Gribouilli - Empowering nannies through ABC information

We give nannies the responsibility to raise 'our treasures' without providing guidance or tools that would allow them to take precious care of them. We aim to offer clear and concise information through SMS/WhatsApp semi-automatic answers, in order to orient nannies and break them out of isolation. Our network of nannies already generates thousands of questions, of which we have answers, but due to the volume, we can no more give individual information. A large scale medium to diffuse such essential information (pedagogical information, educational tips, legal rights) could be a life changer not only for nannies but also for children and their parents. Our nannies suffer from inequalities and digital illiteracy : we owe them a simple and easy to use solution to make the change possible.

Nannies are poorly recognised by French system, often have poor education and/or irregular situation. They suffer from unemployment rise and social struggles: digital illiteracy, uberization, poor vocational training, no childcare for their own children. Millennial parents often struggle for work-life balance, but look for quality, customization, support and digital. Family upheaval and change of nannies are challenging environments for the development of babies, impacting their education. 

Nannies suffer from inequalities in vocational training program and funding, no organization/lobbying and poor unionization. In France, 1.2M parent-employers employ 440k nannies (1.5M domestic workers). In Europe, 2.6M domestic workers - Spain, France and Italy employ the highest number of domestic workers (McKinsey & company, 2017) and 67.1M domestic workers in the world (2015).

With poor access to information, numerical fracture and the absence of a trustworthy intermediary, nannies are isolated. This isolation not only has impact on their individual wellbeing but also on the quality of the care they will be able to provide to babies.

Gribouilli serves nannies, parents, babies and the society as a whole.

Through the organization of 200+ free workshops, the association has created a strong link between 700 nannies from different communities. Since the start of the association, the needs -for administrative help, information on legal rights, trainings, cultural content, best practices workshops, orientation- have been raised by the nannies themselves. They are the ones providing solutions, organizing themselves and dispatching the workload. Clear summaries of workshops are already been made by those organizing the events, but are not shared widely because of the absence of technical solution in place (and the digital illiteracy of some domestic workers).

The ABC of nannies will allow Gribouilli to reach those who currently don't have access to information, because they don't know how to look for it on the internet, can't join a workshop, or don't speak the language. 

For our nannies, getting access to clear and concise information according to their needs is vital. In order to empower them, we will use their medium of communication (SMS /WhatsApp) to answer their questions in a semi-automatic way. We will also be able to communicate invitations for events and trainings and ask questions on their availability and needs on a large scale.

The digital tool we aim to develop works with key words and data. For data collection, we use UNICEF Rapid Pro tool (real time information), on which we are working to develop an interface and a process to match the questions and the answers. The tool will then need to be combined to Nexmo, an SMS/WhatsApp sending platform. We benefit from Deloitte probono tech consultants and a support from Lagardère Foundation to develop the interface and test.

Content wise, summary sheets are in the making for each topics, in a simple format that nannies have already used for a year (why, what, when, who, where and how). Our 50+ key partners for the professional branch, city halls, training centers and more are onboarding and commit to use the same format to communicate their information. This content will be translated (first in English, Spanish, then other shared languages) by a pool of existing translation volunteers within our network. 

The tool will send campaigns of information and intelligent polls as well to clearly assess the situation of each member of the community such as unemployment or skill gap. It will enhance the capacity of Gribouilli to keep customizing the support despite the scale up. 35 senior nannies are volunteering for 2 years ; each of them is specialized on a topic to facilitate workshop, orient and motivate the pool. They are trained to handle the results of the campaign and reinforce their actions. They will also target some specific members, known to be in need.

The ABC of nannies responds to unmet needs at a national and international level for orientation and professionalization of domestic workers, in particularly those involved in childcare. In France, there is currently no other network to break out of isolation, get answers to questions and access good practices. The Rapid Pro tool developed by UNICEF is currently widely used in developing countries, but Gribouilli would be one of its firsts deployment in Europe. Adapting this tool and bridging it with an SMS plateform distribution will foster social progress giving the most vulnerable equal opportunities of fulfillment.

AGAINST THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
Our solution is the last piece of a unique community-driven movement. It enables the scaling up while overcoming the digital divide. Our partners already recognized us for the use of SMS and whatsapp. For instance we had been consulted by the Minister of Health for the President's plan against Poverty (on how to reach nannies and engage them to protect disadvantaged babies).

REACHING THE INVISIBLE NANNIES
There are no available database of nannies for institutions. We have the fastest growing one thanks to our incredible word-of-mouth.

ASKING THEIR NEEDS
We do not have the possibility to ask all our members 'how can we help?'. The tool will do it and identify groups of members that will share similar situations and provide them with our services.

SHARING THE BEST PRACTICES AND CONNECTING THE ECOSYSTEM
Our format enables to share at any time, any information on any topic. 440k people will benefit from it !

Our workshops are innovative : nannies gets in a community, their skills and confidence increases, they provide better support to families and secure their jobs.

But our workshops are limited : the nannies can't come on their freetime every week to get and share information after 50hrs worktime a week ; our senior nannies facilitating workshops can receive more people ; the shared knowledge is rich but benefit only 10 people for each workshop.

The tool will automate what we can't do anymore because of the volume : answering on the phone to questions. It will add a layer by sustaining the engagement of nannies even during work hours.

Sometimes, innovation lays in access and simplicity! Gribouilli’s ABC for nannies responds to unmet needs at a national and international level for orientation and professionalization of domestic workers, in particularly those involved in childcare. In France for instance, there is currently no other network to break out of isolation, get answers to questions and access good practices. The Rapid Pro tool developed by UNICEF is currently widely used in developing countries, but Gribouilli would be one of its firsts deployment in Europe. Adapting this tool and bridging it with an SMS plateform distribution will foster social progress giving the most vulnerable equal opportunities of fulfillment.

Today we have a database of 700 nannies from an organic growth. They benefit from our information in a scarce way.

We will easily reach 1500 during this year by pushing campaigns for our program for employment and placement.

In five years we will reach 50k with the support of partners, and volunteers going to parks. Paris only is about 30k nannies and its region is about 60k.

We also aim to share this tool to all the organizations ot the International Domestic Workers Federation, we joined.

We also aim to share this tool to all the organizations ot the International Domestic Workers Federation, we had joined. The federation works on EU, ILO and others programs to better the 68 millions official domestic workers. 

We envision the ABC of nannies to foster the cooperation in a strong context of migration of the population.

We need funds to hire developpers and facilitators to update the tool (we already have candidates among our members). 

We need to reinforce our data protection policy. 

We need training and coaching for our senior nannies.

If we can't hire developers we will apply to ShareIT Ashoka program to benefit from probono for year one. 
We hope to raise funds asking partners to contribute to sponsor information.
Our lawyer is volunteering to learn more about GDPR and data protection.

We have home based training.

France is a leader of domestic work and early childcare with important public investment (billions/yr). Return on investment are limited by the digital divide, lack of training and difficulty to match the offer and the demand.

We provide efficient solutions to address those issues and to be promoted as a new service by institution and economic actors.

Gribouilli is a community of 400 nannies, with an organic growth by word of mouth of 3-5 people per week. 35 of them are facilitators (from 4 continents, 10 languages), 6 are leaders, and one is the President. Gribouilli’s founders and executive team is comprised of 3 full time jobs, recently joined by 2 part-timers.

Year after year, our association has gained trust from more than 400 nannies. For them, we are often the first source of information. The information provided by other organizations are difficult to access or too complicated (hidden in PDF formats or in newsletters that are not read, for example). Every day, we already answer to more than 50 SMS, and hundreds of questions during workshops. We already capitalize on the information that is collectively gathered, by writing summaries in a simple format, but distributing them to all is currently a challenge. City halls and big profit companies are both impressed and envious of the real connection we have with this network of hard to reach workers.

We are currently partnering with 50+ entities :

• The unique Employer union and its network (FEPEM, Réseau Particulier Emploi) / All 4 Employee’s unions (FO, CGT, UNSA, CFDT)

• Institutions : Ministry of Health, Ministry of Culture, Paris city hall (and other in Paris' region) and vocational certification organization (Iperia) 

• Childcare : Enfant Présent, ABC Puériculture, FOCSS...

• Research Labs : Univ Toulouse II, IFRI, Univ Paris Est Créteil 

• Social businesses : Live For Good, Alenvi (caregivers), Adage (leader and expert in empowerment of women), Bimbamjob, A2job, Paris Law school consulting (Sorbonne)...

All are involved in the project and seek to use our platform to communicate.

From this year our model is hybrid.

We have the non profit for more than 2 yrs, with all the community activities, thanks to subsidies and volunteering. We had near to 30 families buying B2C services to complete our free advisory workshops.

Now we also have a coop selling the same services of nannycare to companies aiming to provide better work life balance of their collaborators. We have 4 clients (2 corporations and 2 work integration organizations) and 2 partners (Bsit and Felice). The benefit is injected in the non profit. 

We aim to generate 180k€ in 2020 in sales revenue in our coop. Our plan until we break even is :

We will work with an expert in fundraising (REC innovation).
We plan an equity crowdfunding in 2021 after our successful 2019 donation crowdfunding (www.ulule.com/gribouillifr).

We offer a sponsoring service to our partner to reach the community for non priority topics through the ABC of nannies. For instance, one union offers advantages similar to the employee representative committee and wants too inform largely. They pay 10€/people for a targeted campaign. We aim to sustain the expenses of SMS by those institutional partners.

Invisible workers have to be recognized and supported in their mission to make the society a better place.

We need funds and expertise to develop our technology and services in the context of the future of work. Automation should not be avoid but embrassed by all, and nannies want to be part of the new era. We have already proved to be innovative by fostering peer to peer learning, informal sharing and more in an organic way. We can be the proof of concept that knowledge can be accessible to the less considered populations.

Whatsapp (Facebook), Nexmo or Twilio (SMS), OnOff (decentralized telephone communication) are solutions we use and new features may increase our impact. ServiceNOW can help us have a development strategy and partner with them.