Help Your Hood
In one of our last few posts, we referred to our views on the existing COVID-19 pandemic that has affected the nation. Many countries have resorted to being placed on temporary lockdown, meaning that individuals are limited to time outside and can only go out for essentials. Such restrictions have led to the suspension of the freedom of movement that we are all privy to having. Holidays have been postponed or cancelled entirely. Flights are on halt, many hotels are currently closed (unless open for patients recovering or key workers fighting the virus), and you can't access some regions due to strict controls or people entering and leaving towns or cities.
The whole situation has been awful for many businesses but is even more difficult for small independent business. We have had the opportunity to promote, visit, shop and work with many smart and incredible independent companies and hope that they get to survive this situation. So, when we heard about Help Your Hood, a project set up by Sejal and her partner, in an attempt to support local businesses during this time, we had to find out more. Although lockdown is being lifted in several places, many countries will take a phased approach, and there will very likely be some changes. Additionally, there is a chance that there could be further waves - so agility and creative and critical thinking is essential right now. Help Your Hood allows people to buy online vouchers for your favourite businesses. You can also recommend a company to be part of their directory or if you have one yourself, submit it directly. Find out more below from Co-Founder, Sejal Parekh.
Founders, Sejal Parekh and Kev Maguire
What are your names and where are you both from?
We're a British couple Sejal Parekh and Kev Maguire. We live in Gracià, Barcelona with our two kids and dog.
What do you do for a living?
We have our own creative consultancy called Quickhatch, which works with organisations all over the world to solve big problems using a week-long intensive process. We want to build better things, faster. Kev previously worked for Google.
How was Help Your Hood born?
When the COVID-19 virus broke out, we immediately started to feel concerned about all the local, independent, small businesses - the people, many of whom we consider friends, in our area. In fact, we've lived in many places including Manchester, London, San Francisco, so we thought okay what can we do to help not just local businesses in our neighbourhood but in neighbourhoods everywhere? What will help them ride this out? How can they earn money right now? So we tapped into our network of super talented freelancer friends to help us and got to work.
We knew that many local businesses don't have gift cards set up or even know how to sell them online, so we contacted GiftUp and got them to waive their fee, and they kindly agreed. Now it's super easy for every single small business in the world to gift cards through Help Your Hood. Most importantly the business receives the money right now not later when the gift card gets redeemed.
Can you name five of your favourite local businesses?
So hard to narrow this down to just 5!
Barcelona:
Origo Bakery (who are still open and are safely providing delicious, fresh goods)
Image © Origo Bakery
Image © Milla’s Lunch
Image © Little Fern Cafe
Image © Flowers for Your Weekend
Image © Buhler & Co
San Francisco:
Image © Dog Eared Bookshop
Image © Pinhole Coffee
Image © 3rd Cousin
In Manchester, it’s:
What impact has local businesses had on you/your lifestyle?
For us, local businesses are the lifeblood of every neighbourhood. Not only providing much-needed services, but they also bring ideas, creativity and community spirit. Without them, we'd be living in a deeply homogeneous world, who wants that?
