MyNabes, is a mutual aid neighborhood app based on kindness and sharing in the community. CEO & Co-founder Elodie Bottine of MyNabes and Co-Founder, Raluca Perkins created MyNabes for neighbors willing to make real life connections, to care about each other and to help each other out by lending a hand, by organizing playdates and meeting with other neighbors or exchanging and sharing services, tools, food and items.
“The beautiful goal that we are pursuing is to recreate the neighborhood spirit that existed in the past and to place communities in a more collaborative, supportive and convivial ecosystem.”
FWM: Share your background in publishing and advertising.
I spent 11 years in the publishing and advertising industry in Paris. As director of business development, I had the chance to work with and to interview some of the most inspiring business leaders in France. Their amazing and inspirational career paths slowly led me to realize that deep down, I really wanted to embark on an entrepreneurial adventure. I enjoyed every single moment of these 11 years, I got to meet extraordinary men and women who taught me so much.
FWM: Tell us about when you were in Paris and your 92-year-old neighbor.
Ginette was about to turn 92-years-old when I met her and she passed away 3 days before her 101st birthday. I met Ginette at our then local grocery store. I helped her reach a can that was up high on a shelf, and we ended up talking. I learned that day that she has been living in the same building since 1935 and that she had no family nor friends anymore. I gave her my phone number and a few weeks later she called me. A beautiful friendship was born between a 91-year-old who didn’t have any family and me, who was far away from mine. She was the first one to meet my husband and, later, to discover my daughters. She was amazing and smart and quite a character. I always wondered why no one among her closest neighbors had ever thought to ask her if she needed anything. When I started working on MyNabes I was optimistic to never again see an old lady with no one taking care of her and I felt like something had to be done to help fight isolation and loneliness.
FWM: How is MyNabes creating the neighborhood spirit that existed in the past?
MyNabes is not about seeing what is wrong in your neighborhood but about seeing how we can help one another. We want neighbors to be able to get to know each other in real life and help one another out. We connect neighbors who live on the same street or in the same neighborhood and by accessing the app on their smartphones, neighbors can use 20 different categories to exchange services or lend items, organize local playdates and meet new families, find a sport partner, give a helping hand to a neighbor in need, borrow a cup of sugar rather than running to the store or gardening tools for example, find a carpool and integrate seniors into neighborhood life, among other things.
With MyNabes we want to help build a sense of community and a place where our neighbors are not strangers anymore, where we share services, tools, smiles and fun moments, where we help each other out through kindness and collaboration, where each one of us feels included.
We think it’s important that in our communities we can count on each other.
FWM: Tell us about the MyNabes app. Is it user friendly?
One of the first phases of development of MyNabes was to create an app as easy to use as possible. We also paid attention to certain details such as the font, the color of the text and other details that make the app user friendly. Many elderlies have a smartphone, but we hope in the future to launch a web version to allow everyone to use MyNabes.
FWM: Take us through the process.
The sign-up process is very simple and straightforward. You will first need to enter your email address and create a password, then you will receive an email with a verification code.
Once you enter the code, we’ll ask you for basic information like your name and year of birth to make sure you’re over 13.
Once you have entered your address, the app will suggest a neighborhood and if not, you can add your neighborhood to the list (the neighborhood will then be verified by our team). Once you’re done, you can start posting. And you can invite your neighbors, friends, relatives or even colleagues to join the application directly from your account by clicking on “Tell a friend”.
FWM: What are some of the main reasons people are using the app today?
A lot of our users are looking for something different than the existing neighborhood network available. Even if this network is very useful to find your lost cat and to be kept informed of the security concerns of your neighborhood, in the end it has led to the loss of the neighborhood spirit, which is nevertheless so important. We no longer meet each other and instead a simple request for information or a recommendation can lead to a hundred comments about something completely off-topic and sometimes very mean.
Neighbors mainly use MyNabes to engage with their community, to share tools and objects, to give away items but also extra fruits or vegetables from their garden, to organize playdates or to ask or offer their help.
What also makes us very unique is that we don’t have any comments section; if users want to respond to a request, it’s done via private chat. You know we just want to facilitate neighborly relations and accelerate local mutual-aid and small neighbor-to-neighbor services.
FWM: Can you provide some of the neighborhoods it’s reaching now?
Raluca Perkins, my co-founder and I are from California where most of our users are, especially in the Bay Area and South California.
It was a real pleasure to see that our users immediately used MyNabes as we imagined it.
MyNabes has been created for neighbors like Kate who uses the app to spread kindness and give away items, Vimal who wants to connect with his neighbors through daily walks around the Crescent Park Neighborhood in Palo Alto or even Lise who started some tomatoes from seed and had really good germination and wanted to share with her neighbors the extra seedlings. We just partnered with the Nehyam neighborhood in Long Beach and we’re very hopeful to work soon with the 11 neighborhoods from North Long Beach.
FWM: What is your mission for the MyNabes app?
I came up with an idea and I’m absolutely passionate about it. I’m the CEO and I’m in charge of all the strategic aspects, communication as well as our social media. I also write all the articles you can find on MyNabes’ blog and I’m happy to say that it works really well and people like them. And, I have an amazing co-founder and CTO, Raluca Perkins, that manages all the technical aspects of the app.
One of the projects we’re working on is to launch a version of MyNabes for schools and churches. By launching this new version of the app, our goal is to offer the school or church community a platform where they can meet other members, collaborate and help each other out and create real life connections that would strengthen the community and enhance their commitment to their school or church.
