Know Your Neighbour: what is it?

Sources

Know Your Neighbour

Know Your Neighbour aims at connecting people from different communities which experience an ongoing conflict. We think that by meeting individually a person from a community you dislike as a whole, you can get to know the person behind the ethnicity, religion, nationality or skin colour, find common grounds of interest and overcome your prejudices. We want to create social link to help soothe social conflict.

Our initiative is unique and ambitions to tackle the growing issue of communautarism and distrust towards those who do not belong to a certain community. Rather than starting at the macro level with the conventional use of a policy, we think that starting at a more modest scale will prove more efficient because you cannot force an entire community to change its mind at once, but you can show, let people see for themselves and form their own conclusions.

Ultimately, we want to provide a service that connects two people from different communities who would not have tried to look past their differences otherwise. An algorithm, both on our website and our future app, would match these two persons on the basis of similar characteristics and centres of interest: age, gender, role and place in the family, hobbies, education, job…

Who for?

Know Your Neighbour would start at a small scale, in an environment that we are familiar with. Our first project will aim at connecting French inhabitants with refugees or recent immigrants. We think that this particular targeting has both a strong symbolic component in the current times, as well as is of a great utility because of the growing number of immigrants and refugees and the growing distrust of the French population towards them. Our initiative would start in the heart of the 7th arrondissement, in Paris, among a population who may not see or discuss with refugees very often.

Our economic model

One of our core values is transparency, which is why we display our economic model on our website. As an NGO, we will be funded by individual donors and corporations whose values align with ours. We are deeply convinced of the benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility, which is why we are looking for corporate partners who are ready to support us and help us spread the initiative.
Find out how to help us here!

We are a non-profit organization and every donation we receive will help finance our project:

As we grow, our needs will grow too. To make the most impact possible, we need your help!

Know Your Neighbour is a French non-profit organization regulated by the “Loi du 1er juillet 1901 relative au contrat d’association”. We are a team of ten people sharing, in a permanent way, our knowledge, skills and dedication in a goal that differs from sharing benefit.

What next?

We will organize the first meeting between a refugee and a French person in February 2018. This meeting will be taped and made a video that we will broadcast on YouTube and on social media. We aim at making this meeting a true marketing event that will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, and more specifically in France. The promotional campaign will raise awareness about our organization; we hope that many people, through word-of-mouth, digital influencers contacted by us and a viral video, decide to sign up for our service. In the meantime, we will also promote our app on social media, as well as give out flyers in the streets. We hope to generate a movement that will create momentum for app downloads and website sign-ups in France. We think that 50,000 downloads can be generated this way by the end of March 2018. Through word-of-mouth, we think that people who may not be digitally active will come in contact with the program and engage in it. We will indeed create a “KYN ambassador” campaign in late April 2018 where younger people will be encouraged to spread the initiative and have their elders sign up for a meeting. This less digitally-based program could make up for 10,000 people by the end of May 2018.

Our ultimate goal is to spread globally; not only in more areas but also targeting more communities. We think that the next step will take place in France, but will consist of spreading the initiative to all different communities that may be separated by their differences, be they political, religious, beliefs, lifestyles… We hope to quickly implement in our neighbour French-speaking countries: Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg, by mid- 2019. The next step would be non-French speaking countries in Western Europe, such as Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and the UK, gradually from the end of 2019. We truly believe our service would be relevant in each and every one of these countries.

As we grow, our Human Resources will have to grow too. By the beginning of 2019, we hope to be able to hire 5 permanent employees to run KYN: a Head of Operations, a Head of Communication and Marketing, a Head of Finance, a Head of IT and Digital, and a President. We hope to grow our volunteer community to twenty people overseen by our permanent members.

Financial forecast

Because of our goal of transparency, you will find below the detailed information for our financial forecast to launch KYN (January-April 2018).

Expenses:

Total expenses = 7,050€


Revenues:

Total revenues = 7,050€.


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