Mami

A new type of primary financial account, assistance locator, and UBI program meant to empower young mothers to escape poverty

My best friend in the world is a young, single mom with a 2 year old. We've been friends for a little over a year, and in that time I've watched her through the struggles of early parenting when you're a early-20-something with little resources. Money is tight, you have to work all the time to keep up, and all you want is to have a safe, healthy environment for your growing kid. It's a full-time, totally exhausting job that keeps you underwater struggling to make ends meet.

She is probably the bravest, strongest woman I have ever met, and being around her gives me faith in the future of humanity. I'm incredibly proud to be her friend.

My key learnings:

• If you empower moms, you directly benefit their kids because moms always prioritize their kids above themselves
• Poverty is a prison that holds you back through fear and lack of resources
• Resources exist, but since they're through old government programs they're almost impossible to access for someone who grew up in poverty

The best place to break the cycle of poverty is through women like her. If you give them the right tools, they will fight till death to give their children a better life, benefiting themselves and their families in the process.

Guiding Principles

1. The most effective way to make the world a better place is to make more good humans
2. The highest impact time to help shape a human's life is early childhood
3. Given the right tools, people solve their own problems
4. Moms know best

Problem

A lot of services exist for young mothers and families, but for someone struggling with poverty they are almost impossible to access or are through systems that most do not understand.

What young mothers want:

What they get:

And most don't even know it exists…

Mami

There are two key components of Mami:

1. A primary financial account for moms that category locks transactions to only things useful for supporting families
2. A deals resource locator that makes it easy for moms to access already existing programs that are currently locked behind old, unfamiliar interfaces

Primary Financial Account

The core of Mami is a new primary financial account for young mothers. It's a debit card (both physical and Apple Pay) that locks spending and merchants to ONLY items that help lift your family out of poverty. This card can be connected to non-profit donations that go directly to mothers, so donate to non-profit → money goes to moms in a way where they can only use it to help their families → kids get the help and resources they need.

Why this works: when given the opportunity, moms will move heaven and earth to build a better environment for their kids. Funding moms in this way directly benefits those kids in a targeted way that just plainly giving them money couldn't.

Deals

There are already a TON of resources that these women can access, but don't know about because of lack of education and difficulty in actually accessing the resources (government websites suck). When we onboard users, we can collect relevant details and automate the application process for them, making it so that you can just search for and see deals, and button click get access to all of the government resources that were meant for these young women.

Plan

Phase 1: App Development and UBI Study

• Initial version of the app that will have the primary financial account and debit cards (via stripe) and some basic deals through headstart.
• Pilot a UBI study where we give 20-30 women $500 / week for a month to help us understand if targeted giving can improve quality of life for them and their families.
• Incorporate non-profit
• Raise $100,000 for the UBI study

Phase 2: Deployment and Fundraising

• Deploy the app at a broader scale using social media content marketing for distribution.
• Depending on the results of the UBI study, raise additional money to deploy to help young families.