Belgium/Charleroi, Bana Community gives parents a helping hand in managing school trips
Combining work and the journey to school to drop off the kids can sometimes be a real headache. It's even more complicated when children have extracurricular activities. The Bana Community shared mobility platform is designed to help those parents who are struggling to combine all the family's agendas. Already active in more than 58 Belgian cities, it is slowly expanding in Charleroi.
Nyota Delecourt, founder of Bana Community and mother of a boy, was having a hard time herself managing the commute to extracurricular activities.So in 2021 she decided to create a platform, which initially developed on the Nivelles side. "I wanted to find a solution because I was often stressed at the thought of being late to drop my son off. I searched online, but couldn't find anything. After a while, I thought I'd create it myself, since there were lots of people around me, especially colleagues, who were going through the same situation", she explains.
A matching system
Based on a matching system, Bana Community puts parents in touch with carers to relieve them of the burden of certain journeys.
Parents visit the platform to complete a form in which they enter the exact route they are taking to drop off their children. "We first check whether we have a match with someone who already makes exactly the same journeys. If not, we'll do some research on our own to find an available companion," explains Nyota Delecourt.
For this service, the platform offers a basic subscription for 8 euros per month.
Guaranteed security
Bana Community claims to provide a secure service, with attendant checks. " We carry out two checks: the identity card and the certificate of good conduct model 2, which is required of anyone working with minors in Belgium", explains Nyota Delecourt.
In Charleroi, the network of contacts is slowly building up: " For a project like Bana, the network effect counts enormously. So there has to be a sufficient number of offers to meet demand. We're still in this phase here in mid-September, where we're receiving offers and requests that don't match. But we're hoping that by October, having received enough offers from the same town, we'll be able to make matches," declares Nyota Delecourt.
Source: www.rtbf.be/article/
