Tech Equalized

Refugees and other vulnerable communities have reduced access to digital infrastructure and the services and problem solving information it can provide.  Using media and helplines that integrate into social and messaging platforms we can bypass barriers of affordability and literacy/digital skills to reduce the knowledge and connectivity gap and improve access to digital services such as banking and Identification. We do this by using already popular platforms that often include free data on mobile plans.  These helplines connect to bots with contextually and culturally relevant and, verified information in multiple formats.  Supplemented by agents, we will use the over half million messages we already have to train more inclusive and less biased Machine Learning models for scaling global responses through an AI recommendation system of process knowledge and humanitarian resources.  This solution can be scaled globally to accommodate additional needs and communities to provide large scale continuous AI powered conversations that empower communities to reduce digital and socioeconomic gaps. 

There is a gap between refugees, resources, and information. Globally there are almost 80 million displaced people. Our pilot focuses on the 1.7 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia (of 6.5 million total), a situation which is expected to pass the Syrian crisis in scale.  It is referred to as the hidden crisis because, as of last year, only $279 in humanitarian funding was spent per person, compared to over $3,000 per person in the Syrian crisis. This means every dollar spent must reach those who need it and increase self-sustainability. Our tools educate the migrant population, enabling them to access the resources of governments and organizations and driving a more efficient, self-sustaining system.

Displaced people are often disconnected from information that would help them assimilate into their host communities, including information about healthcare, education, employment, and applicable laws and processes.  Few of them have computers, but smartphones commonly act as people’s primary means of communication. Because there is no single source of reliable information for refugees, this population is at risk of receiving incorrect or malicious information.  We are building a way to keep them informed using the digital networks and tools available to them.

Messaging helplines with agents from the target community assist users toward problem-solving by providing verified information for accessing basic services, enrolling in education, banking, and visas for legal migration status.  Along with it comes education on digital literacy.  These helplines are available on free platforms that often include free data and are already popular with the migrant community.  From these dialogs and demographics, diverse NLP/NLU models are built.  Our pilot has around 500,000 direct messages for building these models.  These conversations, models will be used in building an AI backed expert recommendation system that can be used to diagnose the gaps in needs, services, and information while continuously growing a system accessible through an API and used to benefit vulnerable populations globally.  We successfully tested multiple ways to deliver informational media, reaching millions with some of the best engagement on social media at the time, averaging 40-60 times the sector average.  This engagement, combined with the ability to help in one-to-one conversations at scale provides a positive feedback loop and proves the efficacy of our concept to be be deployed for additional populations.

Currently we are piloting with the Venezuelan migrant community in Colombia.  A big problem for them is that information is not always accessible or easy to understand, causing a loss of time and money trying to figure out things that a local would understand easier. This lack of accurate and easily understood information makes them a target for scams like fake insurance or IDs.  We are staffing our communications agents from the target population, selecting people that have already navigated the systems in Colombia on their own and then empowering them with additional information we have researched and verified with government agencies and NGOs.  With helplines and Live Q&As on social media, we have a number of feedback loops that let us understand needs as they change over time.  Most importantly, we are the only resource that answers every single question.  All in all we have generated over a half million direct messages within the community.  We also conduct surveys and work in communication groups with local government, UN agencies, and NGOs to make sure that our work is focused on needs that are not served elsewhere.

Our delivery model required only the most basic smartphone access, recognizing that for most migrants this is their highest level of technical/digital availability.  By integrating into already popular platforms with free data on most mobile plans, we greatly reduce digital adoption barriers.  We deliver high level assistance through low tech means using video, text, and audio for those with lower literacy and digital skills.  Refugees are at elevated risk and need access to digital infrastructure that can provide a reliable source of information and significantly improve their chance for accessing basic resources and successful integration.

In less than a year we successfully piloted both a media solution and a comms tech solution that gained adoption by local and international stakeholders.  We have accumulated 65,000 subscribers, 2 million minutes of educational video watched, and 500,000 messages back and forth with the migrant community answering questions.  We have NGO and government partners on multiple concurrent grants, and additional business and tech partners to build out our WhatsApp helpline and integrate AI.  Anonymous survey respondents rate our service as more reliable than news, government, or NGOs and our media engagement rates are many times the sector average.  We are working with dozens of NGOs to reduce barriers and increase inclusion.  We have around 5% of the target population in Colombia (Venezuelan migrants with mobile phones),  are growing our partners and userbase, and will be expanding to additional countries when funding allows.

We are leveraging existing technology in new ways to produce massive engagement focused on problem identification and solutions for vulnerable communities.  This has increased our reach and growth many times that achieved by other organizations working with the same population.  Our services work well with other stakeholders, we are able to listen to the unique requests of an individual and, using the data we compile, point them to resources or information that will be helpful to them.   It is able to both push out information to the broader community and answer one-to-one questions at scale, which both work to push engagement algorithms on social media.  Through education and community engagement, we are able to amplify existing solutions that decrease digital and socioeconomic divides.  The service is in a unique position to collect and understand data on populations that can benefit from better reporting and informed strategies.

We have a combined base of 65,000 users, but estimate unique users around 40,000.  When we launch our upgraded services we will be better able to track this number.  In one year we will be serving over 200,000 users, in 5 years over a 2 million.

We monitor usage rates and changes in demographics, we survey the population, and are building out AI monitoring capabilities.

8 full time staff currently, expanding to 9 full time and 8 contractors 

In the last year our team has become one of the most trusted voices for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia.  We are almost completely staffed by our target migrant and host communities.  One of the founders is herself a refugee.

Our media and comms team is led by Nery(Nana) Santaella, who learned first hand how to navigate the system in Colombia as a Venezuelan refugee, sharing her knowledge with other women in the community and eventually training other women to do so in our messaging helpline.  She came from a management background in hotels, as well as comms and executive assistant for pharmaceuticals and communications infrastructure company(including grid, underwater cables, and satellite).  

Our operations are led by entrepreneur and medical specialist Jason Rovig, who first came to Colombia as a Certified Prosthetist and Orthotist to improve prosthetic standards for people who sustained amputations in landmines and bombings during the conflict in Colombia.  He has internationally worked with vulnerable and marginalized communities for 15 years and is an award winning photographer and independent journalist.  He has put together art and journalism exhibitions telling the stories of Venezuelan migrants that have gotten coverage local and international coverage as well as interest from universities and researchers.

Our team was driven by a cause, many of them first helping others in their own communities in unofficial capacities through skills they learned.  Our goal is to create teams that are generally autonomous in their decision making, so that voices from those communities are able to craft the messages around that community's specific needs.  We focus on hiring women from our underserved communities, as in our experience they represent the most engaged audience who are actively searching for information that can change not only their lives, but others as well.  Women make up around 75% of our users and anonymous polls show they help around 20 others on average.  For example we are building a human rights team around collecting and monitoring data related to gender based violence and human rights abuses for LGBTQIA and women migrants as these numbers are greatly underreported and to provide easy to access informational resources through our helplines.  To do this we have a refugee women and LGBTQIA led team (PhDs, RN, and MD) of academic researchers and clinical specialists to design and implement the solution.  This helps us ensure that the needs of the refugee community their most vulnerable segments are understood firsthand, academically, and professionally.