Gift-a-Dog | Alleviating loneliness in COVID isolation through the company of a dog!

What is the problem you found?

One the biggest obstacles we face is that people are feeling miserable and alone from isolation. Young people, people who live alone and the elderly have been especially impacted by the pandemic. Even after some of the lockdown restrictions were lifted many people still felt disconnected from family due not seeing them for an extended period of time and now with a second lockdown things are only going to get worse.

A lot of people also had financial issues due to being stood down and the global economy crashed which also gave them anxiety and depression. It is predicted by the ABS that 1 million Australians could lose their jobs due to COVID-19.

In a survey that we conducted back in May, it was found that majority of adults we surveyed felt like they were losing their connections to loved ones and were stressed about their budget situations.

100% of people said that they think that the use of animals would be an effective way to help people's mental health.

Customer / Problem

Our customer/ user is most likely someone who has been affected by the lockdown and hasn’t seen many people. They will also probably have low mental wellbeing levels as well, but not necessarily.  

They will be seeking connection and support which is where our dogs will serve some convenience. The user are potentially not going too great financially which might also be affecting their mental health.

What Is Your Solution?

Gift-A-Dog is an app that helps individuals order and find dogs in their local region. Each dog will have a collar which will help other individuals where they can play with a pet. Therapy dogs can be used to help all of these lonely people improve their mental health by feeling like they have a friend. 

Our app/ website helps people order dogs for a couple of hours to hopefully improve the happiness of the user. We are also partnering with Grant Shannon from Dogs Connect, a company that owns therapy dogs and mainly distributes them within schools. Hopefully this app can allow them to hire their dogs out to people. We also hope that this can give Dogs Connect data about whether or not dogs are able to improve mental wellbeing.

Our website and app will help prevent depression and anxiety, encourage people to spend time outdoors and help them feel happier about themselves!

Some prototype screenshots are below:

Support Required

Advice

We would love advice on how we connect to potential users in Bendigo and get some feedback on what they think!

Development

Development support to develop a Minimum Viable Product such as an app or website prototype, would be fantastic.