We partnered with Refugees United to hold a voluntary hack day drawing the developer community’s attention to the problem faced by the charity- reuniting people with their lost family members. There are 43 million refugees worldwide, with many of them looking for missing loved ones — something that we can help solve with technology and a good network. So matching the Rewired State network with the Refugees United network was the logical next step.
Although at the moment its work is focused on Kenya it is striving to solve a global challenge of reconnecting separated refugee families through mobile and web technology.
Refugees United started with an open platform for NGOs and refugees, so far helping more than 55’000 refugees in their search for missing loved ones. But had been struggling with demand.
Problems with their existing product effective mobile phone tracing system were-
How to easily engage refugees, many of whom only interact with the platform through 3rd party NGOs physically taking details
- How to make it easy for refugees to return to find their loved ones traced through Refugees United, currently a WAP-based system
Through the course of the hack day, teams dealt with the issues of engaging refugees and their families. Project on diffrerent platforms were made, prizes were awarded and projects were used to change and develop Refugees United's work.
