trellyz - Digital Service Envoys

People in low income, remote and refugee communities, particularly women and children, have the lowest access to information about critical services – their social safety net. A lack of connectivity, digital identity, devices and digital literacy compounds this difficulty. 

Our solution provides a central repository of trusted public and social services, from government, NGOs and service providers, through the RefAid mobile app that works offline. This enables the few with intermittent connectivity and devices – Digital Envoys – to serve as resource distribution hubs for their communities. Our solution creates a network of dedicated and embedded national and local partners with local contextual knowledge.

Leveraging our existing technology, and the affected population’s existing access to connectivity and devices, will exponentially scale service delivery with very low investment. Innovating local aid will create greater local self-sufficiency and financial sustainability, driving more funding into local and national NGOs, and more resources to the public.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 82% of people lack internet access. The lack of connectivity, devices, and digital literacy have resulted in decreased access to existing critical resources – a social safety net. People in low income, rural and refugee communities, particularly women and children, are at a greater risk due to lack of information, services and resources. Digital exclusion inevitably leads to economic exclusion. 

Mali’s internet penetration stands at only 12.7%, with users concentrated in the capital Bamako, where digital isolation is aggravated by geography and high levels of conflict, increasing the transportation and logistical difficulties faced by organizations delivering aid services. Poverty is on the rise, affecting 78.1% of people, and food insecurity levels are twice as high in families headed by women. As a result of conflict and instability, more than 4.3 million people required humanitarian assistance in 2020. 

Guinea faces many major socio-economic challenges, with 55% of the population living in poverty, and 21.8% of households being food-insecure.  Although women play a crucial role in Guinea society, they have difficulties in accessing resources, education, formal employment, and income-generating activities. Low-income and rural populations often face similar struggles, and are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity and poverty.

The RefAid mobile app is a multi-lingual, central repository of trusted public and social services, from government, NGOs (local, national, international) and service providers. RefAid uses a holistic, cross-sector approach to service delivery and serves as an information distribution platform. It will be used to provide target populations access to available social services through a self-service approach.

The RefAid App works both on and offline and stores social services to make them accessible in rural areas, or low and no connectivity environments. Having community members acting as Digital Envoys will accelerate the delivery and impact of humanitarian assistance in hard-to-reach areas across Mali and Guinea. We will provide them with the digital tools to help people affected by crisis, which enables the few with connectivity and devices – Digital Envoys – to store service information and serve as resource hubs for their communities. This enables our target populations to become more self-sufficient, especially in areas that are otherwise disconnected.

Working with key, experienced RefAid implementation partners and their networks   to recruit local organizations will increase the number of services and resources available to those in need, and will create greater stability in relationships between organizations and the public. 

Our solution is for people in low-income, refugee, remote and rural communities and people on the move, particularly women and children, in largely unconnected communities in sub-saharan Africa, the majority of whom do not not have mobile devices or internet access to critical information. Nearly half a billion people subscribe to mobile services in sub-Saharan Africa, but that is still only a 45% penetration rate for the region, as such lack access to critical information for social service safety nets. This negatively impacts their self-reliance.  

According to the 2019 GMSA report, despite the many challenges that prevent access to information and critical services for refugees, internally displaced people and migrants, people access mobile services in creative ways depending on their context – sharing or borrowing handsets and owning multiple SIMs. For those who do not own handsets, borrowing is an important way of getting connected, hence the feasibility of our solution.

Digital Envoys will accelerate the delivery and impact of digital humanitarian assistance in hard to reach areas across Sub-saharan Africa.

The amplification of the distribution of humanitarian and social services will work much like a p2p network, where those that have access share with those that don’t. Through our RefAid app, which works in offline mode, Digital Envoys will act as human routers, providing access to critical humanitarian services and resources to those near them. The individuals, through their network and community, will themselves become more self-sufficient, and provide a link to a safety net to those around them, especially important in protracted humanitarian crises. 

In most countries in Sub Saharan Africa, digital identity is crucial for accessing basic services and supporting socio-economic development. But many people either do not have, or do not want digital identity. In most countries, refugees need proof of identity to access mobile (and increasingly humanitarian) services in their own name. The slow issuance of identity documentation is hampering the ability of refugees to register for mobile services in their own name.

Our RefAid app is uniquely positioned to enable accessible and inclusive utilization, anonymously, for people who do not want to provide personally identifiable information. This will in turn open access to essential services for a greater number of people. Our app does not require a real user name or identifiable information, and can be used anonymously, and further Digital Envoys will allow refugees, vulnerable people, women and children and others in critical humanitarian crises access to social and public services that they need. Digital Envoys can help to usher in a digital humanitarian future in which mobile and digital solutions optimize improved access to services, information and choice for people who could be or already are affected by crisis.

Our technology-enabled solution addresses the challenge of providing access to the digital economy, for those traditionally at a strong disadvantage - low-income, women and children, rural and refugee populations. Our approach will increase access to the social safety net, by providing critical information about social and public services for unconnected communities – with no need for  investment in connectivity or devices.

Digital Envoys as community members with our mobile application ensure everyone has access to critical services and ultimately the digital economy. We have re-imagined a way to support vulnerable communities, providing them information and resources they need to thrive.

The trellyz platform and RefAid app have already been rolled out in 30 countries including Europe, the US and Morocco since its launch in 2016. Designed to serve refugee communities it is now being used to support people in LMIC, including Africa. More than 5,000 organizations (NGOs, nonprofits, government service providers) are currently part of the network of service providers using the platform to map, manage and publish their services and resources to the public. The RefAid app has become an established tool for people around the world to use during their migration journey and recently won the Padre Arrupe Human Rights Award.

This project will scale the RefAid platform significantly, in order to reach even more vulnerable populations across the globe starting with countries along the West Africa Migration route, in Mali and Guinea, where we have strong partnerships with local and national organizations and service providers. 

The RefAid mobile app, utilizing Digital Service Envoys, is a significantly improved approach to digital inclusion as it provides information about critical services to people on the move, women and children and vulnerable people in sub-Saharan Africa. It innovates the localization of aid through a network of dedicated and embedded national and local partners with local contextual knowledge. The app leverages strong, lean international NGOs for their resources as capacity building partners in the development of networks. For example, our partner, Diocesan Delegation of Migration (DDM) in Morocco leverages local initiatives and focuses on the majority of any funding going to local partners. Digital Envoys provide locally led action and de-colonised approaches to social services for the unconnected communities.

The lean NGO will train and support local and national organizations to help build local institutional memory - the focus being helping local organizations lead the implementation of RefAid. Because of the innovative dissemination of service information through Digital Envoys, people in low income, remote and refugee communities don’t need their own access to connectivity or devices but can access information through those who do. This will exponentially increase the number of people touched by or accessing direct services, resources and a safety net.

Creating access to service information builds equity, resilience, and personal agency for vulnerable populations, encouraging self-help in all aspects of their lives. RefAid will empower the unconnected by giving them the information to live productive, fulfilling, and independent lives, leading to a greater positive impact across communities.

Organizations – our primary direct relationship is with service providers. In a sense our product/platform is B2B. We support aid organizations, government and other service providers to deliver services to their clients. Our trellyz platform is used by more than 5,000 organizations today (with an average of 2-3 people per organization), many of whom operate in our target areas in Sub-Saharan Africa. In one year we will be adding at least another 250 organizations. In 5 years we would expect to operating in more than 50 countries with a total of more than 10,000 organizations using the software, and more than a total of 100,000 individual organization users of the software.

App end users - while we do not market directly to, or interface directly with, end users are our primary beneficiary through the organizations that interact with them. We currently have 30,000 app users. In 1 year we would expect to have 1 million end users – either using the app directly or benefiting from access to the app through Digital Envoys, community leaders or organizations. In 5 years we expect to have at least 20 million people directly using the app.

While this project is intended initially to serve populations of low-income, rural and refugee communities, in Mali and Guinea, we expect to expand the project to these populations across Sub-Saharan Africa, and to be further rolled out throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America.

We intend to begin the roll out of our solution in the Koulikoro region of Mali, focusing initially on recruiting and mapping the most critical resources (and the organizations providing these services) needed by our target populations. This will reduce barriers to accessing information about services that meet their basic needs, and contribute to improving opportunities. 

 As a pioneering innovation, our solution will illuminate the otherwise opaque social services sector within the conflict areas of Mali and across Guinea. To measure our impact, we will track usage metrics on the RefAid app, which will collect log data and key information about the service provider usage of the platform.

 The metrics of measurement towards our impact goals will include:

1. Number of humanitarian service providers (local, national, international) joining the network

2. Number of local community leaders and non-traditional responders (faith-based groups, local community groups, private sector) participating in the network

3. Number of users of the web-based, service provider platform (by type, location, and size of entity)

4. Number of services, resources, and information

5. Number of app downloads by location, age, and gender (No personally identifiable information will be collected)

This data will enable us to determine the resources required initially to build a network, on-board organizations, import services, maintain the database, and successfully promote the app to the population. We will translate the app into the most spoken languages and make sure the greatest number of people can directly, or indirectly benefit from the increased access to information.

7 people are working on our team full time, and we have 3 amazing advisors and several interns and consultants who help when needed.

Shelley, trellyz’s female, black American founder, has lived experience of being part of an underrepresented population, and so brings this knowledge and input to all projects. She has 22 years of experience of building large scale technology platforms and 7 years building mobile apps. Shelley has developed a unique skill of product design for low literacy populations, proven by her creation of RefAid, which has been used by refugees and migrants from dozens of countries for over 5 years.

Diallo Mamadou Alpha, trellyz’s project manager in the region, has more than 30 years of experience in the field of health, education, child protection. He has experience working in the humanitarian context as a consultant for international NGOs and agencies of the United Nations system, across many African countries including Mali, Guinea, Niger, and more.

Our international partner, Diocesan Delegation of Migration (DDM) has an exceptional track record in building networks, at different levels: with Civil Society Organisations; Public Administrations, Delegations and Ministries; international NGOs, Church networks, faith-based organisations, and cross-border projects. Alvar Sánchez, Project Promoter for DDM, in Nador (Morocco) has experience working closely with women and girls affected by migration. He has worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and South Sudan.

Our local partner in Mali, Enda Mali is a decentralized entity of the Enda Tiers Monde Organization, with an associative and non-profit character. It was officially created in 1995 and operates throughout Mali.

trellyz was founded by a black American female, with native American heritage and the management team of the company is majority female. We use this lens and lived experience to encourage diversity and inclusion, in hopes of creating greater equality in all of our projects and partner relationships. The trellyz team has become acutely aware, and highly practiced, in taking precautions that protect vulnerable populations and promote diversity and equity. 

The trellyz Project Manager for the region, Alpha Diallo, is a native of Guinee and trellyz is careful to select locally led partner organizations that not only have expertise in this project context, but also have strong principles and ethical practices regarding inclusion. We are focused and committed to supporting the decisions made by our partners in our chosen contacts, as they are situated on the ground working directly with our target populations. 

Enda Mali, our local partner based in Mali, is committed to promoting more equitable, plural and inclusive societies for political, economic and social change. They work across many countries, including conflict zones and post conflict regions and so will bring valuable experience from working with our target populations. 

The baseline research and work we will conduct during the pilot stage of this project, and the quarterly evaluation and monitoring, will take into account the voices of those who are particularly marginalized. This will help us to improve the results and impact through the design, implementation and adaptation of RefAid, to ensure that their needs are addressed appropriately.

We are applying to Solve to join a powerful network of leaders across industries and sectors, that will help us to build our existing network and to form relationships with potential partners, collaborators, and funders. We would also like to receive mentorship, strategic advice, monitoring and evaluation support from the community experts. This would help trellyz to improve and build on our existing solution and prepare us to scale and expand our business over time. The Solve Community can help to spread the word about our projects, through media exposure and at their conferences, which will have a positive impact on our future work. 

With funding from Solve and their award partners, we can make the platform available and free to all stakeholders, and then work in parallel to find additional funding partners and other ways of creating sustainability. This could include forming potential partnerships with businesses and brands that would benefit from association and exposure (sponsorship or marketing) to the many people RefAid will be serving. It may be that Solve partners would be able to help find the best models for a self-sustaining initiative.

Funding for promotion and marketing will aid us in reaching our intended audiences - both service providers and target populations, increasing the success of the project. As our target populations (low-income, rural and refugee communities, women and children) are often hard to reach, the Solve community could guide and assist us to find the most efficient and effective modes of communication. 

We would love to have financial support for our project, and that could come from direct funding or introductions to other grant organizations or venture capital investors. This funding support would help us to reach our intended audiences, both service providers and target populations, so that we can help as many people as possible. This would be achieved through marketing campaigns and communications, across a range of different platforms (social media, flyers, advertisement, etc). We have grown exclusively through viral word of mouth, and as well as that has gone, we could benefit from help with marketing, social and global media strategy and implementation.

We would appreciate any introductions to NGOs, service providers, government funding and service delivery organizations, so that we can continue to grow our network. Ultimately, this will help us to increase the services listed on our app, and the help available to our target populations. We would also like to connect with potential private sector partners who may have ideas or relationships about how best to get the greatest expansion to our potential customer base.

MIT faculty and initiatives would provide an incredible resource to trellyz, both its access to brain power and community of partners. We would love to create global conferences for change agents in NGOs, government and other critical stakeholders in the social service supply chain.

Future Planet Capital would be a great partner from a fund standpoint, along with their strategic partners and network, and access to human capital from leading academic institutions and the centres of innovation that surround them.

Clorox, as a global company with the dedication to positive impact, could offer us insight into how large companies may be appropriate partners for the work we are doing. Ultimately, sustainability of social service delivery in LMIC countries will rely on partnerships with the private sector, and finding ways they can benefit from exposure to the populations we serve.

We would love to partner with Amazon’s AWS Disaster Management group because it is aligned with the work we do around providing out app to populations and NGOs in crisis. We would also love to have AWS credits.

We would like to partner with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because of their global networks, and because they are already working within the region. Their connection to NGOs and other partners who could become part of our social service provider network would be a tremendous synergistic alliance.

We qualify for this Andan Prize due to our dedication to improving the lives of refugee communities around the world. The RefAid platform and mobile app have become an established tool for people around the world to use during their migration journey, whilst encouraging self-reliance and resilience. RefAid launched in 2016 and is currently being used to help migrants, asylum seekers and refugees across 24 countries. The Andan Foundation would be a great partner in our initiatives due to our shared objectives of promoting refugee resilience, self-reliance and integration. 

Our innovation is focused on helping refugee communities which are often also located in low-income or rural areas. Refugee communities often face several social and economic barriers, in their origin country, on the move, and in their destination country, which can be mitigated by longer-term recovery strategies that include access to education, health care, protection and more. 

In many of the countries where we are using our app (or will be) to provide people with a social safety net, refugees have little access to information about available resources.

Our app, working offline, makes it possible for these largely unconnected refugees to, through Digital Envoys, find help they need, when and where they need it. Information can be distributed to others along their migration route, and to those that would otherwise struggle to obtain this information, due to lack of devices or connectivity. Our project will help build the resilience and integration among the very group that is so often excluded.

We are strongly aligned with the HP Prize for Advancing Digital Equity and our platform, app and entire business are focused on these objectives: inclusion, digital literacy, and economic opportunity. While we cannot address the challenge of bridging the persistent digital divide, we can help bridge the safety net divide through our Digital Envoy approach, while others focus on increasing internet coverage and adoption. 

 People living in poverty, or low income, remote areas have a greater disadvantage when accessing information about critical services – their social safety net. A lack of connectivity, digital identity, devices and digital literacy compounds this difficulty.  

Those who participate as Digital Envoys, passing information to those who are unconnected and in remote areas, will strengthen the practical skills, learning and economic opportunities, digital literacy for the target populations - people in low income, remote and refugee communities, particularly women and children. This will also help prepare people for a more connected future.

Our solution creates a central repository of trusted public and social services, from government, NGOs (local, national, international) service providers so that more services are more readily available to more people due to the network referral possibilities. Our innovation in local aid will create greater local self-sufficiency and financial sustainability to drive more funding into local and national NGOs, and more resources to the public.

Although this project is focused on Mali and Guinea, Sub Saharan Africa, we are rolling out our app throughout the US for all populations.

We qualify for this Innovation for Women Prize, for two strong reasons. We are a woman founded company and want to do everything we can to improve equity and the quality of life for women and girls. Our project is focused on helping women and girls, including women and girls on the move (migrants, refugees and internally displaced) and women in unconnected, low-income and rural communities. Vodafone would be a wonderful partner in our initiatives as our solution is mobile app based and there could be some great opportunities within the initiative to promote Vodafone in the Sub-Saharan countries where we are rolling out this project.

Women and girls are harder hit when there is a pandemic or economic downturn or in conflict zones. The devastating social and economic consequences for women and girls can be mitigated by longer-term recovery strategies that include access to education, health care, and protection. In many of the countries where we are using our app (or will be) to provide people with a social safety net, it is women who are the glue in the communities but also the women who have the least access to information about available resources. Our app, working offline, makes it possible for these largely unconnected women to, through Digital Envoys (community leaders) find help they need, when and where they need it. Our project will help build the resilience among the very group that is most critical for supporting the rest of their community - women and girls.