By COLlive reporter
Shneor Crombie, an Israeli-British entrepreneur, helped develop an app that helps places of worship from all over the world to run services whilst keeping social distancing measures. It also allows participants to be alerted if a person tests positive after participating in a service.
Crombie says his partners of are different faiths and they worked together to create Prayin.io, a web-app that’s available in many languages and is in use around the world to allow prayers to continue even during the Covid-10 pandemic.
“We are 4 friends that have been working together for a few years in a London based startup,” says Crombie. “All of us are from different backgrounds and religions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we wanted to do something to help people. We realized that in these uncertain and difficult times it is important to reunite communities.”
“We saw the need to help congregations to reopen Synagogues safely and in a managed way,” he told COLlive.com. “We therefore created the free app Prayin.io.”
Using Prayin.io, a Shul can easily manage dates and times of services and attendance, to ensure that the number of people attending follow social distancing measures.
A Shul can create an event for a service, set people capacity, and share the event link for people so that they can register in less than 10 seconds. Then prior to service/minyan, the Shul has the list of attendees. It also means that if any positive Covid-19 cases were detected at a later date, it would be easy to track and alert others who attended.
On Monday, following the new limits on Shuls in Israel, hundreds of new Shuls signed up to the service. “It makes me very happy,” Crombie says. “We are helping them to open and take care of their prayers so they won’t contract the virus, this is highly satisfying for me.”
Chabad Houses from many countries are already using Prayin.io and Crombie says that he is personally helping many of them. “It’s a free app, we are doing it for the cause, not for money.”
“We hope that the Prayin.io app will help the congregation get back together safely and that soon our product won’t be needed anymore,” he added.
Prayin.io is available on the web and soon will also be available on Android and iOS.
