continue the development of the application, coordinate data validation, user testing, and partnerships with local stakeholders, ensuring that the platform develops more globally reflecting real-world accessibility and supporting sustainable urban development.

The Toyota Mobility Foundation provides solutions developed through a successful project including an indoor/outdoor wayfinding app tailored for people with disabilities, and a pedestrian and multimodal trip planner that adapts routes based on individual mobility profiles—whether for wheelchair users, seniors, or families with strollers.

The Michelin Corporate Foundation supports a digital service that helps users identify accessible locations and routes in real time. The platform includes a mobile app, website, and GPS-based mapping, offering verified information on accessible venues, public transport, and events. It empowers users to navigate cities with confidence and autonomy.

As a first step, the three partners are combining their solutions to create a unified, user-centered mobility experience in Marseille and two other pilot cities. These cities will serve as testing grounds for the integrated platform in real-world conditions. The goal is to refine the service and evaluate its impact before scaling to additional regions.

This three-way collaboration exemplifies social innovative partnership targeted to public interest and a commitment to inclusivity, aiming to enhance quality of life for millions of people with limited mobility. By unifying for accessibility, the partners are setting a benchmark for future-ready mobility solutions that are scalable, user-centered, and socially impactful.

About Tourisme & Handicaps:
Tourisme & Handicaps is a national association that promotes accessible tourism in France. It manages the official “Tourisme & Handicap” label and works with public and private partners to ensure inclusive travel experiences for all.

About Toyota Mobility Foundation:
Established in 2014, the Toyota Mobility Foundation supports the development of a more mobile society by investing in inclusive, sustainable, and innovative mobility solutions.

About Michelin Corporate Foundation:
The Michelin Corporate Foundation supports innovative solutions for safer and more accessible mobility for all. 

Developed in collaboration with the City of Venice, Challenge Works, and World Resources Institute, the two-stage, three-year $9 million global TMF Sustainable Cities Challenge received over 120 entries from across the world to encourage Venetians to use active mobility, public transport, and shared mobility across Venice’s mainland.

Out of the 120 entries, ten semi-finalists went on to adapt and refine their solutions over a 6-month period. Only five out of ten of the semifinalists were selected to advance to the finalist stage, based on the following criteria: innovation, impact, usability, viability, and team capacity. Judges looked for solutions that not only inspire behavior change towards sustainable transport but also demonstrate a deep understanding of local context, user needs, and implementation feasibility. Each team was required to present a clear demonstration plan with measurable KPIs to ensure long-term impact and scalability.

The judging panel, comprised of urban mobility experts and city stakeholders, selected the following finalists:

• BetterPoints Ltd - BetterPoints works with businesses, public bodies and universities to change the way people think about how they move. The team is developing an app to reward citizens for switching to more active and sustainable modes of travel. They aim to build over 40 behavior change techniques into the app, ensuring gamification, goal setting and other impactful approaches to deliver a modal shift.
• Factual Consulting SL - Factual is an innovative and strategy consulting firm committed to transforming mobility. The team’s platform is a digital tool which aims to promote sustainable mobility habits through innovative approaches like micro incentives. The platform consists of behavior tracking modules which can be integrated into transport apps already used in the city.
• Instant System S.A.S - Instant Systems is a leading Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) provider, empowering over 100 cities and regions worldwide. The team’s platform aims to integrate all available mobility services into a single app. The platform seeks to empower users by sharing real-time travel information, route optimization, and personalized journey suggestions that minimize environmental impact.
• Nudgd AB - Nudgd is a Swedish startup dedicated to driving sustainable behavior change through innovative digital nudging solutions. Its platform aims to integrate behavioral science with digital tools to encourage sustainable mobility habits. The platform will be tailored to Venice’s unique context – where 80% of residents are already multimodal – unlocking potential to shift car-dependent users toward active and shared transport.
• UrbanTide Limited x Love to Ride - Love to Ride Venice is a scalable, data-driven solution combining UrbanTide’s smart mobility insights delivered through Love to Ride’s proven behaviour change platform. The aim is to make cycling more visible, motivating, and accessible through targeted campaigns, real-time analytics, and community engagement. The solution helps Venetians shift everyday travel habits, track progress, and build a self-sustaining cycling culture with lasting, measurable impact.

The teams will now receive $130k implementation funding to proceed with them in the Finalist stage, where they will further develop and test their solutions within the city. Their efforts will contribute to a broader vision of cleaner, smarter urban transport systems that can be replicated globally.

The Sustainable Cities Challenge is funded by the Toyota Mobility Foundation and has been designed in partnership with Challenge Works and the World Resources Institute.  It aims to create cleaner, more efficient urban mobility systems worldwide. Venice’s finalist solutions exemplify the creativity and commitment needed to address global sustainable challenges through local action.

For more information, visit sustainablecitieschallenge.org.

About the Sustainable Cities Challenge

The Sustainable City Challenge is a two-stage, three-year $9 million global opportunity for cities and innovators. The Sustainable Cities Challenge will be delivered over two stages:

● Stage 1: Call to cities
The Challenge sought cities who wish to host City Challenges in 2024 – 2025. In November 2023, ten shortlisted cities received a range of capacity building support to help them understand the issue they want to solve and attract innovators to provide solutions. This included participation in a capacity building academy in Dallas, Texas from November 13–15, 2023. By May 2024, three cities were selected to host City Challenges to find solutions for local mobility challenges: Detroit (USA), Varanasi (India), and Venice (Italy).

● Stage 2: Call to Innovators via 3 City Challenges

Working with the host cities, the Sustainable Cities Challenge team supported by designing local City Challenges which launched between May and June 2024. Each City Challenge offers up to $3 million in implementation funding to innovators. Host Cities held open calls for entries from innovators via their City Challenge with the support of the Sustainable Cities Challenge team. Together, they selected their finalists to test their solutions in 2024–2025. In 2026, final implementation funding will be given to winners in each host city to continue to implement and grow their solutions.

Timeline of the TMF Sustainable Cities Challenge

·       Detroit Challenge: Transforming Height

·       Varanasi Challenge: Innovating Crowd Flow

·       Venice Challenge: Embracing Sustainable Mobility

Meet the judges

· Jannis Linke: Jannis is a research associate and PhD candidate at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. In his research, he focuses on factors influencing consumers' choices of sustainable mobility solutions, including the integration of new mobility services. He has collaborated with industry and city partners on various projects and was a visiting PhD student at LSE Cities. Prior to his academic career, he worked in the railway industry.

· Alexander Schmidt: Founder/CEO at BABLE Smart Cities with the mission to create sustainable and inclusive cities and towns. Schmidt’s work focuses on urban mobility, new digital markets, system analysis and development of urban solutions. He holds a M.Sc. Transport from Imperial College London, Environmental Engineering & Business Studies. He was formerly a researcher and project lead at the Fraunhofer Research Society, Morgenstadt, in Stuttgart, Germany and at the MIT Sensible Cities Lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Schmidt was also part of the founding and management team of EIT Urban Mobility, an institution of the European Union.

· Karen Vancluysen: Karen has been the Secretary General of POLIS since September 2014, after having been the network's Research Director for 10 years. POLIS is the leading European network of cities and regions on urban transport innovation. For over 25 years, Karen has been involved in European urban transport networking and policy activities, and EU research and innovation projects covering a wide range of urban mobility topics.

The Toyota Mobility Foundation, established by Toyota in 2014, launched the $4 million global challenge back in 2017 in partnership with Nesta Challenges, in a bid to drive innovation in the field of assistive technologies for people with lower-limb paralysis in a demonstration of Toyota’s mission of Mobility for All and further vision of producing happiness for all.

The Challenge called for talented engineers, innovators, and designers from around the world to submit their designs for groundbreaking devices, integrated with the latest technologies, to enhance the mobility and independence of end users. Over eighty teams from 28 countries around the world entered.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Human Engineering Research Laboratories (HERL) led the assessment of the entries and provided mentorship alongside a team of Toyota subject matter experts, and the winner was chosen by a panel of expert judges (see Notes to Editors below for details).

Designed by Phoenix Instinct, the Phoenix i uses intelligent systems to automatically adjust its center of gravity, making the ultra-lightweight carbon fiber frame extremely stable and easier to maneuver. It uses front-wheel power-assist to reduce painful vibrations and minimize strain on the user. The chair’s intelligent powered braking system automatically detects when the user is going downhill and adjusts to manage the user’s descent.

The four other finalists were:

• The Evowalk: Evolution Devices (United States) - a smart wearable simulator that goes right below the knee and uses artificial intelligence to support your muscles at the right time aiding in rehabilitating walking and preventing falls for people with foot drop.
• Qolo (Quality of Life with Locomotion): Team Qolo, University of Tsukuba (Japan) - a standing mobility device that integrates exoskeleton and wheelchair functions. It supports the function of standing and sitting with a passive assist mechanism for people with lower limb paralysis.
• Quix: IHMC & MYOLYN (United States) - a highly mobile, powered exoskeleton offering fast, stable and agile upright mobility.
• Wheem-i: Italdesign (Italy) - a wheel-on semi-autonomous electric device that provides ride sharing for wheelchair users. It is primarily designed for micro mobility and is usable on a variety of surfaces.

At its core, the Challenge was developed to highlight the importance of collaboration with end-users and create inventions with the disability community in mind. It supports the UN’s Sustainable Development goals, specifically Goal #10 of reducing inequalities in supporting devices that help people with paralysis better access society for economic, social, educational and other opportunities. Key specifications for choosing the winning invention included devices that will integrate seamlessly into people’s lives and environments while being comfortable and easy to use, enabling greater independence and increased participation in daily life. The judging criteria was based on innovation, insight and impact, functionality and usability, quality and safety, and market potential and affordability.

Around the world, millions of people are living with lower-limb paralysis (the most common causes being strokes, spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis). While there are no statistics on paralysis worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates there are 250,000-500,000 new cases of spinal cord injury globally every year.