Scattered information
Events, job offers, flatshares, course materials: every piece of information lives on a different website, group or messaging app.
Student lifeIn developmentWeb · Android · iOSFR / DE / EN
Valais Connect
The platform for student life in Valais.
Networking and communities, events, jobs, housing, mutual aid, learning and a marketplace: everything that makes up student life, brought together in one app, on the web and on mobile — with Gaspard, an AI assistant who knows Valais.
Valais in our hearts
Platform under development. A school, municipality, tourist office or curious student? Let's talk.
Privacy by design“Verified student” badgeRooted in the canton
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Real screenshots of the platform, with demo accounts
The reality
A rich student life,
but scattered everywhere.
Events, side jobs, flatshares, course materials, a helping hand: it all exists in Valais, but it’s spread across websites, groups and messaging apps that don’t talk to each other.
Hard to find your way around
New school, new town, sometimes a new language: it takes time to know who to contact and where to find help.
Studying alone
Between classes, jobs and a social life, studying effectively without personalized support remains a challenge.
The Valais Connect promise
Valais Connect brings student life in Valais together in a single space: connect, help each other, learn and share — with an assistant that knows the canton and respects your privacy.
In pictures
The platform, as it really is
No mockups: these are the real Valais Connect screens, on the web and on mobile.
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And in your pocket
The same platform, designed phone-first.
Real screenshots of the platform in development, with demo accounts and content.
The platform, in detail
Everything that makes up student life
More than 20 modules, one consistent experience on the web and in the Android and iOS mobile app, in French, German and English. Explore every feature family: nothing is hidden.
- Modules
- 20+
- Platforms
- Web · Android · iOS
- Languages
- FR · DE · EN
- Notification channels
- 4
The common foundation
What every member finds everywhere: a secure account, verified student status, useful notifications and an interface in their own language.
Sign-up and account
- Guided 4-step sign-up: identity, address (with search and choice of municipality), optional studies (school, program, year), password with strength meter
- Referral code accepted at sign-up
- Privacy policy must be read to the end before it can be accepted
- Email address verification and forgotten password
- Members can delete their own account from their settings
“Verified student” badge
- Granted automatically when the verified email belongs to the domain of a listed school in Valais
- Recalculated as soon as the team adds or changes a school's email domains
Member settings
- Student profile: school, program, year, interests, skills, links, avatar
- Private address pinned on the map
- Security, appearance (light or dark theme), notifications and privacy sections
- Guided tour offered on arrival, replayable at any time
Notifications
- Four channels: in-app, real-time, email and push on Android and iPhone
- Around sixty event types: social, orders, deliveries, fundraisers, mutual aid, housing, referrals, moderation, announcements
- Email, push and opportunity alerts can be turned off separately
- Notification center: mark all as read, “unread” filter, direct access to the relevant item
- Sent in the member's language
Real time
- Inbox and unread counter updated live
- “Typing…” indicator and “online” status
- “New posts” badge in the feed
- Courier's position tracked live during a delivery
Search, maps and languages
- Unified search: members, communities, posts and everything students publish, filterable by school or town
- Recent searches and suggestions in the Explore tab
- Interactive maps, address autocomplete, Valais areas, directions and “around this place” lists
- Interface in French, German and English; public pages available in each language
The student social network of Valais
Introduce yourself, follow your classmates, share your campus life and join the groups that matter.
Profile
- Public profile with followers, following and a completeness indicator
- Posts, saved and reviews received tabs
- Username, title, bio, school, program, year, skills, interests and links
- List of newcomers, those from the same school first
Following and suggestions
- Follow or unfollow a member, “follows you” label
- “Friends of friends” suggestions ranked by mutual connections
- Member search by name or username
News feed
- Text posts or posts with up to 10 reorderable photos, caption and town
- Choice of audience: public, followers, close friends or a community
- @username mentions, hashtags and hashtag pages
- Likes, threaded comments, likes on comments, list of people who liked
- Save for later, share by private message, edit or delete
- “For you” or “Following” feed, filterable by scope and type
- Explore page: the most popular photos in Valais
24-hour stories
- Photo with positionable text, or text on a colored background
- Audience: everyone, followers or close friends circle (managed by the member)
- Viewer list, 6 emoji reactions and reply by private message
- Reporting and deletion; automatic removal on expiry
Communities
- Four types: institution, program, region and interest
- Create an interest community (the creator becomes its owner)
- Join or leave, member list with owners and admins
- Posts and events specific to each community
- Suggestions based on the member's school and town
Full-featured messaging, designed for students
Private chats and groups, in real time, with everything you'd expect from a modern messaging app.
Conversations and groups
- Private conversations and groups of up to 20 people
- Multi-step group creation: members, name, description, photo
- Group management: add or remove members, appoint admins, leave
- Shared media, documents and links grouped by conversation
Messages
- Text, photos, documents and voice messages (lockable recording on mobile)
- Reply by quoting a message, forward, copy
- Edit a message for 15 minutes; delete it for yourself, or for everyone within 48 hours
- Emoji reactions and starred messages
- “Delivered” and “read” receipts, with per-message details
- Real-time “typing…” indicator
Organization
- Search within one conversation or across all of them
- Pin, mute, archive, mark as unread, add to favorites
- Inbox with search and filters
- Clear or delete a conversation for yourself
Safe conversations
- Block or unblock a member, list of blocked members
- Report a message to the moderators
- The moderation team never reads private messages
Everyday essentials, all in one place
Going out, finding a job or internship, finding a place to live, sharing course notes and helping each other: every need has its module.
Events
- Categories: party, talk, hackathon, competition, culture, sport, workshop
- Cover image, venue and address, dates, capacity and community
- Sign up or cancel, see the list of participants
- The organiser can cancel (participants are notified) or delete
- Filters by category, town, community and scope
Opportunities: jobs and internships
- Student job, internship, apprenticeship, employment, freelance, volunteering, collaboration, competition
- Field, work mode and workload, remote work, language, pay, deadline, skills
- Apply by email or via a link
- Filters, sorting, counts by region, similar offers or offers from the same organization
- Profile-based recommendations and automatic alerts when an offer matches
- Save an offer; every offer is published and verified by the team
Housing
- Room, flatshare, studio, apartment, sublet
- Photos, rent, utilities, rooms, floor area, furnished, flatmates, availability
- Filters by rent and availability, map, counts by town and type
- Exact address kept private: only the area is public, the address is shared once a request is accepted
- Save a listing, mark it as let
Course resources
- Lecture notes, summaries, exercises, exam prep, tutorials, tips
- Organized by school, program and subject; filters by type, subject, field of study and scope
- Private file or external link, PDF or image preview, download counts
- “Helpful” votes, saving and sharing by link or as an image
- Rankings: popular this week, top contributors of the month, trending subjects
- Recommendations based on the member's studies and personal statistics
Mutual aid: questions
- Ask a location-based question, get answers
- The author picks the answer that helped them
- Counters for solved and open questions
Mutual aid: solidarity offers
- Helping hand (paid by the hour or free), carpooling by the seat, item lending with a deposit
- Departure, destination and photos for each offer
- Request, then acceptance or refusal by the author; requests can be withdrawn
- Confirmation of help received or item returned; deposit kept if late
- Problem reporting, disputes settled by the team
A new way to revise, with a personal tutor
A complete learning space, from secondary school to master's level, with Gaspard as a tutor in every lesson.
Courses
- Course catalog organized into units and lessons
- Levels: secondary school, apprenticeship, bachelor's, master's, adults
- “For me” filter based on the member's studies
- Lessons unlocked progressively
Exercises and exams
- Single-choice, multiple-choice, true/false and short-answer quizzes
- Short answers marked by Gaspard; “Check” button for instant feedback
- Timed mock exams with marking
- Lessons under 60% flagged, mistakes added to the revision list
Revision and motivation
- Spaced repetition at 1, 3 and then 7 days, plus flashcards
- XP, streaks, daily goal and badges
- Weekly leaderboard, overall or by school, which anyone can opt out of
- “I have an exam on…”: Gaspard schedules revision up to the date
- Next step suggested by Gaspard
Gaspard as tutor in every lesson
- Three modes: explanation, Socratic (one question at a time) and exam preparation
- Nuanced marking: correct, partly correct or incorrect
- Quizzes at 3 difficulty levels
- History kept for 180 days
Personal “I didn't understand…” learning paths
- Created from a topic, pasted notes or an imported document (PDF or photo)
- Text recognition in French and German for photos and scanned PDFs
- Placement test, then tailor-made generated lessons
- Report a faulty exercise, regenerate or delete the learning path
- Share your learning path with the community: the team can adopt it as a course
For the teaching team
- Course editor: units, lessons, reordering and publishing
- Gaspard drafts outlines, lessons, quizzes and flashcards
- Every generated question is approved by a human before it goes live
- Handling of learning paths submitted by members
Buy, sell, deliver and support each other as students
A local economy: a marketplace, delivery by student couriers, a built-in wallet and solidarity fundraisers.
Valais Connect is in development: payment flows (TWINT top-ups, withdrawals) are part of the planned wallet and are not yet open to the public.
Marketplace
- Sell or give away items
- Books, electronics, supplies, furniture, bikes, sport, clothing, other
- Condition, size, photos, favorites and similar items
- Sort by distance and estimated delivery cost on the listing
Orders
- Purchase paid from the wallet, then accepted by the seller
- In-person handover with a buyer code, or delivery
- 48 hours to report a problem; “Received, all good” pays the seller immediately
- Cancellation, switch to in-person pickup, receipt and history export
- Buyer protection: disputes settled by the team
- 1 to 5-star reviews between buyer, seller and courier
Delivery: for buyers
- Standard or express quote, parcel size
- One-hour slots, from the next day up to 7 days ahead, between 8 am and 9 pm
- Number of available couriers shown before purchase
- Instructions for the courier
- Live tracking on the map and a tracking link to share with someone close
- Tipping possible for 7 days
Delivery: becoming a courier
- Any member can become a courier: vehicle (on foot, bike, car, van), areas, time slots, charter
- “Available now” mode for 3 hours
- Job board: priority to the best-placed couriers, express and “on the way” jobs
- Rounds of up to 3 jobs with navigation and voice guidance
- Pickup and handover codes, photo on delivery; recipient absent: two attempts, then return
- Earnings for the day, week and month
Wallet
- Balance and detailed history
- Top up with TWINT, from CHF 5 to 500, balance capped at CHF 2,000
- Earnings available 48 hours after the sale; tips commission-free
- Withdrawal to a bank account from CHF 10, optional automatic withdrawal every Monday
- Identity verification to receive money
- Screenshot-protected screen on mobile
Solidarity fundraisers
- Category, goal, duration and photos
- Published only after review by a moderator (never by the organiser themselves)
- Donations from the wallet: preset or custom amounts, optional anonymity, message
- Updates sent to donors
- Manual or automatic closing; full refund to donors in case of fraud
- Overall student solidarity counter
Referrals
- Personal code to share and tracking of referred friends
- CHF 5 bonus for the referrer once the referred friend has topped up at least CHF 15
- Bonus can only be used for purchases on the platform
- Invitation links that open directly in the mobile app
Gaspard: assistant, tutor and memory of Valais
A young farmer from Evolène who raises Hérens cows, and whom you call “by ringing the bell”. Warm, funny and proud of Valais, he keeps things informal and answers in French, German or English.
What Gaspard looks up
- The platform's real data: events, opportunities, housing, marketplace, communities, mutual aid, resources, courses, students, posts
- The member's own data, within their permissions: profile, wallet, orders, listings, deliveries, learning, referrals, notifications
- The member's conversations, only if they bring them up
- Short answers, with clickable cards and sources
Gaspard suggests, you confirm
- Four possible actions: sign up for an event, save a listing, housing ad or offer, start a course, set an exam date
- Each action appears as a “Confirm / Cancel” card and expires after 15 minutes
- Gaspard never carries anything out himself; any answer claiming otherwise is corrected automatically
Guardrails
- Detection of manipulation attempts and requests for secrets
- In an emergency, the numbers 144, 117, 118, 112 and 143 are given first
- Never any passwords, handover codes or bank details
- Off-topic questions are politely declined
- Conversation can be cleared at any time, automatically forgotten after 30 days
Tutor
- Teaching in three modes: explanation, Socratic, exam preparation
- Quizzes, marking, flashcards and lesson plans
- Level assessment and personalized learning path
- Import of PDFs, notes or photos, with French and German text recognition
- Long tasks processed in the background, with status tracking
Valais knowledge base
- Free encyclopedia in French and German: canton, districts, every municipality, selected topics
- Official pages: education grants and allowances, apprenticeships, health insurance
- Texts written by the team, given priority in answers
- Hybrid search, by keyword and by meaning, updated every week
- Bilingual glossary (Visp / Viège, Kuhkampf / combat de reines, the traditional cow fights…) and handling of German compound words
Automatic listing collection
- Jobs, internships and apprenticeships, housing, events and educational resources
- Sources: employers, event calendars and letting agencies in Valais, and open educational resources
- Legitimate sources only, site access rules respected, identified crawler
- Major classified-ad portals excluded; Valais geographic filter
- Scam indicators on housing ads, expiry aligned with the source
- Reviewed by the team before publication
Measured quality
- Automated evaluations replaying real cases before every deployment
- Checks on tool selection, no made-up facts, informal tone, language and confirmations
- Search relevance measured in French, German and English
A native app for Android and iOS
A single codebase for Android and iOS, functionally identical, with the core of the platform in your pocket.
Push notifications
- Native push on Android and iPhone
- Tapping a notification opens the relevant screen directly
- Per-channel settings and enabling device notifications
Invitation links
- Referral links open the app directly
- Logged-out member: sign-up with the code pre-filled
- Logged-in member: access to their own referrals
Maps and live tracking
- Native maps on each platform
- Live courier tracking for the buyer
- Background location sharing during a job
- Directions, turn-by-turn navigation and address autocomplete
Media
- Native photo picker and camera (proof of delivery)
- Photos compressed before upload
- Voice notes with lockable recording
- Document picker
Security
- Session encrypted in the phone's secure vault, excluded from backups
- Two-factor authentication required at login if enabled
- Protected wallet screen: screenshots blocked on Android, preview hidden on iOS
- External links filtered
Comfort
- French, German and English, switchable on the fly
- Light, dark or system theme
- System text size respected and layout adapted for tablets
- Guided tour the first time you open each tab, replayable at will
- Real-time updates, with periodic refresh as a safety net
Privacy and security, by design
A student platform powered by AI has to be beyond reproach with its members' data. Here are the safeguards built into the product.
Account security
- Two-factor authentication by code (TOTP) with backup codes
- Passkeys
- Password re-prompted before sensitive actions
- Sessions and devices tracked and revocable
- Rate limits on all sensitive actions; 2FA mandatory for the team
Moderation
- Any content can be reported
- Moderation queue: most-reported content first
- Dismissal or removal, with the author informed
- The team never reads private messages
Personal data
- Exact addresses kept private for housing, mutual aid and deliveries
- Delivery photos deleted after 30 days
- Automatic masking of emails, phone numbers, IBANs, AHV numbers, bank cards and passwords
- Anything involving personal data is processed by a local AI
nFADP compliance
- Versioned acceptance of the privacy policy
- “Help improve Gaspard”: consent off by default and revocable
- Pseudonymized training data, private messages excluded
- Export of your Gaspard data and erasure when the account is deleted
- Optional external AI providers, limited to non-personal content, and never a provider that trains on the data it receives
A console to run and moderate
Moderators and administrators have a complete console, with every action traceable.
Oversight
- Dashboard over 7, 30, 90 or 365 days, compared with the previous period
- Exportable statistics by module
- System health and retrying of failed jobs
- Exportable audit log; password re-prompted for sensitive exports
Members
- Member list and export
- Identity correction, resending of the verification email, 2FA reset
- Ending a session or device, global logout
- Warning, role change, suspension and reinstatement
Content and finances
- Moderation of content and disputes in the marketplace and mutual aid
- Commissions, general ledger and reconciliation
- Configurable commissions on the marketplace, donations and mutual aid, plus courier rates and share
Reference data and communication
- Schools, programs and email domains
- Sponsored cards
- Targeted announcements (everyone, a role, a school, a town, couriers) in the app, by push and by email
- Opening or closing registrations, global banner
Data collection and AI
- Review queue for collected listings: approve, reject, process in bulk
- “Re-check at source”, manual run of a source, trusted sources
- Monitoring of Gaspard usage, model status and quality evaluations
Automations
- Refunds for orders not accepted and for help requests left unanswered
- Release of earnings, automatic Monday withdrawals
- Delivery follow-up: widened to other couriers after 10 minutes, new offer as soon as a courier becomes free
- Closing of fundraisers and payout to organisers
- Deletion of expired stories, forgetting of Gaspard conversations (30 days) and tutor conversations (180 days)
Gaspard on your website, and well-targeted messages
Schools, municipalities, tourist offices and organizations can offer Gaspard to their own visitors and reach students in Valais.
Embeddable widget
- Embedded with two lines of HTML, about 15 KB compressed
- Isolated from the rest of your page: no style conflicts
- Configurable language, page context and suggested questions; controllable via JavaScript
- Consent requested on first click
- Listing cards linking to the original source, with sources and licences shown
- Accessible: managed focus, close with Esc, screen reader announcements, full screen on mobile, reduced motion on request
Public API
- Conversations with streamed responses
- Positive / negative feedback on answers
- Knowledge base search
- Privacy notice, consent, export and erasure of visitor data
- Quotas per client (minute, day, month) and per visitor
- Server key, and a publishable key restricted to declared domains
Reaching students
- Opportunities published and verified by the team on behalf of organizations, with an “other offers from this organization” page
- Sponsored cards in the news feed
- Announcements targeted by school or by town
The AI assistant
Gaspard, the assistant who knows Valais
A guide to student life and a tutor for revision.
Gaspard is a young farmer from Evolène who raises Hérens cows, and you call him “by ringing the bell”. Warm, funny and proud of Valais, he's on first-name terms with everyone and answers in French, German or English.
He finds out what's happening on the platform, draws on sources from Valais and supports your learning, based on your own course material. His full capabilities are described in the “Gaspard & AI” tab above.
Gaspard suggests, you confirm: he never acts on your behalf.
Finds what interests you
Events, listings, housing, communities, course resources: just ask, in French, German or English.
Knows your account, within your permissions
Gaspard can look up your orders, your progress and your profile — only what you are allowed to see.
Suggests actions for you to confirm
Signing up for an event, saving a listing to favorites: Gaspard prepares the action and waits for your confirmation before carrying it out.
A personal tutor
Guided lessons (including a Socratic mode), quizzes, flashcards, marking, level assessment and tailored learning paths — based on your own course material, imported as a PDF or a photo thanks to text recognition.
Answers grounded in sources from Valais
Hybrid search, by keyword and by meaning, across several languages, over sources from the canton, districts and municipalities and official pages, updated every week. Data collection respects each site's access rules and terms of use.
In practice
A new term, from start to finish
An illustrative example: a student arrives in Sion to start her studies.
Step 1
A verified profile
She creates her profile and confirms her academic email: her “Verified student” badge appears.
Step 2
Her communities
She joins the communities for her school, her program and her region, and discovers the news feed.
Step 3
A night out found with Gaspard
She asks Gaspard what's on this week. He suggests a back-to-school party and prepares the sign-up; she confirms.
Step 4
Tailored revision
Before her first exams, she imports photos of her lecture notes: the tutor turns them into quizzes and flashcards.
Local roots
Designed for the canton, in its languages
An interface in French, German and English to connect French-speaking Valais, Upper Valais and students from elsewhere. Communities by school, by program, by region and by interest.
And an assistant whose answers draw on sources from Valais — canton, districts, municipalities, official pages — updated every week.
Partners
Add Gaspard to your website
Schools, municipalities and tourist offices can offer Gaspard to their own visitors, with the same guarantees: consent on first click, cited sources, data export and deletion on request. Would you also like to support the platform or contribute to its development? Write to us, we’ll be happy to get back to you.
Widget — two lines of HTML, about 15 KB, accessible and configurable (language, context, suggested questions)
Public API — streaming responses, dedicated keys, quotas per client and per visitor
Targeting — announcements by school or by town, sponsored cards, offers published for your organization
Support — sponsorship, ideas, testing or development
Frequently asked questions
Everything about Valais Connect
The platform is in development. It is designed for the web and for an Android and iOS mobile app. To stay informed or get involved in the project, write to us.
In development
Let's bring student life to life in Valais
Student, school, municipality, tourist office or simply curious about the project: let's talk about Valais Connect.