What is Blaxit?
My partner and I started our Blaxit experience July 2, 2021. Is it all we hoped that it would be? Basically. Despite all the reasons why people Blaxit, but it wasn’t until we made the big move that we truly understood for ourselves the many reasons why it was a good move for us.
The term Blaxit — a play on the term used for Britain’s exit from the European Union — is being used to refer to Black Americans exiting the U.S. and moving abroad.
When I heard the term for the first time, I immediately understood the play on words. I was very intrigued. How many of us are leaving the United States? Come to find out –a shit ton!!! That was exciting to me because I’ve always known that I wanted to explore the world. To know that so many of us were already doing it made me ask the question: What am I waiting for?
Now that we’re here, Manta Ecuador, we find that one of our biggest resource is still the facebook groups. Anything that we wanted to know prior to departing the US, someone else already knew. Now that we’re here, our questions are different, but our resources for answers are still the same. Expats!!! They speak our language and readily provide answers to the same questions they themselves once had. It’s an invaluable resource, and there are so many groups to choose from! These groups range in size from a few hundred to thousands of members. There’s Global Blaxit, Black Expats, Black Expats in Mexico, African Americans in Ecuador… and many more.
So when my partner came up with the idea to create an app, the Blaxit app, I was totally onboard… and after a couple of days and a bit of research, it went from being some plausible to something needed. It just made sense to consolidate these resources into one primary location as well as add additional features useful to folx pre-Blaxit (prior to exiting your home country) and post-Blaxit (already living abroad).
This app would be the facebook for the expanding community of Black folx looking to connect, network, and get/provide information from all over the world.
Features of the App
Some of the really awesome features we plan to implement involve connecting pre-Blaxit members with post-Blaxit members who have airbnb’s. This is very useful for folx visiting a location for the first time.
Another cool feature we plan to add is the ability for a user to see their proximity to other Blaxit members on the app. This will not only allow users to see who’s around them but it will allow them to zoom out and see all members in the world and where they are currently living. Imagine being able to see a consolidated view of Black expats all over the globe!
We want the app to also be a top resource for Black expats. That means having pertinent information available and easy to navigate. We want new users to easily obtain information needed to make Blaxiting not only a reality, but super easy to do! Someone traveling alone or with small children will have very different experiences as an expat and therefore have different questions. We want users to be able to connect with other users based on similarities. These similarities will be factors that a user can submit anytime to allow our algorithmic suggestions to connect them with other members.
These are just a few of the ideas we have to make the Blaxit app the go-to resource for Blaxiting. We want to make sure that we keep you in the loop, so please join our newsletter to stay informed as we continue to make this app a reality. If you are looking to be a bigger part of what we are building, we invite you to join our Patreon community where we share even more about the progress and features included in Blaxit.