[LUM#3] Solidarity 2.0

What if your phone could help you rediscover close, supportive relationships with those around you? That's the ambitious wager of the creators of the EyesHelp community application.

With EyesHelp, Marc Nguyen focuses on civic-mindedness

On the face of it, nothing destined Marc Nguyen and Olivier Mazières for a career in new technologies. The two friends are dentists and former students at the Faculty of Dentistry in Montpellier. But one day, Olivier's father came face to face with burglars in his home, who fled. He wants to warn everyone in his neighborhood of the lurking threat, but doesn't know how to go about it...
"We're in an ultra-connected world, we have ʺamisʺ all over the planet, but we don't know how to reach our neighbors when we need help," laments Marc Nguyen. So the two friends came up with an idea: to create a community app to connect us with those around us and make our daily lives more secure. EyesHelp was born. Feeling unwell in a remote area? Witness an accident? Lost your cat in the neighborhood? EyesHelp lets you alert people nearby.

Civic-mindedness and benevolence

To "breathe new life into local relations", Marc Nguyen is counting on "everyone's civic-mindedness and benevolence". How does it work? The application geolocates the person raising the alarm and sends a message to the phones of ʺhelpersʺ who are nearby and will be able to provide assistance or call for help if necessary. With almost 2,000 helpers conquered in just a few months, the app seems to have found an audience.
Next objective for Marc Nguyen and his Gamox employees: to propose a partnership to local authorities. "EyesHelp is a good way for local authorities to keep in touch with their residents, for example to report roadworks or incidents". But also for the emergency services, who could receive alerts sent via the app and thus react more quickly in the event of an incident.
"Beyond the notion of urgency, we want to reconnect people with each other and get everyone to pay a little more attention to their fellow man". In other words, to get people to take their eyes off their phones a little? "Exactly! In fact, if the application really achieves its goal, we won't need it anymore".

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