The Niemikoti Foundation’s Niilo app has been an important community and everyday motivator for many — a place to set goals, chat with others, and find companionship and meaning throughout the week.
The Niilo and Us-website (me.niemikoti.fi) will be combined into one shared meeting place that brings together the Niemikoti community, peer support, and engaging content. The goal is to build an accessible and easily developed online service that preserves Niilo’s best qualities while creating plenty of new good things.
The blog post below, written by Sanna from the Niilo team, takes us back to Niilo’s early days and users’ experiences — to where it all began, and why the spirit of Niilo continues to thrive in the upcoming service.
Would you like to help shape the new service?
Sanna Nevalainen, Niilo team:
WHAT ON EARTH IS NIILO? – HISTORY AND THE PRESENT DAY
Like many other organisations, the Niemikotisäätiö Foundation also has its own application — an app called Niilo, as the organisation’s name itself already hints. Its logo features a monkey, inviting the “digital apes” of the Niemikotisäätiö community to connect with it and through it in the urban jungle.
In Niilo, for example, users can set personal goals. When a goal is achieved, a “point” drops into their account — and since we’re in the jungle, the symbol of a point is a banana. As bananas start to accumulate, Niilo gets different hats, and the user feels good for having accomplished something. In this way, Niilo encourages activity.
But Niilo is more than just a tool for tracking tasks done independently. Many have found a community within the app, keeping in touch through chat channels and discussing various topics in different message threads. In the opinion of many — including the author — a week is best started with Monday’s chat café, when everyone gathers online at the same time to talk. Peer experts play a major role in running the activities, as Niilo is designed by people in recovery for people in recovery.
I asked two long-time Niilo users how the app appears in their lives today and how it did in the past. First, I spoke with Tuomas, Niilo’s very first digital support person, about Niilo then and now. He originally joined by invitation, and over time the app has evolved through updates — for example, the role of digital support has changed accordingly. He has also seen some members of the community come and go over the years. Tuomas’ wish is that Niilo would receive all the features that have been proposed as necessary. Above all, he thinks anyone who belongs to the target group should join Niilo — after all, Niilo is simply the best app!
Another early pioneer is Santtu, who has also worked as a digital support person for Niilo. He remembers the early days with optimism — Niilo was being designed as an app that could spread even internationally. He still likes the visual style that was created back then. In the beginning, there was a lot of development buzz on WhatsApp as well. These days, for him, Niilo is mostly about the chat side. The chat cafés and message threads work well as part of his daily routine, and he also gives credit to the other peer experts and to the instructor Teppo. Santtu would like to see some kind of diary function added to Niilo (though of course Niilo’s evolution hasn’t stopped — editor’s note). He would warmly welcome new people to both the chat threads and the chat cafés. In the cafés, participants sometimes just catch up with each other, and sometimes gather around a specific topic. At first, if someone doesn’t feel like joining the conversation, they can simply follow along. But if they want to, they can also step in and even host a café themselves.
For me personally, Niilo represents a well-proven way to start the week: Monday evening chat cafés, which I sometimes host and sometimes join as a participant. To me, this practice captures Niilo’s beautiful principle and implementation — everyone can participate in the way they want, not always leading the conversation, and not always just observing. Roles shift, as they ideally do in a democracy. The goals function as everyday motivators for me. And in the chats, I’ve had moments of what I’d call a “connection-plus” experience — a sense of community that isn’t always visible but is “out there somewhere,” and that makes each day just a little bit better.
