In the Netherlands,
there are more than 2.5 million caregivers.
Almost 50% of them are overburdened with it.
And it is because they are just too shy to ask anyone for help.
On the other hand,
more than 60 to 80% of ordinary people like you and me
are willing to help a friend in need.
So it's clearly very difficult to bring those people together:
people in need for help,
people who are willing to help.
Six years ago I became a caregiver myself.
My parents became ill.
My mother had a stroke and my father had a brain cancer
and I was only caregiver in that time.
Many people said to me:
"If you need some help from us you should ask for it."
But I didn't, because I was too shy to ask for help, too.
But I was almost overburdened with the caregiving.
Almost a year later, my wife was diagnosed with cancer.
We just became a mum and dad
and we had our own business.
And in that time, I decided to act different,
because I started to actively ask for help from my neighbours.
I knocked on the door and I asked them to help us with small,
but for us very important jobs, like cooking and cleaning.
To be some company for my wife and our little baby daughter
when I was not at home.
And we had a wonderful time,
because we had a lot of help from our neighbours.
But it was also a wonderful time for our neighbours,
because they had the opportunity to get involved in our situation.
And they had the opportunity to help us.
Fortunally, my wife is healthy again now.
And she inspired me to form the Bucket Line foundation,
because Bucket Line helps people in need and caregivers
to easily arrange help from the familiar surroundingds
that suddenly cost a lot of time and energy
like cooking and cleaning and shopping,
from their own familiar surroundings.
So we thus created an online platform
to match those people in need of help and their friends willing to help.
They can all make free use of an application with planner.
With only one push of the button they send their friends an e-mail
and asking them for help.
I have to be honest with you,
because there are some complaints about this system.
Because, if you want to help a friend in need,
you have to be very fast.
Otherwise someone else is already doing it.
(Laughter)
Today, there are 300 people in the Internet using Bucket Line,
asking for help and helping each other.
But why are they doing that?
It's not because Bucket Line makes it that easy to ask for help.
It's not because Bucket Line makes it that easy
to give up some of your privacy, to give up some of your strength,
or to give up some of your autonomy.
It's because with Bucket Line,
all those people know that they are not only asking for help,
they are giving something too.
They give their friends and neighbours
the opportunity to get involved in their situation.
They give their friends and neighbours the opportunity to help.
But most important of all:
all those people caregiving and willing to help
give themselves the opportunity to refocus on what's really important in life.
Health and Love.
Thank yoy very much.
(Applause)