About

I’m fortunate to call a lot of people my friends. Good friends. And over the past 20-odd years, I’ve gone to them for help, as they have come to me. Probably an average of 10-20 friends a week reach out to me for practical help or advice. Because that’s what good mates do, right? Many of these requests have been confidential, so I couldn’t even post them publicly on Facebook – my platform of choice – making the process of fulfilling those requests even more difficult and time-consuming as I had to resort to inbox introductions and explanatory emails. 

Covid in 2020 amplified this need exponentially. Even before the pandemic, many people I knew suffered from depression, anxiety or stress. And often, in silence. Then months of isolated lockdowns brought home the true meaning and value of things many of us take for granted, such as companionship and human connection. But I believe we all have a role to play in supporting not only our friends and family, but also strangers as well, and during the peak of the pandemic during my time in LA and London, I witnessed this at first-hand: strangers posting notes on my door offering grocery shopping; people offering lifts to my doctor friends to get tested; and facebook posts offering an ear or a shoulder. 

So I’m not the only one helping; I’m just one fleeting silver surf, in a sea of friends and people who are kind and who personify humanity. I’m blessed to know so many people, who are so good, and who want to do so much.

And that’s why we created HelpHuddle. A free online platform dedicated to serving our private community – and where we can, those beyond – to better facilitate everyone helping each other. Posting and connecting people through Facebook, email and WhatsApp is so time-consuming, and I’m really pleased my team and I were able to build something during the lockdowns that has increased our bandwidth and efficiency to help others exponentially.

I’m just one fleeting silver surf, in a sea of friends and people who are kind and who personify humanity.

Initially, we’re focusing on Requests and Offers of help, advice and support. Our pandemic-centred lens will cover homeschooling aid, financial wellbeing, mental health and supporting victims of sexual and domestic violence. However, we also want to support our friends’ services, products and businesses, especially when so many of them have been hit hard by the pandemic, so we’ll giving them some eyeball on here, and hopefully they can offer special concessions to our members too. Or maybe some can offer services or investment to the many people that have been made redundant, to help them start a new business? Fingers, arms, legs and eyes crossed for all those to happen. 

We hope you find this platform useful. If you have any suggested improvements or ideas of what you’d like to see on our social media platforms, or want to join our Zoom board huddles to help formulate policy and help us grow this small, furry, pinkish kind of thing, please reach out to us. We should give it a cuddly name right? Oops, we already have…HelpHuddle. Helping others Help.

Founder