Shovelling? No need to work up a sweat, just pick up your phone

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This article was published 30/11/2018 (2747 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Wednesday night, Alex Shao stayed up until 2:30 a.m. shoveling snow. He couldn’t have been more excited.

The University of Manitoba commerce student is one of five team members of OnTheStep, a new on-demand snow removal service app that launched on Nov. 12.

The team set a first-snowfall goal of five snow removal requests, Shao said. Instead, they got triple that amount after about 10 centimetres fell over the city on Wednesday – which meant the app’s founders have had to pick up their shovels to try to meet the demand.

Shao said the first request came while he was still at school on Wednesday.

“I made the biggest scene (running) out of class,” Shao said. “I just bolted.”

Shao and OnTheStep co-founder Buhle Mwanza spent the rest of their night shoveling driveways across the city, from River Heights to Sage Creek to Transcona.

The app is available on Google Play and in the App Store, and allows users to make requests for snow removal in minutes. After creating an account, users are prompted to include details of the job (like the street address, how big the driveway is and whether the surface is concrete, gravel or brick). The app sets a recommended minimum offer for the job, and allows users to increase this price.

Since launching the app, the OnTheStep team — Shao, Mwanza, marketing manager Tyrel Praymayer, developer Victory Iyakoregha and head of recruitment Tristen Wong — has also announced a partnership with newcomer employment initiative Hire a Refugee that will help them meet the growing demand for their services.

“Being a son of an immigrant family, and kind of feeling like an outsider when I was growing up, I really kind of have a connection with people who are feeling the same way,” Shao said. “We’re really trying to promote diversity and equality of opportunity for all Winnipeggers, because we really feel like diversity is something that makes Winnipeg special.”

Hire a Refugee founder Omar Rahimi said the partnership wasn’t necessarily something he expected — the first time he saw snow, he was 18 years old and had just arrived in Canada from the Iraqi refugee camp where he was born.

The initiative is a way for newcomers to find odd jobs they can work — like painting, landscaping, cleaning and, in the winters, snow removal — even if they aren’t fluent in English, Rahimi said. It’s an opportunity he said he wishes he had when he first arrived in Canada in 2001.

“I didn’t know what to expect. I was nervous,” Rahimi said. “I think the main thing I wish somebody told me at the time is to be patient, and things will get better.”

Since starting the employment initiative last year, Rahimi said he has seen how something as simple as shoveling a driveway or cleaning windows can help forge connections between people from different communities. This summer, he was at a job painting garage doors with other refugees from the initiative when the woman who owned the house started chatting with one of the painters.

“They became really good friends,” said Rahimi. “Now, she visits their family. They eat each other’s food. They got to know each other.”

Shao said the app is still evolving, and making this sense of community a part of its mandate is front of mind for the OnTheStep team.

“We’re trying to really expand our diversity. Right now, I know we’re all male, but we are trying to get female members onto the team,” Shao said. “It’s changing every single moment.”

caitlyn.gowriluk@freepress.mb.ca