Help Nearby
Discover food banks, shelters, medical aid near you.
November 2025. I was scrolling TikTok in my bedroom in Prokopyevsk, Siberia. A video showed Yale Humanitarian Research Lab satellite images of El-Fasher, Sudan. Red patches on the ground. I thought they were cattle from space. They weren't — they were blood from killed people, visible from orbit.
I closed the phone. Did nothing.
February 2026. Random Discord interaction. I was looking for English speakers to play GTA 5. Someone sent me the Discord mascot sticker. I asked "who r u?" He said "same question." Turned out he was half Sudanese, half Russian, fled Sudan to Egypt when the war got bad.
That's when it connected in my head.
April 16, 2026 — started building HelpNearby in Webflow.
May 12 — submitted to SDG Submit competition. Rejected.
May 15 — almost gave up. Sent my Sudanese friend the link anyway, no expectations. He replied: "I was just talking with my friend in Sudan and he said it's working great."
His friend was using my buggy prototype in an active war zone.
May 17 — rebuilt seriously on Next.js.
Today: 114+ verified humanitarian organizations across Russia, Kazakhstan, Sudan, UAE, Belarus. 7 languages including Arabic RTL. Lite mode under 200KB for slow connections. UN OCHA databases integrated (HDX, GDHO).
I'm 15. Self-taught. Solo founder. From a small industrial city in Siberia where most people work in coal mines or factories.
HelpNearby exists because someone in a Sudan war zone shouldn't need a VPN, paywalls, or scattered NGO websites to find a shelter. The link is help-nearby.org.
Submitting to Zayed Sustainability Prize 2027 (Global High Schools, deadline June 22).
Not raising. Not monetizing yet. Just building.
Feedback welcome.
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