That is one of my favorite quotes from the cult B movie Buckaroo Bonzai. That is how I feel about our journey as humans… Continue reading “Wherever you go, there you are…”
That is one of my favorite quotes from the cult B movie Buckaroo Bonzai. That is how I feel about our journey as humans… Continue reading “Wherever you go, there you are…” →
“These migrants are coming into Europe, they get here, and they don’t know how to find the basic things—the supermarket, shelter, the doctor,” says Taylor, CEO of Trellyz, which creates software for cities and nonprofits. “And I thought, they all have smartphones, maybe I can create something that will let them find what they need when they need it.”
Over a weekend she built RefAid—Refugee Aid App and launched it in the UK and Italy in February 2016. The app catalogs aid organizations’ services for migrants and refugees seeking to build a new life in Europe and, increasingly, the United States.
Services have been added to address family separation, offering constantly updated intel about legal aid as well as geo-targeted push notifications with crucial on-the-ground information. For example, RefAid might send an alert with a phone number for free legal help in an area where migrants are being rounded up.
The app (which is now available in 22 countries, with some 5,000 aid organizations contributing) will soon include services in most U.S. states. Taylor and her team are constantly reaching out to more nonprofits and public service providers to include them in the app. Through a web-based content-management system, they can manage and update their offerings and communicate directly with users.
Eventually, Taylor created what may be the first global database of nonprofit services. She doesn’t charge the organizations to use the app, covering the development and operating costs herself. “We didn’t want anyone to have an excuse to say no to putting their services on the app, because it’s such a huge problem and people really need help.”
“When you come into Greece, for example, the organizations don’t have the right to go to the beach directly. They have to stay in their offices—that’s the law. But, if somebody’s told migrants to look at the app, those migrants can discover that around the corner there’s a Red Cross office and food vouchers, which they couldn’t have found otherwise.”
During the current U.S. migrant crisis, new services from different aid organizations are being added daily. Some large resettlement organizations in the US, such as the International Refugee Committee, have actually started preloading cell phones with the RefAid app and giving them to migrants.
“It’s exciting to see how it’s growing,” Taylor says, “but we still haven’t mapped the whole world. And that’s our goal: to map all of the services available to refugees and everyone else in the whole world. It’s just a step at a time.”
RefAid App from trellyz.