London Technology Week: Tech Solutions for Refugees and Migrants

This article was originally published on the Jamae Law Group blog.

How does technology intersect with the emerging refugee and migrant humanitarian crisis? What can the international tech community do to empower displaced people?

We put those and other questions to panelists in a forum titled “Tech Solutions for Refugee and Migration Issues” during the 2016 London Technology Week at Impact Hub Westminster (and, coincidentally, refugee week across the U.K.)

To get a sense of how tech has been tackling refugee and migration issues, especially in the Middle East and Europe, we gathered some of the top influencers in the field.

Below is a skimmable snapshot of the presentations. Scan through and click the links to learn more about specific projects.

The tech solutions panel was part of the International Migration and Refugee Hub Project at Jamae Law Group. The Hub aims to connect all tech initiatives related to humanitarian and social innovation, advocacy and activism in migration and refugee issues in the world.

1) Help NGO’s Communicate

Joséphine Goube, COO at Techfugees

Joséphine’s refugee and migration Tech C.V. is a mile long (see bio below), so she could talk about dozens initiatives that she’s spurred, covered, or researched. But at our London Technology Week forum she focused on Basefugees, a web-based platform supporting technology projects around the world that respond to current refugee needs and NGO challenges.

She emphasized the importance of field research for entrepreneurs who are interested in generating solutions for refugee issues. Part of that research is understanding the diversity among all the stakeholders involved in these issues: governments, international organizations, NGOs, media, academia, and within refugees themselves.

The tech community , she said, can leverage that diversity to build bridges of understanding and collaboration. She also advocated for getting rid of the “refugee” and “migrant” term as undermining labels in the society and instead look for ways of empowering them through access to labor markets and entrepreneurship support (more on capital access in the Rafael dos Santos section below).

Joséphine is an expert on entrepreneurial migration for the European Commission, and COO at Techfugees, a London-based social enterprise coordinating the Tech community’s response to the refugee needs by organizing conferences, workshops, hackathons and meetups around the world.

She was named one of the 30 under 30 Social Entrepreneurs of 2016 by Forbes, has written reports on immigration systems for migrant entrepreneurs, and is a tech evangelist of Yborder.com, an online recruitment platform supporting the mobility of software developers across Europe.

2) Refugee Women’s Health

Kriselda Rabino, Software Engineer & EmpowerHack Committee

Stakeholders are diverse both institutionally and individually. To hammer that point home, Kriselda talked about the gender perspective of refugees. Despite the fact that half of refugees in Europe are female, issues specific to women are not prioritized by most NGOs.

At EmpowerHack, Kriselda and her colleagues do focus on problems specific to women, such as gender-based violence, health, education and employment.

One example of their projects is HABABY, a web app for prenatal and postnatal care for refugee women. Another is Health Starter, an online learning tool helping aid workers hit the ground running with quickly absorbable health and childcare knowledge.

Kriselda is an engineer and member of the strategy committee at EmpowerHack, an initiative to build sustainable technology solutions to the issues faced by women and girl refugees. She is also a board member at Women Hack for Non-Profits, a partnering organization that focuses on increasing the open source footprint and general visibility of women in the tech community.

She leads the Draw My Life project for Terres Des Hommes, one of the MVPs developed at the last EmpowerHack hackathon in London, a prototype app to collate refugee children’s drawings and anonymized, qualitative data which can be used to advocate mental health support programs for vulnerable children.

3) Support Entrepreneurs with Capital and Office Space

Rafael dos Santos, Founder and CEO of mi-HUB, a coworking space & funding for Migrant entrepreneurs

Rafael started his presentation by showing a video for his crowdfunding campaign for mi-HUB, a co-working space for migrant entrepreneurs in London. The main struggles for migrant entrepreneurs, he explained, are lack of funding, networks and local knowledge.

He hopes that with mi-HUB he can solve those challenges and highlight the importance of migrant entrepreneurs for the British economy. (Update: following the “yes” vote in the Brexit referendum, this work will be even more important).

Rafael is also working on a report with academics on migration and entrepreneurship in order to advocate for policy changes that eliminate obstacles for migrants in business. (Update: the report was published in September and you can find it here).

Rafael dos Santos is a Brazilian entrepreneur Author of the book: ‘Moving Abroad — One Step at a Time‘ that helps young people understand the emotional challenges of moving and living abroad.

He has won several awards including the prestigious Sunday Times’ Top 100 Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs in the UK’ by Maserati and Centre for Entrepreneurs and the ‘Best Pitch in South East Europe by Founders Forum.

4) No Silver Bullet, but 147 insights from Germany

Ben Mason, Lead Researcher on Refugee Tech Projects at Betterplace Lab in Berlin.

Ben has walked the paths of migrants in Europe, literally. He shared insights from his field research in Greece, Jordan and Turkey, which gathered case studies on Information and Communication Technology for refugees in part by interviewing 147 of them.

He underscored the problem of naïve beliefs about digital projects as “silver bullets” while underestimating the complexity of refugee challenges, the importance of local knowledge and on-the-ground experience.

One of the case studies he shared on Technology and Medical Care is 3D Mena, a social innovation hub affiliated with Refugee Open Ware (ROW), a global humanitarian innovation consortium based in Jordan. 3D Mena serves the dual purpose of manufacturing prosthetics for people that need them and providing technology training for refugees, increasing their future employability.

Ben also discussed another initiative on Information Technology: refugeeinfo.eu, an online platform for refugees in several Eastern European countries boasting over 95,000 visitors. Marhacar is another tech solution founded in Greece, which fulfills the role of coordination and delivery of a globally distributed network of volunteers with the help of ICT technology.

Ben Mason is a researcher at Betterplace Lab, a digital-social think-tank based in Berlin. He leads Betterplace Lab’s work on digital responses to the refugee crisis, including work with the German federal ministries for the interior (BMI) and international development (BMZ) and publishing the report “ICT4Refugees” available online. Check out his complete report to find out more about other tech initiatives for refugees.

5) Employment, Education, Health and Inclusion

Meghan Benton, Senior Policy Analyst at Migration Policy Institute

Meghan’s advice for social entrepreneurs working on the refugee context: focus on using tech to improve existing services rather than reinventing the wheel.

If tech can’t offer a silver bullet, it sure can arm NGOs with ammunition they don’t currently have. But how do policymakers attract solutions and call the right shots on investments?

The MPI analyst said policymakers can run more open challenge competitions with a long-term sustained strategy and bringing entrepreneurs, NGO’s, migrants, and refugees together in an effort to find innovative solutions.

As a researcher, Meghan emphasized the importance of evidence-based research in an era of political and media-fueled myths around migrants.

Meghan works at MPI, a Washington-based think tank, where she focuses on on refugee integration, migrant employment and education as well as cities and social cohesion. Meghan recently spent a year working for Nesta, the UK’s Innovation body, where she led projects on digital local government and digital democracy.

Her most recent publication is Smart Inclusive Cities: How Smartphone Apps, Big Data and Collaborative Technologies are Transforming Immigrant Integration. She holds a PhD in Political Science from University College London.

See an interesting tidbit on tech or digital solutions for refugees and migrants? Got an idea for a panel or presentation? Drop us a line!

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