LOCAL INGENUITY
SAFETY FIRST
A clever new app is connecting women passengers with women drivers, helping them and their children travel around the city in safety.
“Women and children represent the most vulnerable members of society,” says founder, Danielle Wright, “but they also represent our greatest untapped resource. ChaufHER is a way for us to provide opportunities and freedom of movement to these groups, to help them live their best lives.”
The development process behind the safe and secure ride-hail service first started in 2017, when Danielle and her team developed and built their own app. Then Covid came along, forcing them to pause, take stock and reassess their goals. “Towards the end of 2021 we found technology that we could white-label, which has been an incredible part of the process and has allowed us to find ourselves where we are today,” says Danielle.
ChaufHER was released in November, and currently offers pre-booked rides with on-demand rides soon to follow as users increase. “For many of our team it has been an exhilarating, if not daunting growth journey,” she says. “We’ve always kept in mind what women need to feel safe, to empower themselves and to live their lives fully.”
For busy moms, the app is a gamechanger – children under the age of 18 may also use the service, allowing parents to shuttle their kids to school, sports games and birthday parties safely. ChaufHER is by women, for women, and both drivers and riders have been at the forefront in its development to ensure that safety is the number one priority for both – as a result, all drivers, vehicles and riders are comprehensively vetted before being able to use the service.
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“Driver recruitment is via word of mouth from existing ride-hail drivers, as well as social media, billboard and trailer advertising,” says Danielle. Each interested driver is then contacted individually by a ChaufHER team member and taken through the stringent onboarding process. “While it’s rigorous, we make sure that it’s a personable experience and that a ChaufHER team member is there to help every step of the way.”
The ChaufHER team have also collaborated with several partners to keep the app’s safety credentials top of its game. These include SAFER through Response24 (providing an in-app SOS functionality), MasterDrive (driver and vehicle assessment as well as defensive driver training) and INpowered (a personal protection program that specialises in women’s self-defence).
A BURNING INVENTION
Sometimes the best inventions are the simplest, as is the case with this circular grid that screws up and down for the ultimate heat control on your braai.
“Having retired after selling my business in 2016, I found myself thinking more and more about how to adjust the heat easily and proficiently on my braai or Weber,” says Harvey Downes, an 80-year-old retired Cape Town businessman and DIY enthusiast, “The idea of a BBQ grid screwing up and down to adjust its height came from the winding mechanism of an office chair.”
However, when he took the idea to several braai makers, they were dismissive – the shaft wouldn’t work, it would jam, rust, expand, turn too slowly, take up space or food would fly off. Nevertheless, Harvey persisted and eventually succeeded in making a prototype that worked. A friendly engineer helped him get a few samples made and later production started with some parts made at a braai factory and the Braai screwing mechanism was finally born.
“Perseverance paid off and eventually I managed to complete my first model of the Draai Braai to show the engineers how it worked brilliantly. This is where they finally changed their minds and showed massive interest,” says Harvey. Today the Draai Braai is distributed via Takealot, and orders have been coming in from the UK, Australia, Canada, Holland and the USA.
Part of the Draai Braai’s appeal, says Harvey, is that it’s portable and can be used anywhere – plus its simplicity makes it easy to use as well as incredibly effective. The braai grid is screwed onto a central shaft, and when turned clockwise moves down and anticlockwise turns up. This means that food can be cooked for longer without the risk of burning, fresh coals or smoking chips can be added while the food is secured on the grid, and when flare-ups happen, the grid can be rotated up away from the coals so that the flames can be doused with ease.
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Website: draaibraai.co.za
Facebook: @draaibraai
