A group of high-school students from the Polish city of Wrocław have created an app to match dogs needing adoption with prospective owners. The “Befriend” app, whose interface is modelled on Tinder, is the first of its kind in Poland and has already been met with an enthusiastic response.
After downloading Befriend, which is available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play, users set their location and indicate how far they are willing to travel to an animal shelter.
They can also specify preferences for the sex, age, size, coat and colour of their desired dog if they wish, as well as details about their garden and whether they have other animals or young children.
The app then creates a list of all suitable dogs in cooperating shelters, including descriptions of the animals and details of any health conditions. Users can then contact the shelter using the telephone number or email address provided.
Initially only operating in the province of Lower Silesia in western Poland, the app has expanded to include shelters across the country, including in Warsaw, Lublin and Poznań. According to overwhelmingly positive reviews on the Google Play store, a number of users have already found new four-legged friends via the service.
Befriend was launched earlier this year by a group of high-school students as part of the “Exempt From Theory” (“Zwolnieni z teorii”) initiative, an educational programme designed to help young people in Poland develop skills needed in the job market.
The app was created by four teenagers from the III Adam Mickiewicz General Secondary School in Wrocław: Filip Fret, Jan Dziewoński, Andrzej Pijanowski and Marcin Mularczyk. Graphic design is by Weronika Ziemięcka from XV Wrocław Secondary School and social media posts by Julita Blicharska from I Secondary School in Jelenia Góra.
Fret told Gazeta Wyborcza that the app was inspired by Petfinder, which operates across the US, Canada and Mexico.
“We would like to become a Polish Petfinder at some point and do something very useful and convenient for both the user and the shelter employee,” Fret told the newspaper. He noted that physical visits to shelters are currently “more difficult” due to the pandemic.
Fret also emphasised that the team wanted the Polish app to include information on smaller shelters, which often have little online presence and are therefore missed in internet searches.
“At Befriend, all dogs are treated equally by our algorithm, which significantly increases the chance of adopting dogs residing in smaller towns,” he says.
A Facebook page has also been launched to support the app, providing information on common questions regarding adoption, as well as profiling dogs who need homes.
The team behind the app are all working on a voluntary basis, to ensure it remains free for both users and the shelters involved. With no advertisements, Befriend relies entirely on donations from the public.
The team have set a fundraising target of 3,500 zloty (€773) on their donation page, which will allow them to maintain the application until the end of 2021.
Main image credit: Befriend App
Juliette Bretan is a freelance journalist covering Polish and Eastern European current affairs and culture. Her work has featured on the BBC World Service, and in CityMetric, The Independent, Ozy, New Eastern Europe and Culture.pl.
