Lauren McGuire, MBA’20, recalls riding her bicycle around the crescent of her family’s Ottawa home as a child waving to all of her neighbours. “Everyone knew everyone. If I needed anything or got locked out of my house, I could simply skip over to our neighbours.”
That same community looks a lot different today to the former Canadian World Cup speed skater, who moved back to the Ottawa area in January after completing her MBA at Smith. Fewer people stop to chat or wave hello, and children play closer to home.
This shift became glaringly apparent with the arrival of COVID-19. “I really don’t know if my neighbours are OK. In fact, I doubt that most Canadians can honestly say if they know if their neighbours are okay and have the help they need during this crisis.”
Lauren began to ask herself how she could better connect her community during this crisis. She came up with the idea of an online platform that could connect at-risk individuals in the community with neighbours in their area who were willing and able to help.
Leveraging the help of some tech talent in her network, she launched Community Helpers in mid-April.
“We are gaining exposure quickly. We have more registrations for Helpers than we do for Helpees at the moment. Our team at Community Helpers is targeting community organizations that have connections to the at-risk groups we are seeking to help to increase our registration,” Lauren says.
The platform works by having people who are interested in helping out in their community register, complete a COVID-19 health assessment, and create a profile including areas and services they are willing to help provide. Helpers are then matched to individuals or families in those areas seeking help. Services include everything from grocery, prescription and mail pickup, to laptop and cellphone donations, to daily phone check-ins to yard maintenance. All tasks are completed with no contact, with any funds being exchanged electronically or by porch pickup. The site also includes information and links to resources on maintaining personal safety and mitigating the spread of Coronavirus in the community.
Since launching mere weeks ago, the platform has grown to a network of volunteers targeting over 10 cities. “The platform is evolving to become a central hub to connect people that want to help to those in need of help. There are many emerging COVID-19 initiatives seeking to help, but that are having difficulties scaling in a quick and safe manner. Additionally, while all great initiatives, so many platforms are disjointed or difficult to find, use, and share. They are missing a key opportunity of synergy across players with similar missions,” Lauren says.
She notes that Community Helpers is in the process of developing a web app which will include individual profiles, a messaging function, map feature and ranking system.
“I believe the COVID-19 crisis is a time for all of us to re-evaluate how we reach out and help those around us. We need to leverage technology to better help and better connect, so we can grow towards a new and better normal.”
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