Jeff Gelles: Donafy app aims at homeless problems
How often have you walked past a homeless person, in Philadelphia or elsewhere, and felt a pang of anguish over your inability to help - or do anything at all?
How often have you walked past a homeless person, in Philadelphia or elsewhere, and felt a pang of anguish over your inability to help - or do anything at all?
As a Midwestern transplant, taught not to ignore anyone in obvious need, I've never quite adjusted to the counsel that "just giving money doesn't really help." While I taught my own children that there were other ways to help those who might suffer from addiction or mental illness, I worried that they could become inured to people's plights.
Nikki Johnson-Huston has faced the same problem, from both sides of the street, you might say. As a child, she endured months of homelessness and her mother's disabling alcoholism. As a successful Philadelphia lawyer, she's faced the same quandaries I have. But she's come up with an answer: Donafy, launched this week in Apple's App Store.
The free app isn't magic. Johnson-Huston is the first to admit Donafy won't solve any chronic societal problems. But it addresses the "What can I do now?" question in three ways.
For those with resources, Donafy makes it easy to give small amounts - $1 to $10 or more via PayPal - to about 110 organizations serving Philadelphia's homeless and others in need, from the large and well-known (the Salvation Army and Project HOME) to small shelters, food pantries, and soup kitchens.
For those in poverty, Donafy offers a location-based map leading to nearby services - not just food and housing, but resources like mental-health centers, legal aid, and job training. (To broaden the app's reach, an Android version is among Johnson-Huston's priorities.)
And to help bridge that painful person-to-person gap, Donafy gives users a more direct way to help. Press "Notify" and you can connect to the nearest outreach hotline, to describe a particular person's needs as observed on the street - or even get help for yourself.
Johnson-Huston, a Center City tax lawyer who has developed a sideline of speaking about her personal experience, built and funded the app with her husband, Shawn Huston. They aren't taking any revenue from the project, she says.
That might be extraordinary among tech developers - the usual mantra is that they want to "make the world a better place" while making a cool few million. But there is nothing ordinary about Johnson-Huston, who at 40 has already lived three different lives.
Johnson-Huston, of Mount Airy, is a Temple law grad who began her career at the City Solicitor's Office. That would be success enough for a woman born to a single mother in Detroit and later sent to live with her grandmother while her brother went into foster care.
But in 2010, two events altered her life again: Her long-troubled brother hanged himself, and Johnson-Huston was profiled by the Philadelphia Daily News and the Huffington Post. In essence, she says, life offered her a public platform, and she seized it. Donafy is her latest effort to use it - this time, by helping others see what we're inclined to look past.
"Imagine what it feels like for me to walk past and know I can't do something," she says. "I know what it feels like. I've been in the situation where people couldn't look me in the face because they didn't know what to do."
Johnson-Huston has a sophisticated understanding of poverty's many faces, including "enough experience in life to know that not everybody's in a position to be helped." Her brother, for one, was a meth addict in court-ordered rehab when he died.
But she also knows the role luck plays - and how things can turn out differently, especially when people get the kinds of help she did along the way.
You might call Donafy an experiment in the growing field of "microphilanthropy." Johnson-Huston mostly sees it as a way to turn us all into part of an outreach team: "It makes us all part of a community. You can get involved as much or as little as you want."
215-854-2776 @jeffgelles