Svity

Because of the Russian full-scale invasion, around 7 million Ukrainians were forced to flee abroad. Around 400,000 of them are teenagers, aged 15-25, whose experience is one of the most challenging. Coming to an entirely new community, these people were required to experience the initial stage of adaptation, in short terms, fighting for their right to live in a safe environment. Although they have successfully passed primary integration, they still do not feel a sense of self-belonging to the new community.

According to our surveys conducted among 100+ Ukrainian refugee students currently in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, the US, the UK, and 16 more countries, all these factors cause 62.8% of people to strive for better integration and 69.2% to feel hardships on the way to making friends. Why does it happen? The traumatic experience of every person fleeing from war inhibits quick and harmonic integration into the community. The cultural gap and differences in life experiences prevent both a host community and a refugee from building long-lasting connections.

Thus, a lack of cultural knowledge and a communication channel that would help the individuals discover each other from different perspectives fuels hostility and loneliness. 

Being teenagers ourselves, we realize that social media replaces traditional communication. With that in mind, we created a digital communication tool that encourages people to interact in real life. 

Svity is a mobile application aimed at assisting Ukrainian refugees in integration into their new communities by enhancing communication and helping them learn more about their new place of settlement. The app’s concept is an ice-breaker, where users can create a group of people from their real community or be added to an existing one. All of the group members receive strike questions on various topics at the same time. The questions are created in a careful manner that helps the users get to know about each others’ views, experiences, and cultural heritage. Once the user responds to a question, they can see the answers of other group members, however, without their names or any other recognizable tags. If the user intends to uncover the personality of a specific answer’s author, they can send a request. Thus, the people are encouraged to freely express themselves and learn about their fellows from the same community in a safe environment. Such an approach would likely lead to real-life communication. 

We believe that discovering the views of many forces people to build a multi-perspective understanding that fuels their integration into the alien communities and facilitates emotional intellect, which are the main factors for healthy intercultural long-term connections. Overall, these steps would ensure a better emotional background as an integral part of the learning environment for displaced youth.

Our solution serves young people aged from 15 to 25 who have to move to a different country and integrate into the new community. We specifically target those who study in schools, colleges, or universities as their education and ability to adapt to a new country strongly depends on the educational environment they are in.

While our app was initially created for Ukrainian refugees, it can be found useful by refugees or international students of any nationality. While the backgrounds may differ, the path toward integration and challenges are common for those groups. 

Our solution has a significant impact on education. It is much harder for foreigners to voice their opinions in class, due to doubts regarding their language skills, or appropriacy which makes them less engaged in the learning process. Svity helps both to find an understanding of the norms of the community that surrounds them and build confidence in themselves which is vital for in-person interactions which is one of the pillars of education. 

Our solution touches upon multiple topics, thus enhancing communication in different settings and regarding different issues, thus empowering extracurricular learning. Our aim is also to ensure a better education environment for our target group. The team considers such an interactive and informal way of education as a prominent step toward better intercultural understanding and overall mental well-being. Additionally, displaced teenagers’ integration into the communities reflects upon their potential will to thrive within local and global communities.

This team’s philosophy greatly resonates with the Solve’s learning challenge.

Being international students who left Ukraine during the full-scale invasion, we passed the same stages of integration into the new communities. All the team members experienced difficulties with communication in four different countries, representing various cultural contexts. This advantage gives us a comprehensive picture of the problem. In simple words, we created the tool we wish we could use while being in the same conditions as our target group. Additionally, our current positions provide us with an opportunity to use our communities as an initial market.

Besides, the team has previously worked on a mobile application in the related field. The first project delivered by Svit was an app for refugee kids that provided them with a user-friendly tool for urgent communication. However, during testing the idea, we realized that our target audience already has different needs. Thus, we started working on a more advanced communication tool, following up on our potential users’ new experiences.

Our current stage of development is a pilot version since the application already works in several communities and is currently undergoing testing.

Communication is a vital tool for humans to share their ideas and seek help, it is an integral part of daily life. Language barrier and lack of cultural understanding makes communication between a refugee and hosting community challenging for all sides, and with lack of cooperation from one of the stakeholders – makes communities exclusive for people non-native to them. 

Being refugees ourselves, we understand the importance of effective communication in supporting the education, community integration, and well-being of refugees. However, while we are acknowledged of the challenges Ukrainian refugees face, we may not be that confident about all the possible contexts. The community and expertise MIT Solve provides will help us to acquire the backgrounds and hardships of different refugee groups and scale our solution by making it more inclusive and accessible for use by other refugee communities. Moreover, we believe that MIT Solve will help guide us and provide the framework for working with vulnerable populations, such as people who faced displacement due to conflicts or natural disasters and need to both cope with their trauma and adapt to a new environment at the same time. While these people may receive access to education, they may lack additional support for their needs that we strive to provide. 

As we work with vulnerable communities privacy and safety are important factors for us. Recognizing challenges that may come with using technology that contains personal data we want to ensure that all important information is secured. MIT Solve will help us to find support from other innovators crucial to ensure the safety of people who use our solution.

We also believe that partnering with education institutions, local and national governments, and non-governmental organizations is vital for the success of our project and our ability to scale and adapt it to different contexts. While we are starting to build up partnerships with some non-profits, we believe that mentorship and the community of MIT Solve will assist us in finding more partners and making our solution more accessible to different groups.

Our solution is innovative, as it provides communication help for young people in a way that does not make them forcefully come out of their comfort zone, which has not been seen before. In situations where a lot of people are in physical danger, the mental problems of the victims are often overlooked. The main options that young people have in this position often include the unobvious stigmatizing of the victims’ experience, the need to openly proclaim and talk about their traumatic experience, and also the invisible separation of victims from the community around them. This is why SVIT aims to provide a solution that can be more familiar to the youth, as it will mostly feel like another kind of social media app and will also allow displaced youth and people from the local community to work together without each group feeling separated or isolated.

The first step for the displaced young person who decides to use the application would be to ask other people from the local community to join them, which would already softly encourage teenagers to start a conversation with the people around them. As soon as the group is formed and the users start receiving questions, each person will be able to anonymously express their opinion on different topics without the fear of being judged or misunderstood, which often appears to be something that displaced teenagers miss about being in their home country and local environment. Seeing the answers from other people will help young people to look closely into the lives of those around them and notice the similarities that they have in common, which will slowly start to erase the barrier between the two groups and encourage the teenagers to start more conversations and be more outgoing with people from the local community.

Our solution has qualitative and quantitative impact goals. 

Quantitative goals are the total number of users of the application and the number of refugees or international students in proportion to the residents. As refugees and international residents are the minority, we understand that they will be the minority of the users of the application. However, the inclusion of all the members of the community will provide smooth communication and support to all the parties. We are currently testing the application with 5 community members per refugee/international student, but we realize that the ratio may differ in other communities. We are testing our app with 200 volunteers, but we are aiming to scale to 2000 users by the end of 2024.

Another quantitative goal is the number of educational institutions (including schools, colleges, universities, and alternative educational institutions) that are using our solution. We plan to partner with educational institutions throughout Europe, the US, and Canada to make our application accessible to more users. We plan to start partnerships as soon as we complete and reflect on testing.

Qualitative goals are the impact our solution has on the communities. During the testing process, we work with volunteers in person to gather their feedback. We are working on developing an in-app questionnaire that is accessible to all users to reflect on the app's helpfulness for their community integration. We aim to receive 80+% of users who find the app useful for community integration.

We believe that increasing the number of users and institutions who are constantly using the app will contribute to Quality Education (SDG 4), Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10), and Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions (SDG 16) by making education more inclusive for all the parties and reducing intercultural barriers, thus promoting tolerance and cooperation.

Application Download Link (Google Play)

Svity Demonstration Video

The team consists of four members currently studying in four different countries and, consequently, time zones. Thus, all the work processes are held online. This condition forced us to test multiple management resources that ensure smooth connection during task completions.

The team was formed in February 2022. Since that spring, we have been working on our first project - an application for young refugees that provided them with basic communication tools (translation, detection, and readdressing to the local refugee hotline, etc.). However, by staying in touch with our target group, we identified a shift in their communication needs. Thus, in spring 2023, the team modified the product and started implementing the current solution to target community integration and later adaptation of refugees to their new environment.

We are a socially aimed non-profit organization, officially registered as a youth civil organization. 

Key resources: Among our key resources are the co-founders and employees of the organization, our partners (such as Technovation and KidsRights Foundation), and the grant money we received. Partnerships with KidsRights Foundation provide us with access to media outlets (we were featured by the Guardian, BBC, NHK). 

Partners: Our key partners are Technovation and KidsRights Foundation. For the last year, we were able to work and be mentored by representatives from Shopify, Google, Thales, and TE Connectivity. We plan to extend our cooperation by partnering with governments and educational institutions, as they will largely assist us with delivering our solution to the target users.

Key activities: Our work is split into three main areas. The first one is app development as we work on improving the quality and accessibility of our solution for the users with both Android and IOS devices. We plan to add more languages and make design more inclusive and accommodating for people with special needs. The second area is communication and delivery of our solution to the users. We develop our website and social media and establish new partnerships to reach out to the target audience of the solution. The third area is administrative as we work on funding applications and reports and take care of legal matters.

Type of intervention: Product – a mobile application.

Channels: We plan to reach other users through social media marketing and partnering with educational institutions and governments/organizations who help to accommodate and support refugees or foreign residents.

Segments: Our application will benefit refugees and international students who struggle to integrate into their new communities and members of those communities who seek ways to support refugees and newcomers and better understand them. The solution will benefit both parties by enhancing communication and reducing language and cultural barriers between parties. 

Value proposition: As we pay a lot of attention to the user experience we plan to gather user feedback through regular questionnaires in the app to assess the effectiveness of it in supporting the integration and enhancing communication.

Cost Structure: Our main costs are product development, including employee salaries and software costs, and legal expenditures. While salaries and legal expenditures will remain nearly the same, with the growth of the number of users we will require more costs for software and user support (cloud services maintenance and adjusting to more users). Additionally, we plan to add costs for marketing to launch target ads on social media and attend technical conferences. Any possible surplus will be invested in additional education for the employees (with the possibility of attending professional events) and scaling the app further.

Revenue: Currently 100% of our revenue consists of grant money. However, we plan to add crowdfunding to our financial structure. 

As we are a social non-profit organization, we aim to provide services at no cost to our target audience. 

In the summer of 2022, we received a grant from a private corporation that was used to establish a youth civic organization in Ukraine, continue our work on the first project (Refee), and start developing a new project (the current solution). The grant money was sufficient to support our work until today and will be used to sustain us in the next 5 months. In November 2023 we received a 50,000 Euro grant from KidsRights Foundation to develop and scale our current solution. Recently, we also received an additional support grant from ARAG.

We plan to remain non-profit thus we will continue to apply for grant opportunities and fund our work by partnering with educational institutions, other non-profit and for-profit organizations, and governments. In addition, we plan to start crowdfunding and accept donations from our users and people who want to support refugees in their countries.