Like many startups and people around the world, we were shocked as the pandemic swept across the world. After realising that we would be working from home and arranging to do so, our attention turned immediately to what could we do utilising our existing technology to help as many people as possible.

We figured that our geolocation was a powerful tool to bring people together with those in their community that can help with essentials such as food shopping and collection and delivery of prescriptions. We rapidly built a COVID-19 support tasks section for people to list tasks they are looking for help with and those that they can offer help with. Users can see a rough location on a map and approximate mileage to know who is nearby that can assist them in this desperate period.

We also wondered how people would deal with the changes in being able to no longer teach skills and do many tasks in person. We watched as traffic surged by 400% within days of the lockdown and people arranged to share skills through video calls with each other. It’s wonderful to feel that our site is helping some people to get through this difficult period and to come out the other side having learned something new.

Looking forward to the economic recovery period that we will be going through and under which nobody can be under any illusions as to how tough it is going to be, we wanted to do something to help. We took the collective decision to make the site free to use for all until July 2021 so that those making money from sharing their skills and tasks once lockdown is lifted will be able to keep all their revenue without paying anything for finding their users to teach skills and do tasks for. We hope this will help a great deal to those who earn significant income from the website as well as those who just do a few hours sharing a week.

Do you have any ideas for further things we can do to let us know? Please tell us now!