Palestinian mom and her app wins international startup-award
Nisaa FM: - In February 2017 Nour al-Khodari launched an app giving child-rearing advice – now in Arabic. She came up with the idea for her app after she gave birth to a son in 2014 while living in Chicago far from her family. The advice she found online was mostly written in English.
“I was surprised to see that there was a great deal of research on child rearing published on social media and in magazines. Most of it was in-depth, well-documented and scientific — a sharp contrast to the Arabic content I found, which was mostly limited and from sources unverifiable" and often based on old wives' tales,” al-Khodari, the founder and CEO of Momy Helper, tells.
Returning to the Gaza Strip in 2015, al-Khodari first started a blog on motherhood and kept an online diary about her daily activities with her son. She also started questioned traditional educational methods – the old wives’ tales. Thus, Arab mothers in Palestine and abroad started following her and ask her for advice on motherhood and education, which resulted in al-Khodari establishing a consultancy company. Momy Helper was established at the end of 2016 and already in February 2017 al-Khodari launched the website and app that offer advice to mothers through Arabic articles, videos and blogs.
In October this year, the Momy Helper app won the second prize at Startup Istanbul, an annual fair that brings together tech companies, executives, startups and investors from 65 countries.
Addressing misconceptions in child-rearing
Arab mothers can read child-rearing information and research on the website and ask for advice about many issues — from a healthy diet to child behavior. They can seek advice on how to raise children with autism or other special needs.
“My biggest incentive for this project is that I am a mother who benefited from the right information, and I should help other Arab women — not just Palestinians — to benefit from [good advice and research]. [My website addresses] some misconceptions in child-rearing,” she says.
The Momy Helper website includes more than 400 articles — some of them are translations and others are written for the site by content writers and consultants. Including Nour al-Khodari, the company employs 12 staff members: three programmers, three content writers, a customer service employee, a designer, a video editor, a web developer and a consultant coordinator.
Alaa Assaed, a content writer and translator for Momy Helper, checks English-language magazines and online sources to keep abreast with topics relevant for mothers and families with children. “We try to keep up to date with daily tips that would make the lives of mothers easier,” she says.
Nour al-Khodari herself studied journalism and media at the Islamic University of Gaza and worked in film production and direction as well as screenwriting of cartoons before studying for a master’s degree at Chicago’s DePaul University.
To ensure the quality of the advice and research, the company makes use of several consultants from the Palestinian territories and the Arab world. The site has hundreds of visitors daily and roughly 10,000 visits per month. Consultancy requests exceed 10 per day at present. One session costs $15 that is paid through an online payment system or a credit card. According to al-Khodari, similar consultations elsewhere may cost up to $100.
Source: www.al-monitor.com