Tomer Segev vividly remembers the day about 10 years ago when his parents told him and his sisters they were getting divorced. His older sister had a friend with divorced parents, so she knew what that entailed, while his younger sister was excited to have two houses and two birthday parties with lots of presents. Tomer took some time to process the change and realized that one of the greatest challenges would be the broken communication between his parents.
The memory of his parents’ split stayed with Tomer through his high school years at AMIT Gwen Straus in Ra’anana, where he focused on computer science. While there, he also took part in a program called LEAD, which aims to cultivate the next generation of Israeli leaders.
During the program, when asked which social problem he would want to tackle, Tomer said communication between divorced parents—and from there, he went on to develop an app called 2for1, which recently went live and is being used by several hundred families in Israel.
Tomer won second place at the first-ever national startup championship last year, which was held under the auspices of the Education Ministry, in cooperation with Israeli high-tech companies and venture capital funds.
“When people talk about divorce, they usually focus on the legal aspects like child support,” Tomer recently told Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon. “People don’t talk enough about how it affects the family and the communication between children and their parents or among the parents themselves. Many children write me to say thank you after being exposed to the application.”
The app, which takes a standard messaging app to the next level, includes a shared phone book and calendar to make it easier for parents to plan holidays or parent-teacher meetings without having their kids become mediators—something that happens quite often and places additional stress on the children. To use it, one parent needs to register and then add their former spouse and children.
In the initial planning stages, Tomer aimed to raise 16,000 shekels (almost $4,500) through crowdfunding, and he ended up raising twice that. “Once I had the funding, I felt a real obligation to get the app up and running,” he told the paper. “Sometimes you think, ‘I have an important test coming up, maybe I’ll put the app on hold,’ but then you remember that you have other people’s money in your hands and you have to continue. On one hand, it’s scary, and on the other, it spurs you on. Now there are hundreds of people using the app, and I can’t just abandon them.”
Tomer continues to work on the app with the help of a small Israeli software development firm he hired. He recently completed a year at a pre-army preparatory program and will enlist in the IDF in February. Performing meaningful service is something Tomer has always valued, even going back to his high school days when he volunteered with Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, and organized a fundraiser with a friend for the school’s giving society (gemach).
His app, of course, also aims to help others, specifically kids like him whose parents divorced and who may be unsure of how to navigate their new reality. His advice for parents is to act wisely and do what’s best for the child. And his advice for the kids is, “It may be an unpleasant situation, but you slowly get used to it and it’s not that bad.”
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Photo courtesy of the Segev family
