Rides4Refugees Part 5: Student Solutions
A new central Ohio nonprofit, Rides 4 Refugees (R4R), founded in 2022 by Honda retirees, strives to address the transportation challenges faced by local refugees. In its first year, R4R assembled an impressive array of services and support, including a vehicle match grant for eligible applicants, assistance with driver training and insurance, and limited warranty and roadside assistance on client vehicles provided through R4R.
Rides 4 Refugees knows that more can be done, which is why Center for Innovation Strategies was pleased to work with the growing non-profit in the fall of 2023, to host an OnRamp mobility innovation sprint to explore the challenge, identify unmet needs, and ideate on potential mobility solutions for the refugee community. Five groups of student teams worked through a guided innovation process. Three groups focused on single vehicle, public transit, and micro-transit to understand immediate problems that refugees experience with mobility. The remaining two groups focused on mobility obstacles and cultural etiquette, respectively, to understand how these factors impact transportation. Below is a summary of their solutions.
Want to learn more about the process? Review this brief video summary of the sprint:
Single Vehicle Mobility Team: Vincent Liu, Jainesh Kothari, and Jay Chawla
The Single Vehicle Mobility team proposed several short, medium, and long-term solutions to enhance the digital footprint of Rides for Refugees (R4R), to expand its impact and ability to provide vehicles for refugees. Key to this is building trust with the refugee community by strengthening the flow of information, empowering refugees to secure their own vehicles. Additionally, these solutions build on strengthening R4R’s network with the refugee community and related organizations. Solutions include adding testimonials from refugees who have benefitted from R4R services to its website, upgrading the website with helpful guides in multiple languages, and regularly conducting surveys and interviews to continually assess services and client needs.
Public Transit Team: Karol Jia, Kunj Pandya, Runmin Li, and Nikhil Mummaneni
The Public Transit Team proposed a Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) Ambassador program to address transportation barriers by providing a familiar and trustworthy source of information to refugee communities. Newly arrived refugees express challenges related to navigating public transportation; an ambassador program would build knowledge and awareness of the COTA system in the refugee community. This solution involves identifying COTA employees who specialize in refugee outreach, working with leaders in the refugee community to build trust, hiring bilingual refugees as COTA ambassadors, creating educational guides on COTA services for refugees, and establishing mechanisms for regular feedback from the community to further enhance services.
Micro-Transit Team: Tanmay Varshney, Ishwarya Iyer, Henry Jiang, and Raymond Hao
The Micro-Transit Team suggested a solution focused on the last mile transportation problem for refugees, particularly in refugee communities with insufficient access to public transportation. To address this issue, free or discounted rideshare credits on Uber or Lyft were proposed to establish more flexible transit options for refugees. This option would involve finding a company to sponsor the free or discounted rides; similar programs have been offered by Lyft, such as its Wheels for All program, and Uber’s ride credit partnership with the International Rescue Committee.
Mobility Obstacles Team: Yash Desai, Helena Meng, and Vaidehi Patel
The Mobility Obstacles Team focused on educational solutions to address language barriers and the learning curve related to understanding public and private transportation options. The team recommends the creation of brief, visual tutorial videos and simple infographics to provide information on transportation resources for diverse refugee populations. The video tutorials and infographics would be developed and promoted in partnership with local refugee support organizations, such as Community Refugee & Immigration Services (CRIS). With images, the tutorial videos would briefly show how to use the COTA system using a navigation app and demonstrate bus etiquette. Other videos would focus on how to use ride-sharing apps and how to obtain a driver’s license.
Cultural Etiquette Team: Kara Abney, Vanessa Bonilla, Sreenidhi Karanam, and Jayden Sussman
The Cultural Etiquette Team proposed solutions to help refugees understand an array of transportation and traffic rules to ensure mobility and safety of refugees, including tutorial videos and a guidebook. Like the Mobility Obstacles Team, this team recommended partnering with CRIS and other refugee organizations to create and promote the videos and guidebook.
Next post: Insights, Themes, and Trends
