Neighbourhood sharing-caring time-trading app

[LiCern]

Name
Lisa

Describe the problem you'd like to solve
More often than not, we do not even know who our neighbours are. London, for example, is particularly unfavourable with regards to this due to its size and people moving around a lot, going from tenancy contract to tenancy contract. This can contribute to a sense of isolation and loneliness that plays a key role in psychological well being, especially when suffering from low mood or depression.

In the chapter "Togetherness" of "The Little Book of Lykke: The Danish Search for the World's Happiest People", Wiking investigates the sense of community or togetherness which is one of the six researched factors at the core of his explanation on happiness. In particularly, he explores this sense of belonging and safety rooted in feeling part of a community that people living in co-operatives all over Europe (including London!) experience. Togetherness is cultivated from the smaller things, such as tool-sharing (supposedly, a drill is used on average between six and twenty minutes in its lifetime and yet most households own one!), to the bigger ones such as providing a couple of hours of afterschool childcare, help with food shopping, fixing things in the house, etc.

While this comes naturally to people living in co-ops, there is a space to create this kind of micro-community at the small level, on the street where one lives, for example. I would like to create an app that, upon verifying one's residence, allows people to share tools, trade time (i.e. if you watch your neighbour's children for a couple of hours then you get a time credit for someone else to help you when you need), organise social occasions and cultivate this much needed sense of community.

Who are the stakeholders?
Who would this benefit? Who would be affected by it?
As this sense of community is so fundamental to human well-being, this would benefit anyone who is lacking it or does not have it in a satisfactory amount. Psychological health aside, as everyone has different skills and works according to different schedules, the practical advantages of implementing such a solution could be very significant for the small-scale-community to be created.

What is currently being done to solve this problem?
Whether it's effective or not, what is in place at the moment to solve this problem?
Nothing that I am aware of, as of right now.

[amberrignell]

I really like this idea, and think it's actually really clever to focus on getting it working on a small scale in the first place