Sophia - the first chatbot for victims of domestic violence

According to the World Health Organization, "Violence against women, whether by an intimate partner or of a sexual nature, is a major public health problem and a major violation of women's rights."  

Globally:

• An estimated 736 million women—almost one in three—have been subjected to physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30 per cent of women aged 15 and older).” and most of this violence is perpetrated  by current or former husbands or intimate partners.

• Almost 24% adolescent girls aged 15–19 (24 per cent) have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner or husband.

• 1 woman or girl is being killed every 11 minutes in their home and 58 per cent by intimate partners or other family members. 

• 1 in 4 children aged under 5 years live with a mother who is a victim of intimate partner violence

Switzerland: 

The report of the Federal Office of Statistics "Domestic violence: offenses recorded by the police" offers a comparative view of cases of violence, which reveals the revealing growth of the phenomenon. in the period from 2009 to 2021, serious bodily injuries to women increased from 55 in 2009 to 124 in 2021, assaults from 4,928 to 6,434 and sexual coercion from 143 to 198. The report also mentions several offences that are equally disturbing, such as kidnapping, abuse of distress, and misuse of a telecommunication facility. All these offences prove how difficult it is for victims of abuse to get out of the relationship; to seek and find the necessary help, hence the importance and urgency of having Sophia chatbot whose use is entirely anonymous and leaves no digital trace. 

Senegal: 

According to the Gender based violence  report of the Statistic National Agency "variations by area of residence show that the percentage of women aged 15-49 who have experienced physical violence since the age of 15 is slightly higher in rural areas (27.8%) than in urban areas (25.1%)." Thus, the standard of living and socio-economic and religious considerations are an obstacle to the help and assistance that is provided to people suffering from abuse, with the absence of specialized services, French language barriers, the lack of diversified means and a strong risk of isolation within society. Sophia, therefore, becomes a suitable solution as it would be accessible everywhere and available in local languages with sufficient information to guide people in their rights and towards resources and organizations that can help them.

Peru:

• The National Institute of Statistics and Informatics has reported that in 2018, 63.2% of girls between 15-49 have suffered violence from their partner. From those, 58.9% have suffered from psychological, 30.7% from physical and and 6.8% from sexual violence. And during months quarantine domestic and gender violence has increased up to 130% in Peru. According to Statistics of the Judiciary every month 26 men are condemned for having commited femicide (2020-2021). 

Domestic violence can be considered as the most universal issue. All societies and states, wherever they are, face the problem of domestic violence in one way or another. According to the World Health Organization “Intimate partner (physical, sexual and psychological) and sexual violence cause serious short- and long-term physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health problems for women. They also affect their children’s health and wellbeing.”  However, in many countries domestic violence is still not considered from a medical point of view and victims do not have access to specialized services to assist them. And in other countries where services exist, they are not always available.  Also considering some factors (legal, economic, social) related to victims of domestic violence mixed with fear and stress parameters, it can be quite difficult for them to access reliable information on both their rights and the organizations that can provide help, to sort them out and to choose the most relevant ones given her situation. However, Because of the seriousness and urgency of the situation, they need special care and support to meet their specific needs. 

The problem we are trying to solve is to allow every person suffering from domestic abuse, wherever they are, to have access, without leaving any digital trace, to the right information to act safely, to find the necessary help and to protect themselves and their documents that could be used as evidence. Thus, the problem must be addressed in its entirety and 24/7 access to medical and psychosocial care must be ensured for those directly or indirectly affected by this violence. Health services must be available and accessible to all, especially to victims of domestic violence. 

Our approach to domestic violence is informed by mobile health research that emphasizes the importance of integrating technology development in local contexts and with input from stakeholders on the ground. Thus, by developing and making Sophia available to the public and collaborating with national domestic violence experts and other stakeholders, in the short term, more survivors will be aware of the tool and have easy and safe access to information, and the workload of local organizations can be reduced. In the medium term, survivors will have more knowledge, skills, and confidence to deal with their situation. The long-term impact will hopefully be that more survivors will actually seek help and break the cycle of violence sooner. For this, the main objective of Spring ACT is in the implementation of Sophia, to collaborate and promote applications such as Juli. Juli is an important technological innovation that supports people with chronic health conditions like asthma, migraine, depression, bipolar disorder or chronic pain through a number of evidence-based approaches: https://www.juli.co/ 

Combining Sophia with Juli not only guides victims of domestic violence to the appropriate and available services, but also provides them with a means to receive appropriate and always available medical support. By using the data tracked passively through smartphone, the data tracked passively through smartwatch or other wearables, the environmental data and the self-reported data (a few questions asked in the app, relevant to their condition), Juli integrates information that might impact on users’ condition and then help them identify how these factors have an impact and take action to avoid that.

Receiving the MIT Horizon Prize would make Juli an essential, free, accessible, and responsive medical assistance tool for victims of domestic violence and seal the collaboration between Spring ACT team and Juli team. 

“I hear you. I see you. I believe you. You are not alone. There are lots of people out here ready and waiting to help”.  

What is Sophia? 

Sophia, the world's first chatbot for survivors of domestic violence is a way to build a trusty relationship between victims and people that are around to assist her (Health workers, police officers, psychologists….). Developed by a Swiss human rights organization called Spring ACT, Sophia’s main mission is  to help people who are suffering from abuse in 3 ways: 

• Gathering evidence : survivors can upload potential evidence of the abuse happening in their relationship, whether it’s a photograph of physical violence, voice memos, screenshots of verbal abuse, or documents highlighting financial withholdings. These files are uploaded and securely stored in their personal “vault” on servers located in Switzerland and protected by the highest standard of data privacy rights.

• Assessing and knowing your rights : Contacting lawyers and police can feel very intimidating in the best of situations. Especially, though, when individuals may be trying to leave a violent relationship and are unsure what awaits them. Sophia walks with survivors through what they need to know about contacting the police and/or how to find legal assistance, summarizes the procedures and explains to them their   rights.

• Learn about your options : The information out there is overwhelming. Sophia therefore acts as a guide through the options and help available to survivors of domestic violence and provides online resources and/or a list of local helplines to call in every single country in the world. 

Accessibility 

Sophia hears, sees, and believes survivors, 24/7 regardless of their location from any device with internet access and in English, French, German, and Italian. They just have to type "sophia.chatbot" in the search bar of your web browser or  find it on the popular messaging applications by looking for “Sophia Chatbot” in Telegram or Viber (and next month on Whatsapp and Signal). Eventually, Sophia will be available in more than 25 languages. 

Privacy:

Chatting to Sophia is completely anonymous and does not store any personal data. It keeps all the files sent securely in a digital safe on servers in Switzerland (where  developers are based). Everything is stored safely and confidentially until the owner – and only the owner – decides to access it. Nobody else but the person who created the digital safe can access it through a secure login system. 

Reliability:

Sophia is a secure tool to obtain relevant and reliable information (types of violence, information about support organisations, your rights, etc.), get the right help especially medical help and create a digital safe to record evidence of violence suffered. Spring ACT was accompanied in the development by the umbrella organisation DAO, the Swiss Conference for Victim Support (CSOL-LAVI), lawyers, social workers specialising in domestic violence and IT companies specialising in cyber security. Each line has been carefully thought out and tested with the help of psychologists specialised in gender-based violence, in order to best respond to the tension and urgency that survivors experience in situations of abuse. Sophia has also been tested by survivors, who were consulted at every stage of her development and who are an integral part of the ACT team.

Scalability:

Currently, Sophia provides localized information on your rights in Switzerland and general help everywhere else in the world. The experts who designed Sophia  planned for it to be established in every country in the world with the detailed help that you need in your particular area in your country. Therefore, it is perfectly adaptable, which also facilitates its scalability. In Senegal, Spring ACT is mainly partnering with AJS (Women Lawyers Association), FAFS ( Federation of Feminine Associations in Senegal) and other relevant local NGO in order to integrate local information and make Sophia available in senegalese local languages (Wolof, Serere, Peulh, Diola). In Peru, Spring ACT wants to do the same with Pachacutec Foundation and the OLI Foundation network but in Spanish and Quechua And in Sierra Leone with West Africa Women and Girls Empowerment Sierra Leone.

Spring ACT empowers people through technological solutions to take action and helps eliminate social injustices. Its overall targets are all those people who by nature or human's actions find themselves in a situation of vulnerability and feel disadvantaged in one way or another. 

Sophia chatbot is essentially directed towards victims of domestic violence. Considering the statistics, it basically affects women, who are also disadvantaged in many other areas: work, health, entrepreneurship ....

The LGBTQIA+ community is also strongly supported in the Spring ACT strategy but also in Sophia chatbot improvement. 

Finally, an important target group, which is often forgotten in the care of victims of domestic violence, is children and youth. This is why Spring ACT intends to extend Sophia to children and young people by integrating more information about their rights and their care. 

More globally, Spring ACT aims to implement Sophia in the most remote and conservative areas. Indeed, in some countries or regions, domestic violence is sometimes tolerated or even normalized. The strength of the technology is that it can reach out to many locations and overcome the barriers that may prevent victims from taking the first step to seek and receive help without discrimination. 

We have direct beneficiaries: 

• Women/Girl suffering from domestic abuse 

• Men  suffering from domestic abuse 

• LGBTQIA+  suffering from domestic abuse 

• Children living with a parent suffering from abuse 

*Generally speaking, women and children are the most vulnerable, especially when combined with socio-economic disparities. With this project, women and girls who are in abusive relationships will have equal access to outreach and support services. They will also have a reliable overview of their rights and options 24/7 regardless of their location, ethnicity, religion or beliefs. But Sophia is also a way to prevent violence or to avoid critical conséquences. If women and girls can be aware of their rights and very able to early notice an abusive relationship and how to react to it, the pourcentage could drastically go down. 

Indirect beneficiaries: 

• Professionals assisting people suffering from domestic abuse (Social worker, Doctors, Police Officers, etc) 

*People who intervene in the care and support process must be sufficiently sensitized to domestic violence in order to ensure quality care services that meet the needs of the direct targets. Moreover, for the professionals around the victim of domestic violence, a framework where they are all gathered with their accurate and reliable information is more than necessary to facilitate and accelerate the process of care. Because people suffering from abuse are very often introverted and scared, professionals that are supposed to help should be trained enough to recognize signs and adapt a particular protocol to make them comfortable.  

Spring ACT has a diverse, multi-national, multi-disciplinary team, and in each of the target countries, has a representative in charge of collaboration with local organizations. This diversity helps to establish standards that take into account various issues related to ethnicity, culture, beliefs and traditions, and gender and integrate them into the technological solutions we propose in order to better meet the needs of the target communities. The local organizations with which Spring ACT collaborates also help a lot in the local implementation of Sophia by indicating the important and sensitive factors to be taken into account and integrated according to the country, the region or the area. 

Thus Sophia-chatbot, from its conception to its implementation and improvement, is a combination of many experiences and expertise. Survivors of domestic violence, integral members of the Spring ACT team, and professionals working in the field have tested and continue to test each chat line. Each decision, each characteristic is thus discussed and considered from several angles before its implementation. In doing so, Spring ACT promotes a participatory approach by the communities for which the solution is intended. In addition, to ensure that the communities for which the solution is intended are included and empowered, Spring ACT always puts forward local organizations that are already established and working on the subject; an assurance that the needs, beliefs and realities of the target communities are respected.

We are applying to this challenge upon the invitation of Patrick Diamond from MIT Solve.

Spring ACT is currently facing many challenges: Sophia touches on several areas of expertise: legal, cultural, technical, social. By offering a global solution, Spring ACT seeks partners with a global reach but also partners with strong local bases and trustworthy relationships with grassroots communities. The more its collaboration network is developed, the better because this will not only guarantee the quality of the solution but also increase the resources available through Sophia. 

As a technology solution to social injustice, Spring ACT may face some cultural resistance and apprehension to technology, hence the major importance it places on communication and awareness. 

Despite Sophia's relevance and usefulness as an NGO, Spring ACT also faces funding challenges for deployment in other countries and related research. 

For all these reasons, Spring ACT believes that the MIT Horizon Prize is a great network to promote Sophia, meet technical partners that can help us improve the technology we are developing. 

"Sophia" is an innovation on several levels including: 

- Sophia is the world's first chatbot exclusively for victims of domestic violence that helps them save potential evidence and find help near them. 

- It is a digital solution available 24/7, anonymous and without any digital trace. 

- Another strength, and not the least, lies in the fact that Sophia Chatbot is entirely non-profit as chabots are not yet common in the NGO field. With the documented weaknesses of DV apps in the Global South due to high storage or data usage, expensive extras, or other issues, chatbots are a more affordable and accessible alternative. This argument is born out by the rapidly increasing use of chatbots, particularly in the Global South. As a non-profit organization offering server space for free to DV survivors, Sophia is innovating upon how technology can aid in evidence collection. Finally, with the right funding model and support, we aim to input AI capabilities into Sophia, including NLP and voice-to-text technologies.

- In addition to the many functions it offers, Sophia is progressing in its innovation and is providing a digital vault integrated to the Chatbot whose particularities make it unique in its kind: 

a. The safe allows to save potential evidence (written or vocal messages, images, logs) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 

b. Access to the digital safe is only allowed to the owner and only to the owner 

c. As security, confidentiality and protection of privacy and personal data are always a top priority, access to the personal data, access to the safe is established in such a way as to find the perfect compromise between the ease for the user not to lose his/her identification elements and the impossibility for any other and the impossibility for any other ill-intentioned person to find or guess them. One of the most important features is that the user will not need to log in (i.e., it is not necessary to provide an email address) to save or retrieve data. 

d. Writing down the password or memorizing it is not an option, as the user is likely to be living in an untrusted and stressed environment. Also, using a password manager on a shared computer or installing it as an application on the user's phone can raise suspicion. For this Spring ACT founded a secure, innovative, and helpful way for users to access their digital safe without having to memorize any password.  For the protection of users, the technique cannot be revealed publicly but could be explained in interviews or meetings. 

e. Also to avoid suspicion, users will browse through completely random URLs from the chat. 

f. All saved items, such as potential evidence, are entirely in the possession and control of the user. She, and only she, can decide what to do with it. 

- The anonymous data Sophia will be able to collect will provide a data-driven response to improve services and support for survivors of domestic violence. This is especially important because 60% of victims never seek help and 80% never go to the police. With this data, we will be able to shed light on the unknown number of domestic violence cases. 

- Languages: Sophia's technology offers a very easy solution to talk with victims of domestic violence in their native language. 

Next year:

• Increase Sophia reach through local partners, recommandations, and social media : More than 30,000 people will chat with sophia within a year from all around the world 

• Specifically increase Sophia reach through local partners, recommandations, and social media : People more exposed to domestic violence (in rural areas and with limited resources) are enough aware  and know how to react and find people that can help them

• Improve user experience and services : “Feedback” option will be integrated to Sophia to get users' opinions and thoughts

• Professionals working on the field will get reliable datas on where the main hubs of domestic violence in each country are and will be more responsive in these areas

• Integrate local information of at least 10 other countries and in their local languages

Five Years: 

• “Report” and “signalisation” options integrated to give to victims the possibility to directly reach out the police or authorities working on the field

• Local information of at least 50 other countries and in their local languages integrated

• Adapt Sophia to children and Youth

• User experience improved as we go along with country implementation

• More than a million of organizations all around the world available into Sophia as bank of resources dedicated to help women suffering from  abuse

• Exchanges between countries and continents to establish a code of conduct for professionals, harmonize the intervention especially with foreigners and migrants, and share good practices. 

• Include NLP and voice-to-text technologies

To prioritize a people-centered infrastructure to ensure essential health services to victims of domestic violence we are monitoring:

• Number of users globally and specified by country

• Number of users classified in each country to define the hubs of domestic violence

• Number of country where Sophia is implemented with local information and languages

• Numbers of organizations available into Sophia

• Awareness and advocacy done in each country, on social media and globally

• Feedback from users

• Signalisations and reports to police or relevant authorities

• Enter-countries/continents exchanges and meetings

To actively build trust and engagement between historically underserved communities and their health systems we incentivize a closer approach with empathy towards the victims. Also this will reduce bias from the social services.  The indicators to do so are:

• Number of workshops to local authorities and healthcare personnel

• Number of onboarded authorities

• Number of “leaders” participating in workshops

To monitor if the development of Sophia has a correlation with the strengthening of the domestic violence healthcare system, there will be indicators to define a the social baseline for victims of domestic violence such as: 

• Number of medical care through sophia by region/country

• Number of social care through sophia by region/country

Spring ACT strongly believes that change is driven by an inner drive, will and commitment. Change comes from the grassroots, from the communities affected by the issues at hand. The communities for whom the solutions are intended must themselves be involved in identifying their challenges, classifying their strengths and areas for improvement, defining their goals and priorities, and thinking about how to achieve them. For this reason, Spring ACT always favors a participatory approach. If a solution is designed and developed externally without any involvement of the beneficiary community, except for implementation, it is more likely to be an imposed solution that is often misunderstood by the people it is supposed to help. In most cases, this is the reason why humanitarian projects sometimes fail or are not sustainable.  When communities and individuals are involved in the whole process, they understand what is at stake in the decisions made and actions to be taken and are more committed and concerned about the solutions. They are then more likely to change their behavior permanently, because they understand the need for change to achieve their own goals. Change must therefore start from communities and end to communities. Thus, action plans and measures adopted at the international level must be understood by the grassroots communities so that they can bring about change themselves and contribute significantly to the achievement of the SDGs.  In this logic, in each country targeted for the implementation of Sophia chatbot, Spring ACT puts forward local actors and calls for the active participation of the population. Thus, beyond the chatbot which adapts perfectly to local needs and realities and which is essentially victim-centered, Spring ACT seeks to organize the actors and people concerned around discussion groups to exchange on the issue of domestic violence and to find ways to eradicate or prevent it by finding other ways of solving the problems. 

Sophia uses the latest in conversational technology offered by Zendesk in their commitment to our work. Due to the sensitive nature of DV, security, trust, and privacy are paramount. Zendesk’s Sunshine system provides a stable base on which to build, providing API access, built-in integrations to popular messaging apps, out of the box security, and logic for the conversation flow. We are building on top of the tried and tested Zendesk Sunshine platform in order to create a seemingly human chatbot that, on first glance, will not look like an adviser for abusive situations. The content of the conversations themselves will not be saved but users will be able to upload text, audio, and images; these will be securely stored in a storage system  (based in Switzerland). At the forefront of technology and always looking for ways to make it work for users, Spring ACT has found a unique, innovative and extremely secure way to relieve survivors of the need to remember or write down a password. For the protection of users, the technique cannot be revealed publicly but could be explained in interviews or meetings.

In addition to that, Sophia is providing a digital vault integrated to the Chatbot whose particularities make it unique in its kind: 

a. The safe allows to save potential evidence (written or vocal messages, images, logs) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 

b. Access to the digital safe is only allowed to the owner and only to the owner 

c. As security, confidentiality and protection of privacy and personal data are always a top priority, access to the personal data, access to the safe is established in such a way as to find the perfect compromise between the ease for the user not to lose his/her identification elements and the impossibility for any other and the impossibility for any other ill-intentioned person to find or guess them. One of the most important features is that the user will not need to log in (i.e., it is not necessary to provide an email address) to save or retrieve data. 

e. Also to avoid suspicion, users will browse through completely random URLs from the chat. 

- The anonymous data Sophia will be able to collect will provide a data-driven response to improve services and support for survivors of domestic violence. 

Finally, with the right funding model and support, we aim to input AI capabilities into Sophia, including NLP and voice-to-text technologies.

The Spring ACT management team is composed of 3 people each based in Europe, Africa and South America and of different religions. The team, as small as it is, has a representation of female, male and non-binary. And the large team of 80 volunteers offers great diversity both culturally and in terms of skills, beliefs, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity. The diversity of the team is one of the greatest strengths of the team today, as it allows for many important and sometimes overlooked factors and parameters to be taken into account when creating solutions.  

Spring ACT is committed to inclusiveness and diversity and has made it a point of honour to enshrine it in its code of conduct to better protect the opinions, beliefs, realities and backgrounds of all individuals, team members and non-team members alike, and to provide a framework for expression that is free of any vice. 

Given the discrimination often experienced by women, minorities, and people of color, Spring ACT's public communications strongly encourage respect for their rights and their promotion. Although secular, Spring ACT respects the religious affiliation of each individual. 

Globally, domestic violence has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each region has its own local organizations to support survivors, its own laws governing abuse, and its own customs: What is universal is the difficulty for survivors to learn about the issue of abuse, access resources, and gather evidence against the perpetrator - and all with ease, 24 hours a day, and most importantly, discreetly and safely - so as not to make the situation worse.

At Spring ACT, we believe that the existing and widespread technology of instant messaging, coupled with AI technologies like chatbots, can be part of the solution to these problems.

Having Sophia available 24/7 from everywhere, in multiple languages (even local), with local information to guide victims, without leaving any digital trace, is a necessity. The opportunity for the different stakeholders to have their services, contact, location and areas of expertise grouped in a secure chatbot without a digital trail, aimed at victims of domestic violence is also a great strength of the project. Several expressions of interest to have Sophia have been registered in Peru and Senegal with the above-mentioned partners, but also in France with Elien rebirth and HeHop, in Turkey with Legal Design with UNDP, in Thailand with Thailand Institute of Justice, in UK with Refuge and in the Balkans with IAMANEH. 

As a technology that is perfectly capable of operating independently from its implementation in a country, Sophia does not require large funds for its operation. Spring ACT operates at low cost, especially in terms of human resources. Most of the expenses are for development, local research, integration of new options and settings into the chatbot, translation into local languages, and setting up and securing the chatbot in a given country. For this, Spring ACT diversifies its fundraising actions by submitting grants and organizing fundraising and crowfunding events. An important source of long-term sustainability is membership, which Spring ACT has decided to promote and increase considerably this year. 

Future Prize from the President of Switzerland: 10,000

Crowdfunding campaign: August 2021 41,000 CHF

Fundraising event with “les ateliers” 2,000 CHF and during the launch: + 1200

Memberships: 2000 CHF

Volunteering time: 25000+ hours 

Ladies Lunch support in Switzerland: approved 

E-goverment funding: CHF 81,000

The Lions Club Forch Zurich: CHF 15,000