MyLink: The Product of a Leadership Lincoln Cohort
by Bryan Seck
The MyLink app started in 2018 from an idea to have the Center for People In Need’s (Now known as the Center for People) printed resource handbooks available and searchable on family’s phones. At the time, I was participating in Leadership Lincoln Fellows Class 2017–18, through my role as the Employment Skills Developer for Prosper Lincoln. Previously, I had served as the Lincoln Public Schools Homeless Outreach Liaison and knew that our families had phones but often were not aware of existing community services.
As part of our Leadership Lincoln service project, my group decided to build a phone app to bring this valuable community resource to the digital world. We worked with the Center for People in Need to organize the printed handbook into an Excel sheet and then realized that we didn’t know how to build an app. We reached out to Don’t Panic Labs to ask if they would help us. DPL agreed and assigned summer interns as well as staff members Lori McCarthy and Matt Will to the project. During this time, our Leadership Lincoln group met with nonprofits to understand the features that the app needed to have to be successful with families in need and also to allow the helper (nonprofit works, social workers, police, and more) to use the app to share info with families.
We learned that almost all families have a phone as it is the lifeline to their children’s school, doctor’s office, call backs for jobs, and much more. The difference was that many families only had pay-as-you-go prepaid minutes. Therefore, we made the app so that it works offline once downloaded and updates with any changes the next time the phone is on WiFi or cellular service.
The app also translates into the ten most widely spoken languages in our community including Spanish, Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and more. Families can search the app by word such as “diapers” to find what they need or look at a daily calendar of food and free medical services. Many times, families know about one resource but do not know there are seven places to get free diapers in the community.
Fast forward to today, and the app has nearly 50,000 downloads and thousands of monthly users. It is shared by Lincoln Public Schools with parents, by Bryan Health with patients, and with families across the city that help people to achieve their needs. Our team has trained law enforcement including LPD and the Sherrif’s office as well as firefighters/EMTs and many others.
The app is now widely shared and utilized by families and those in the community that help. This project would not be possible without funding from Lancaster County and Region V services, the Center for People in Need, Leadership Lincoln, Cause Collective and Don’t Panic Labs. We are thankful for Don’t Panic Lab’s continued support over the last eight years, led by Lori and Michael Blake.
NOTE: This story illustrates that Leadership Lincoln is instumental in not only connecting people and giving them an overview of what our city has to offer, we serve as a way for people to work together and implement programs and services for others in our community.
