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By Jacqueline van den Driest

Michaela Bercu likes to break down barriers. In November, 1988, she became the first model to wear jeans on the cover of Vogue, shunning the usual formality of the high-end fashion magazine. "I had just looked at that picture and sensed the winds of change," famed Vogue editor Anna Wintour recalled. "And you can't ask for more from a cover image than that."

It's now 30 years later and Bercu is hoping to change another norm: toppling the barriers of entry to volunteering. Inspired by the word "contribute," she has launched Tribu, an app which connects volunteering needs with those who wish to help. She has spent the past four years developing the platform with her husband, They started by launching it in a Tel Aviv neighborhood to see if it would actually work. An elderly woman was in the hospital and had no family to visit her. Like a bat signal being broadcast in the sky, people who had downloaded the app saw the opportunity and quickly rushed to her bedside. "Suddenly she had so many visitors coming to take care of her," Bercu told The Grapevine news site. "It's just a small thing to sit with someone who is alone so they are not so lonely. And it lightens up her life. And for the one who's giving the service, it makes you feel wonderful. You change someone's life."

You would think, like many supermodels, Bercu’s second act would be something like becoming a Pilates instructor or releasing a skin-care line. Instead, she’s releasing a new app, Tribu, that she has created with her husband, Israeli tech entrepreneur Ron Zuckerman.

The Tribu icon is friendly and inviting: a bright red square with a smiley face. But don’t be fooled. Bercu and Zuckerman say Tribu is poised to become the Uber of volunteering, a technology that could revolutionize the concept of people helping people.

Tribu originates from a personal cause close to Bercu. While living in Los Angeles, Bercu and her husband met producer Scooter Braun and his wife, Yael Cohen, the CEO of Fuck Cancer. “She was connected to an organization for women who have breast cancer, and she showed that taking care of one person fell on one person, not because people didn’t want to help, but because it wasn’t easy to help. They didn’t know how to help and where to start,” Bercu tells me about Cohen’s efforts. “So my husband and his partner developed an app for them. In each family and each group of people, they open up their own hub for somebody to take care of this person, all the needs of the week, and each person participating in the app would take part in whatever they could help with.” From there, Tribu was born, and was developed over a period of four years.