MyConnect is an online platform that caters to parents of children with special needs by providing them with a community outlet and a directory of providers and services and resources. MyConnect is unique in providing such information and services at all, according to Caroline Bilal, who co-founded the online platform with Faradjine Laurore.
“The idea formed years ago when I, as a parent to a child that has a developmental disability, really struggled to access information, find resources, programs and providers to help my son,” Bilal recalled. “I found it incredibly hard to understand why technology wasn”™t more helpful in helping me to access information, but also find other parents who have similar kids to my own.”
Bilal and Laurore were passionate about rectifying this deficiency. Both women had amassed experience working in nonprofits, with Laurore in particular eager to utilize her background in software development and computer science for the mission.
With the help of a team of volunteers ”” mostly students from New York University ”” the co-founders set the stage for the project, incorporating MyConnect on June 2, 2021, with the website launching nine months later on March 2 of this year after enough information and material was compiled.
Bilal envisioned MyConnect as a “one-stop shop” that will service and help connect some of the roughly 70 million parents with one another, a group who are “largely left to their own devices to figure out how to get help, how to get support, very much relying heavily on word of mouth.” Once parents are immersed in a supportive and informative environment, the team hopes to see parents transition into becoming effective advocates themselves, spreading awareness.
A sense of community, then, is a major point of attraction for such parents thinking of signing up. The fledgling website has about 200 members in its social network, some of whom are “provider users,” Bilal said.
“When there is a question that requires slightly more sophisticated expertise, then our providers are able to chime in as well,” she added.
The community is further enhanced by MyConnect”™s Intellimatch System, which Bilal described as a “primitive version of AI,” which uses data provided by members during the onboarding process to match them to local providers and with other parents who have similar concerns regarding their special needs children.
“It will allow, potentially, at some point down the line,” Bilal said, “for parents who have kids who are undiagnosed to seek certain diagnoses and thus receive more accurate, better, effective treatments for their kids.”
Members of the site have access to a directory of special needs programs and providers, presently focused on those within Westchester County, and which parents may be matched to via the Intellimatch System. The directory”™s effectiveness is supplemented by the Qualitative Review System. Members are able to leave reviews of listed providers, though they are encouraged to pen reviews that are “qualitative” in nature.
“Most sites that have a review feature, they allow users to create more of a narrative, like a text-based review, which is often not guided by a certain set of criteria that other users might actually care about,” Bilal explained. “For every single provider type or program type in the directory, we”™ve created qualitative review criteria that users are kind of encouraged to use for leaving a review.
Members also have access to resources that features vetted content deemed to be of high quality by the small team. This includes written content such as how-to articles guiding readers on the Medicaid application process or ways parents may identify signs of ADHD in their children.
Additional resources MyConnect provides is its series of “A-list tips” that give parents quick one-page advice on topics, including travelling with special needs children or how to help special needs children through their tantrums, all of which are shared on MyConnect”™s social media accounts on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Presently, the site is still undergoing testing and is limited to Westchester County residents, though there are plans to expand.
“We”™re very much focused on building the community, the parent level community, at this point,” Bilal said. “We are ready to launch in Manhattan in late summer. We have all the data scraped for Manhattan, which is great because that”™s a very different context and a very different kind of community than Westchester County.”
Alongside the Manhattan launch, the MyConnect team is looking into an ad-based revenue model to keep access to the community and its resources free. Currently, in order to cover its development costs, the startup launched a GoFundMe fundraiser on May 12.
“We have gotten a lot of providers and retailers reaching out to us, saying, ”˜We want to advertise,”™ and we”™re not really set up for that right now,” Bilal said, “but that is one way in which we likely will be able to accrue revenue, or at least test the theory that an ad-based model could work.”
