Typically nothing can heal like a dialog with an auntie. Nicole Kenney of West Philadelphia is aiming to harness that energy in a brand new app, Hey Auntie!
Kenney has seen the advantages of auntie conversations in her personal life. Earlier than she received a $50,000 prize by way of the Well City Challenge this July, and earlier than she approached the idea of an app altogether, her aunties had helped her get a brand new begin as an entrepreneur.
“I used to be working with the NAACP, doing work round communications on a nationwide stage. And, you realize, like many millennials, burned out and got here again dwelling,” Kenney mentioned, including that she returned to Philly six years in the past from Baltimore. “It was actually simply attempting to simply reorient myself. And it was actually my neighborhood of aunties — and I take advantage of that time period very affectionately, proper? I discuss it like my organic auntie, but additionally simply ladies in my neighborhood … who gave me life recommendation, together with my mother, who actually simply gave me knowledge and perception or navigate that season of my life.”
After attending the North Star Conference in 2018, Kenney started to search for extra methods to proceed her work for Black ladies and ladies by way of know-how. The app, which is ready to launch in Spring 2022 with each free and paid options, will give every consumer a dashboard to pick one-on-one conversations in addition to group conversations in boards on completely different subjects. Customers will have the ability to chat with aunties and friends from their similar ages round themes, subjects that would vary, Kenney continued, from negotiate a pay increase to set up a greater work-life stability with children.
“One of many issues my auntie would at all times inform me is, ‘Everytime you’re in a low place, the final place you could be is by your self,’ ” Kenney mentioned. “I believe that’s actually what the worth of intergenerational neighborhood is.”
Kenney spoke to The Inquirer concerning the forthcoming app, her hopes for Hey Auntie! and for Black ladies’s well being. This interview has been edited and condensed for size.
Before everything is as a result of lots of the challenges we’re dealing with are generational. What grounds my work is historic context, with historic frameworks, proper? And lots of instances we is likely to be experiencing issues with out having a deeper understanding of the backstory and what led as much as it. And in order that’s one of many the reason why, I believe, only for me as an individual, I at all times know that there’s greater than meets the attention.
There’s actual magnificence and a privilege to be in neighborhood with individuals who have lived very comparable experiences as you, experiencing challenges, and is keen to go that info together with the hopes that you’ll take that info and go additional with it.
I’ll let you know one of many first issues every time I’m speaking to particularly older ladies is that they know precisely what I’m going by way of. They’ve been there earlier than. And so it permits me to determine the issues sooner, which then offers me extra time to give attention to the answer.
I’d say for millennials, one of many issues I’ve heard is that we now have lots of info however don’t essentially know what to belief. And so it may be info overload — you don’t know what’s actual, what’s not. Having somebody who’s trusted give their very own expertise and may vouch that it really has labored for them — that in and of itself can get rid of lots of stress.
I’ve heard comparable challenges, however I believe before everything it simply begins with respect and understanding that we now have much more in frequent than we now have completely different, proper? We would see it from completely different views, however understanding that these views are what makes the dialog so wealthy. So I can say from my expertise and from my neighborhood, once I’m speaking to Gen Xers and child boomers, as an example, I’m actually going there to study. The platform is de facto for that millennial who desires to study, or that auntie who actually desires to study. [It’s] for the auntie who values the millennial, which has actually been my expertise.
I need us to have a more healthy framework for fulfilling our potential. I need to see conversations round boundaries. I hear that from ladies lots, and what does that seem like in your office, what does it seem like in your loved ones? I need to see conversations round id. Once I speak to lots of ladies, there’s lots of self blame.
I’d love for us to learn to present ourselves grace, and compassion for certain. Let’s see what else, after which undoubtedly wealth constructing, funds, is essential to us.
And stress administration — how do you determine it, after which how do you handle it? — after which additionally, too, the self company of when to stroll away from it.
I’m an auntie, so I perceive. It’s nonetheless form of wild, however I find it irresistible, being known as “an auntie.”
For the aim of the Effectively Metropolis Problem, [we] actually targeted on millennial well being, however the platform general is designed to be this intergenerational connector. Positively, I envision it as being not one thing that’s simply millennial and boomer, however actually additionally for the Gen Xer, and likewise the Gen Zer.
For those who’re 33, your auntie is likely to be in her 40s, mid-40s, for the aim of a dialog. It doesn’t at all times essentially need to imply that they need to be a selected age older than you, however extra so somebody who’s extra skilled in a sure space than you, so there’s some flexibility round that.
I completely additionally see it as constructing a pipeline for millennials to be aunties to these Gen Zers, and those that are coming behind them… The massive imaginative and prescient is that this will probably be a platform that can have the ability to help ladies and ladies at completely different levels of their life cycle. And that would seem like 20, or that would seem like 65.
To seek out out extra about Hey Auntie, try the platform’s website here.