I’m Michael Brennan, the founder of tootoot. Today I thought I’d do something a little different with the blog. My team asked me 5 questions and I thought I would share my answers with you.

What drives me to help students with tootoot?

Throughout both Primary school and secondary school, I was bullied heavily as a child. I was physically, verbally and cyber bullied to the point in which I didn’t want to go to school anymore. I was fortunate enough to be able to move schools in 2008 to Berwick-upon-Tweed where I became Head Boy of my High School, Berwick Academy.

On my year of Head Boy-ship I was asked what did I want to achieve. For me it was simple, I wanted to help children of any age be able to speak up in confidence without fear of repercussion and prevent children from having to suffer like I did. As a result in 2008 I won a National Rotarian Award for services to safeguarding and Anti-Bullying after creating the first peer mentoring schemes, which is being rolled out in many different form across the country still to this date. I then left school and went to University in Edinburgh.

A year into University I received a phone call from my past Head teacher of Berwick Academy who wanted my help. Cyberbullying and safeguarding issues through social media in school had exploded and he wanted a way to help students. I have always been a very passionate and self driven person but this was something very close to my heart.

Throughout University I combined passion and past experience with knowledge, and as a result I developed the first safeguarding platform called tootoot. Something which I am now wanting to take around the world and introduce to as many schools as possible.

How do I innovate at tootoot?

The innovation behind tootoot started with a lot of planning. A great friend of mine at school, Kieran Innes, had developed many web based applications, so I asked him from the start to become my development director, focusing on encryption and security behind tootoot’s development.

I was focused on one outcome – To provide tootoot to as many schools and students as possible.

How did you develop tootoot?

After a 2 year development and testing phase, innovation came directly from not only personal knowledge but also from those on the front line. I worked with focus groups of students, staff, Senior leadership, governors, contacts in the government and celebrities to create a platform and app that students would love to use to report, staff to record and monitor incidents and senior leadership and governors can view real-time reports.

Ongoing innovation for tootoot happens every single day. When tootoot was into it’s first schools, tootoot’s set up was manual, meaning I would have to go to a school and then set up, train staff and then launch tootoot via assembly to a school’s students. Now, through innovation, set up is completely automated and takes on average from start to finish 14 minutes (It’s so so simple).

Staff training resources are recorded and broken down into stages, and the assembly and student launch phase is now a video which includes Will Mellor (Our fantastic celebrity ambassador). Recently I have partnered with great organisation’s including National Children’s Bureau, The Anti-Bullying Alliance, E-safety support, Barclays, Starbucks, and even Apple have provided support.

What was my personal influence?

My personal influence comes from my past – Nobody should have to suffer in silence especially children, of any age. My integrity is to prevent children suffering like I did and to provide those who need it most with a voice to be able to speak up.

Right now my strategic direction is simple. I am raising awareness of the tootoot platform and app both Nationally and Internationally. I have received internal and external funding to allow every school in the UK to try tootoot completely free for one whole calendar year, no strings attached – something I have been very passionate about doing from the start.

Since launch in September 2015 tootoot has launched into 400 schools Nationally with 20 international schools using tootoot in countries such as Russia, Dubai, Honk Kong, Myanmar and Italy. To date 133,324 students now have access to tootoot and my goal is to help 1 million students in the next 5 years.

What was my first piece of media coverage?

My first piece of media coverage was on BBC Look North and I have include the clip below for you to view.