t tribe
A non-profit · launching 2026

Tackling loneliness in schools. So every child does better.

Children with strong friendships do better. In their wellbeing, in their attendance, in their grades. tribe exists to make sure no child is left to find that on their own.

Read our mission → Get in touch
Structure Community Interest Company
Focus Year 6 → Year 7 transition
Status In formation · 2026
Our mission

Reducing loneliness in schools, to get better outcomes for students.

Loneliness at school is not a small problem. It shows up in mental health, in absence, in academic results, and in the friendships a child carries for life. We think the right intervention is simple, and it sits at one specific moment.

It's not a clever idea. It's how friendships have always worked. We're just making sure every child gets the chance.

How we work

A simple idea, carefully built.

Three steps. One per cohort. The school stays in charge of the room.

01

Match on what they care about.

Children take a gamified survey in the last week of Year 6, on iPads, in their own primary. No login, no typing. They pick from tiles. About 25 minutes. That's the only thing children ever do inside Tribe.

A matching engine reads the results and groups children across feeder schools around real shared interests. Not popularity, not academics, not appearance.

What the child sees: a question, four tiles, a progress bar. No feed. No friend list. No photos.

02

Give them something real to do together.

Friendships need a reason to keep showing up. Each group gets a six-session project they work on across the first half-term. We maintain eight briefs: Game Build, Cookbook, Comedy Film, Magazine, Podcast, Music Track, Bike Jump, Clothing.

The brief that lands on each group's table is matched to what they actually like. By the autumn showcase, every group has made something they can show their parents.

What the school gets: one C5 envelope per cohort with the printed group briefs, parent letters and a one-page how-to inside. The lead hands them out at induction. Done.

03

Measure what actually matters.

Six months on, we check whether those friendships still hold. Not app engagement. Not survey completion. Real friendships, six months in. That's the only number we report.

The school keeps everything we measure. If the matching doesn't work in their cohort, they'll know first.

What we share: a short cohort report each spring. Honest, anonymous, plain English.

For busy schools

Designed around how little time you actually have.

Schools are busy enough. Tribe is built so one person, the transition lead, touches it for under an hour, total, across the year. No teacher training. No new logins. No work for the children beyond a 25-minute survey on an iPad.

~45 min
Total lead time across the year
Six short touchpoints between May and the following March. None more than half a morning.
0
Teachers needing a login
Only the transition lead ever signs in. No classroom rollout, no INSET day.
25 min
Time per child
One IT-room session in the last week of Year 6. The depth is what produces the data the matching engine needs.
Swipe to see the full dashboard
Who we are

Built by technologists who wanted to work on something that matters.

Tribe was started by a group of like-minded people who'd spent their careers building software for commercial markets, and decided the next thing they built should be for a community problem instead.

We are Creating Tribes CIC, a not-for-profit Community Interest Company registered in the UK. The CIC structure means our assets are locked to the mission. Any surplus is reinvested into reaching more schools, particularly those who couldn't otherwise afford the service.

We are not a social network. We are not a wellbeing app. We are a small, focused tool that does one thing for one moment in a child's life, the move from primary to secondary school, and gets out of the way.

How we're funded

Tribe is initially supported by private individuals and charitable grant funding. The goal is to become self-sustaining through modest fees to schools that can afford them, while keeping the service free for schools in financial hardship. Surplus stays in the mission.

Where we're going

Modest start. Honest ambition.

We start small, with a careful validation phase. We grow only as fast as the evidence supports. The destination is a service that reaches hundreds of thousands of children every year, with no child priced out.

2026
Validation
Research phase with our first partner primary schools. We test whether the matching actually predicts real friendships, before any Year 7 child relies on it.
2027 – 2028
First cohorts
We bring Tribe to a small number of secondary schools, refine the product with the transition leads who use it, and learn what works in real schools.
Beyond
Scale, on the evidence
The ambition is to reach a meaningful share of UK secondary schools, with hundreds of thousands of children a year, while staying free for the schools who need us most.
We're recruiting

Year 7 Transition Leads. Help us get this right.

If you're a transition lead, Year 7 head, or pastoral lead and the Year 6 to Year 7 wobble is something you think about every September, we want to talk to you. We're looking for schools and people to help us refine the matching, the survey, and the first weeks.

Get in touch → info@jointribe.org.uk
Contact

Schools, funders, would-be collaborators, we'd love to hear from you.

We're a small team. One inbox, one human reading it. We'll get back to you.

Email info@jointribe.org.uk Web www.jointribe.org.uk
Registered office Smith Dock Studios, Lawson Street,
North Shields, Tyne & Wear, NE29 6TG