Refunite Blog

Refugees United and Ericsson Announce Global Hack for Good to Connect Refugees to Missing Families

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:00:00 +0200

PRESS RELEASE — In order to raise awareness of the plight of refugees, and find new ways to reconnect refugee families in some of the most remote areas in the world, Ericsson and Refugees United will run a series of developer competitions leading up to World Refugee Day, on 20 June 2013.

The number of forcibly displaced people around the world is measured now at 43 million. That is why it is urgent to reconnect families who have been separated due to conflict, war, and disaster. So far over 200,000 refugees have registered on the service, and the aim is to reach 1 million by the end of 2015.

The Global Hack for Good will galvanize the talent and skill of the developer community toward a solution for separated families. The unique series of “hackathons” – a weekend-long marathon of developing applications on mobile networks – will be held on three continents, on three separate weekends, but all are working toward the same goal of making re-connection easier. For example, refugees may be reluctant to share data, or they face challenges such as illiteracy and lack of internet connectivity.

Developers might find ways to make the platform more accessible from low-cost mobile phones, change interfaces or modify the built-in messaging application that allows refugees to exchanges messages without additional costs.

The first hackathon will be in Cairo, Egypt, on 31 May-1 June. Then, a new batch of developers will gather in San Francisco, USA, on 7-8 June, and the third part of the Global Hack for Good will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 15-16 June.

Christopher Mikkelsen, co-founder of Refugees United, says: “Everyone has the right to know where their family is. To separated refugee families, this for many years seemed impossible. Today, we’re at a tipping point where technology can help them reconnect. Now it’s up to us to act and help.”

Elaine Weidman-Grunewald, Vice President of Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility, Ericsson, said: “We have a long-term commitment to the refugee cause, and have been working with Refugees United since 2010 to create a mobile platform for refugees to reconnect with family and loved ones. We now want to harness some of the new innovation and technology of the developer community with this Global Hack for Good, in order to scale and amplify the great work that is already underway.

“Increasingly we see developers wanting to apply their skills for a good cause - this is a true example of Technology for Good, and we hope to see the world’s most talented developers create new ideas to serve more separated families,” she said.

The jury, including experts from both Ericsson and Refugees United, will select two finalists at each location. On World Refugee Day, June 20, 2013, a winner from each location will be announced. The three winners receive a trip to Kenya and will be invited to test their prototypes in the Kakuma refugee camp in late 2013.

The hack in Cairo: May 31st - June 1st 2013
The hack in Silicon Valley: 8th of June - 9th of June 2013
The hack in Nairobi: June 15th - June 16th 2013

FOR MEDIA INQUIRIES PLEASE CONTACT:

Ida Jeng, Communication Manager, Refugees United. Mail: ij@refunite.org / mobile: +45 31 49 31 93.

PRESS RELEASE // Refugees United Receives Prestigious Award

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:57:13 +0200

Copenhagen, Denmark – Prix Ars Electronica honors individuals, institutions and organizations that have made an outstanding achievement in the field of art and technology.

Refugees United has received an Award of Distinction from Prix Ars Electronica 2013 in the category Digital Communities, which honors innovative work that bridges geographical, cultural and gender divides.

Established in 1987, Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important awards honoring what is new, radically different and making an impact right now. Headquartered in Linz in Austria, Prix Ars Electronica has previously honored sites, such as Wikipedia, Pixar and Wikileaks.

The Award of Distinction includes 5000€. Refugees United has also been invited to present the innovative family-tracing platform at a special ceremony at the annual Ars Electronica Festival in Linz in September 2013.

“It is a great honor and a tribute to the fantastic work being carried out by our amazing team and partners every day,” says David Mikkelsen who founded Refugees United in 2008 with his brother Christopher Mikkelsen.

Refugees United is on a mission to connect one million refugees by 2015 and has created a web and mobile platform that allows refugees to take the search process into their own hands. Visit www.refunite.org for more info.

For media inquiries, please contact:

Ida Jeng, Communication Manager Mobile: + 45 31 49 31 93 / Mail: ij@refunite.org

Refugees United’s East Africa Camp Coordinator, Natalia Alvarado...

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:18:00 +0200

Refugees United’s East Africa Camp Coordinator, Natalia Alvarado and Outreach Volunteer, Farhiya Shazz visiting a Hafyo Youth Group Seminar at the Kobciye Community Centre in Kenya. They presented Refugees United’s work to reconnect families separated by war and conflict. Hafyo Youth Group is a Somali organization advocating against female genital mutilation.

Refugees United @ NYUStern: Using mobile technology to reconnect families separated by war

Tue, 07 May 2013 08:41:05 +0200

The students at NYU Stern School of Business were up for a treat last week as co-founder of Refugees United, Christopher Mikkelsen, guest lectured at their University. “The lecture at NYU was interesting as it bridged the knowledge of technology students in New York with the realities of the millions of people we help in some of the poorest places on earth.” Says Christopher Mikkelsen “Hopefully the students took away not only a sense of our work to reconnect families, but a deeper understanding of people so different from them”

The lecture revolved around the prospects that the ever-increasing social connectivity offers social entrepreneurs, exemplified by a presentation of Refugees United’s mission. As a tech non-profit, Refugees United has harnessed the power of social connectivity through mobile technology to help reconnect families separated by war. Through a mobile phone based platform used by both individuals and NGOs, Refugees United is helping refugee families to reconnect.

We hope the lecture has inspired some of the bright minds at NYU Stern to explore the possibilities of social entrepreneurship as a tool to tackling some of today’s challenges.

By Guest blogger Rebecca Wainess, East Africa Project...

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:17:00 +0200

Refugees United Kakuma Camp Coordinator and outreach volunteers learn how to access and operate the platform www.refunite.org

Refugees United and Kenya Red Cross outreach volunteer registers two women in her community. One woman is looking for her Nephew and the other is looking for her daughter.

Refugees United and Kenya Red Cross outreach volunteer found someone she believes to be her sister during the training!

Refugees United and Kenya Red Cross outreach volunteers register a Somali woman from their community who has been searching for her brother for ten years.

By Guest blogger Rebecca Wainess, East Africa Project Coordinator.

This past week, the Refugees United East Africa team and I headed to Kakuma Refugee Camp to roll out our new and improved online platform to reconnect families separated by war, persecution and natural disaster. Nearly two hours from the nearest town on the boarder with South Sudan and Ethiopia, Kakuma (a word for “nowhere” in Swahili) is home to nearly 115,000 refugees.

To successfully reach families in Kakuma, in partnership with the Kenya Red Cross (KRCS), we identified and trained ten local outreach volunteers. Our volunteers are the true backbone of Refugees United: registering their friends and neighbors and advocating for our tool in their communities. I shadowed five of our volunteers for a day and saw just how essential they are to our work.

We are all so excited to launch our new and improved platform in Kakuma. Users are now able to register missing persons who will then be notified by SMS when they create an account, narrow their searches and provide more specific information about themselves. All of these improvements will make it that much easier for refugees to find their loved ones. With nearly 200,000 registrations on www.refunite.org I am more hopeful than ever that many more families will be able to find each other.

Note: All names of refugees in this post have been omitted to protect their identities

Somali hospitality // outreach in Eastleigh, Nairobi

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 17:20:00 +0200

Maja Okholm, Refuges United’s Communication Assistant, reports from Nairobi, Kenya.

Recently, I had the pleasure of spending an entire day with with Refugees United’s outreach volunteer, Farhiya. Together we went on a work assignment to Eastleigh, an area in Nairobi with a large Somali population, sometimes referred to as ‘Little Mogadishu.’ Here, you really experience Somali hospitality first hand. Through this experience I also learned more about Refugees United’s outreach programmes aimed at reconnecting families separated by conflict, war and disaster. The recipe is actually surprisingly simple, with only three ingredients, namely: one outreach volunteer (Farhiya), one community with a large refugee population (Eastleigh) and a cell phone (not specified). The steps are also very straightforward as you simply identify a building, knock on the first door you see and ask if there are any refugees in need of assistance. Are you searching for family and friends? Afterwards, Farhiya elaborates on the Refugees United platform with her great charisma and incredible sense of empathy.

They were all very welcoming and immediately invited us in and served drinks, while sharing their stories. Everyone we met had been separated from parts of or all of their family - it seems to be the rule rather than the exception in this community. Despite the devastating stories all these homes shared, they were incredible welcoming and warm. As a complete stranger, I felt at home right away. Farhiya then explained that what I had experienced was Somali hospitality, and that any guest in a Somali home will be met this way.

I was also able to see the impact of this outreach programme and the tangible outcome: all of the people we met registered on Refugees United’s online platform and started searching for their missing family and friends.

Refugees United launches mobile operation in a refugee camp // Dadaab

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:50:00 +0100

Guest-blogger and Project Coordinator, MariaSole Dall’Oro reports from Dadaab, Kenya, the world’s largest refugee camp.

The impressions that hit you upon arrival in Dadaab, Kenya, are those of endless bush, incredible heat, tons of United Nations convoys, police officers and, not least, a seemingly infinite number of families who have been forced to flee their homes. Dadaab now hosts 450.000 refugees, many of which have lost touch with their loved-ones when fleeing conflict and war.

The impressions described above also summarize how the Refugees United’s East Africa team and I felt when we arrived in Dadaab last week. We traveled to Dadaab to kick off our new mobile operations together with our Outreach Volunteers who will be going from tent to tent with a mobile phone to connect families separated by war and conflict. Supported by Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), the team and I carried out a 3 days training of the Outreach Volunteers, teaching them about our family tracing system, Refugees United’s work, and how to implement the operations. We received a lot of positive feedback and we are now about ready to launch the mobile operations in the camp. The team is excited and engaged, and we all have a clear feeling that the mobile operations in Dadaab will be a success… So lets roll up our sleeves and get to work! Check out this video by FilmAid and learn more about Dadaab refugee camp.

Refugees United embrace the latest trend in business innovation: Big Data

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 14:57:00 +0100

A new partnership with the non-profit organization DataKind sets out to help us understand our data better. This in turn, will enable us to make more informed strategic decision, allowing us to help even more families reconnect. Watch the video to see how Mark Sharon from DataKind presented our new partnership at the joint United Nations – Datakind meetup event in NYC last month.

DataKind is a community of data scientists who works with humanitarian causes by helping them to understand their data better and by optimizing systems and operational performance. DataKind will work with Refugees United to explore what our data can tell us about how people are using our search tools, how they connect with each other and in the end, how we can use this information to help displaced people find missing family and friends more effectively.

We are very excited about this new partnership and the potential it holds to ultimately assist even more people reconnect with missing loved ones.

New office for East Africa team marks area of rapid expansion for Refugees United

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:19:58 +0100

Know that good feeling of having just turned a fresh page and being ready for new adventures? Refugees United’s East Africa team is currently enjoying this great buzz after recently signing the lease for a new office space at the Startup Garage in Nairobi. The StartUp Garage is a hub for entrepreneurs and innovative souls and therefore a perfect fit with the spirit of Refugees United. But buzz aside, this new office is extremely important to Refugees United because of the central location of Nairobi. As the host of almost a million displaced people, Kenya is a crucial country for Refugees United.

“I’m really excited with our new office!” says Alexandra Aparicio, Project Manager for Refugees United’s East Africa unit “The Startup Garage is a very inspiring space, with the many interesting start-ups as well as the amazing developers who surround us. We are living in a breakthrough environment indeed, which has everything to do with Refugees United core business: constantly innovating and bringing new ideas to life to help people get reunited with their loved ones.”

The new office space marks the beginning of an era of rapid expansion for Refugees United on our path to our goal of assisting 1 million families reconnect through our online family tracing tool by 2015, and we are very excited about the prospects it holds.

‘Hackers’ improve Refugees United’s platform // #HackForGood

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 17:10:00 +0100

The first week of February was a special week for Refugees United, as this week saw our second hackathon of the year #HackForGood take place at the StartUp garage in Nairobi, Kenya. Here talented developers from both Kenya and Denmark worked intensely together for a whole week to improve Refugees United’s search tools. This event saw the developments of some great applications, which will increase the accessibility of Refugees United’s platform considerably. The specific outcomes were applications enabling searches via SMS and USSD, meaning that anyone will be able to search for long lost family from any low-cost mobile device very soon.

Searching via SMS will work as a simple text message where you type the name of the person you are searching for. The USSD application will similarly allow you to search for missing loved ones without internet access. To use the USSD application you will type a code on your phone (i.e. *321…#) and your phone will then send you a notification if you have a match. USSD applications are very common in Africa where these are usually used for checking credit balances and call-back services. Refugees United’s USSD application will also allow you to send messages to people you might know through our platform.

Refugees United @ BOLDtalks 2013: the power of connectivity

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:50:00 +0100

Christopher Mikkelsen, cofounder of Refugees United, spoke at BOLDtalks 2013 in Dubai, an event he himself describes as “engaging on all fronts: challenging topics and inspiring people made it a day to remember.”

In his speech Christopher Mikkelsen explained how Refugees United is harnessing the power of connectivity to help refugees all over the world reconnect with loved ones. Many refugees have not only been forced away from their homes, but many have also lost touch with their close networks, and are now finding themselves isolated and alone in foreign countries. However with the power of modern technology, Refugees United is fighting this problem by assisting families in reconnecting with their loved ones through our online family tracing platform supported by our partner, Ericsson. Christopher Mikkelsen’s speech moreover addressed how Refugees United can be a supporting factor for families in the region.

For the fourth year in a row now, BOLDtalks managed to create an event with a series of eye-opening talks, challenging the audience to relate to current issues in new ways. Some of the most influential and innovative persons from a wide array of industries participated in BOLDtalks 2013, from artists over professors to entertainers and doctors.

Social innovation and business strategies // Refugees United @ DANSIC13: IMPACT

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:16:00 +0100

Climate change, financial crises, immigration, energy shortage, sustainable development, terrorism, … - there seem to be no end to the list of current global issues. The need for novel and creative solutions which social innovation foster consequently can’t be stressed enough. It was therefore with great pleasure that Refugees United accepted the request to hold the keynote speech at the Danish Social Innovation Club’s (DANSIC) annual conference DANSIC13: IMPACT #DANSIC13.

Here Communications and Relations Office, Claudia Simler, and CEO, Jens Briksten spoke behalf of Refugees United, about how the non-profit world can utilize business strategies to create lasting impact.

DANSIC is a student driven platform, advocating the use of social innovation to tackle the societal and environmental challenges facing us today. Social innovation entail innovations which are both social in their ends and means.

“Being part of DANSIC13 under the headline ‘Impact’ is a great opportunity for Refugees United to showcase our approach to doing non-profit work, including how we partner with the corporate world in order to scale the reach of our work.” Says Claudia Simler, Communications and Relations Officer at Refugees United “We are excited to inspire and engage young, entrepreneurial students to think differently about how to do social good - leveraging new technologies, applying a market-driven and business-focused mindset, and looking into creative ways of spurring innovation.”

The other keynote speech was held by Pamela Hartigan, director of Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School at Oxford University and founding partner of Volan Venture.

More than 300 social entrepreneurs, business leaders and students participated in the conference and discussed how social innovation can be used to create a better and more sustainable society for us all. The event also included a case competition on the best social innovation pitch. Check out the pictures from the event here.

Hacking for good in London #RefunitedMod

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:51:00 +0100

Rewired State – a network of over 1000 software developers and designers – and Refuges United came together for a day of exciting work at the RefUnited Mod day 2013 hackathon, hosted by the London Google Campus.

For those of us who don’t spend our daily lives in the programming world, hackathons are one-day events, which bring together a bunch of tech savvy developers to work intensively on a specific project. For Refugees United these hackathons play a crucial role in ensuring that our family tracing platform keeps improving and serve our users in the best way possible. This time around, the tech geniuses pooled their brain power to come up with a number of amazing projects, all aimed at increasing the likelihood of families finding each other through our database.

Some of the exciting projects developed include the creation of a “geoname database” that indexes geographical information and thereby streamlines the process of locating relatives; an SMS-enabled notification system that contacts people on their mobile phones when they have a profile match; and a project to improve the platform’s spam filter. Additionally, a project working on making our database more accessible for persons who are not familiar with modern technology or illiterate through the use of voice-to-voice messaging is also looking very promising as well as a project using family trees to match people. Have a closer look at some of the projects here.

Simon Engelbrecht, CTO of Refugees United, says about the event: “I’m really happy with the results of this hackathon! We got some really interesting and very innovative ideas in terms of how to match profiles in our database and some great ideas to reach out to even the most disconnected of refugees via different technologies.”

We are very thankful to all the developers who participated and helped us improve our system, enabling us to reconnect even more families through our online family tracing tool.

Reaching out to Somalis missing loved ones with Radio Ergo

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:02:00 +0100

Together with the Somali radio station Radio Ergo, Refugees United commences radio campaign, targeting the many Somalis who have lost contact with family and friends during the war. Radio Ergo is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and produces humanitarian news for the Somali-speaking region, much of which is life-saving information for Somali families.
As part of the radio campaign, Radio Ergo will broadcast short radio spots for families who have lost contact with missing loved ones. The aim is to reach out to families in war-torn Somalia and let them know that they can search for family via www.refunite.org. Furthermore, a live Sunday program will be dedicated to Refugees United and the issue of family tracing, where listeners will be able to call the show live and ask questions. One of the spots will feature Fahiya (see picture, far left), a Refugees United volunteer who was separated from her mother several years ago. She continues to search for her mother, while also helping to reconnect other families separated by war. We look forward to reaching many more Somali families with this radio campaign.

Also on this picture: Abdulkadir Mohamed Mursal, Senior Editor, a radio producers from Radio Ergo and Ida Jeng, Communication Manager of Refugees United.

Targeting the youth of Nairobi // New radio campaign with Ghetto FM

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 11:20:00 +0100

Refugees United and the Kenyan radio channel Ghetto FM are joining hands in a new partnership, reaching out to the many young people living in Nairobi who are missing loved ones. Ghetto FM broadcasts in Sheng, a Swahili-based patois widely spoken in Nairobi and is very popular amongst the youth in Kenya.

Together, Refugees United and Ghetto FM have developed an exciting radio campaign, which was launched last week. Check out pictures from our first spot here. The campaign includes prime time radio spots and dramas illustrating how to use Refugees United’s free, online tool to search for missing family and friends. With 185.000 people already registered on our family tracing database and more people signing up every single day, we are encouraging all listeners of Ghetto FM who are missing loved ones to sign up. Listeners are moreover encouraged to send in questions, comments and reconnection stories via SMS as well as via Refugees United’s Facebook page.

We are very excited to engage with the youth listening to Ghetto FM and hopeful that we will see many more Nairobians missing loved ones sign up for our free, online family tracing database www.refunite.org.

Refugees United enter the two largest Kenyan refugee camps // Dadaab and Kakuma

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:09:00 +0100

There is renewed hope for the many refugees in the Kenyan refugee camps, Kakuma and Dadaab, who have lost contact with family and friends. In Dadaab alone there are about 400,000 refugees, with a significant share living in uncertainty about the whereabouts of their loved ones.

Refugees United and Kenyan Red Cross (KRCS) recently signed a new partnership agreement including a total of 60 outreach officers. These will be assisting refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma to sign up on Refugees United’s online platform and search for their missing family and friends.

The project aims to get a total number of 105,200 new refugees to sign up by the end of 2014, adding onto Refugees United’s already solid foundation of over 185,000 users, and enabling countless new family reconnections.

CEO of Refugees United, Jens Brinksten says: “This is a really crucial project as it is our largest project ever, potentially covering all of Dadaab and Kakuma, and we are very excited to do it together with an organization as important as Kenyan Red Cross Society.” The new partnership between KRCS and Refugees United is a continuation of their successful pilot project from 2012.

Refugees United and Kenya Red Cross // Bringing technology to a NGO

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 17:27:00 +0200

Recently, Refugees United and the Kenya Red Cross (KRCS) held a joint workshop in Nairobi, Kenya. Organized by KRCS, the workshop was entitled “Lessons Learnt”. For the past seven months Refugees United and KRCS have been running a pilot project aimed at combining the resources of the two organizations in order to improve family tracing in Kenya.

As the pilot project is coming to an end it was time to sit down and talk about lessons learned from the project: how a traditional family tracing organization like the Red Cross is taking new technologies into their operations in order to make these more effective and streamlined. Additionally, Refugees United hoped to come away with a better understanding of how to create a model in which to implement the Refugees United family tracing tool with other organizations around the world.

We arrived at the Red Court Hotel, where the workshop was being held, early Thursday morning to the smiling faces of KRCS staff and volunteers. The majority of the day was spent in two groups, management and on the ground, discussing the project, what worked well, what had not worked well, and recommendations for the future. One of the many unique qualities of the workshop was that people from all levels of the two organizations, from CEO-level to project managers to on the ground field monitors were in attendance voicing their own opinions of the project.

Often, the concern with workshops like these is that while fruitful discussions take place, change is rarely seen afterwards. However, the transformation from lessons learned to improvements implemented is already taking place both in the Copenhagen office and on the ground in Kenya. The IT team is hard at work applying changes to the tool that users suggested, a monitor guide is being created with more information about Refugees United, per the monitors’ request, etc.

As Refugees United begins to develop partnerships in other countries, the lessons learned from this workshop and our partnership with KRCS will help inform a working model for how NGOs can use Refugees United’s technology to offer free family tracing to their beneficiaries and thereby bring some of the 21^st century’s most cutting edge technologies into their services.

Two sisters reconnected after 16 years of separation

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:48:00 +0200

In 1996, the Congolese village Uvira– like many other villages during the DRC War – was attacked. It was the Munyamulenge tribe that was being targeted by an unidentified armed group from the Murundi tribe, who were looking for young boys to join their rebel army, slaughtering people mercilessly on their way.

Early that morning, Estelle* had gone to fetch some water for her family and five children. When she returned to the village, women, men and children were in total panic. The rebel soldiers were drunk or under the influence of drugs, showing no mercy when raiding the village and torturing the people. Estelle immediately knew that the only option she had was to run for her life. She managed to get her children who were at a neighbor’s house, but had to leave both her parents and siblings behind, including her cousin Patricia*, who had always been like a sister to her.

Estelle followed a crowd of people that were running away towards a forest. The group kept walking for hours, and Estelle remembers how her children were hungry and how blisters were soon hurting her bare feet. The people around her were talking about a place called Tanzania and kept saying it was safe. Estelle had no idea about where they were going. After a few days, she crossed lake Tanganyika with her children and they arrived in Tanzania.

2 years later, Estelle returned to Uvira with her children to try and find her parents, but nobody knew where they had gone. She was told that they had fled to the North of the country to some mountains.

Shortly after, another war started and the Murundi soldiers returned again. Estelle was beaten and tortured several times. She and her children had to flee again, this time to Burundi and, eventually, Kenya. Estelle and her children settled in the refugee neighborhood Kasarani in Nairobi, where, one day in 2012, Estelle heard about Refugees United at a community forum.

She was assisted to register onto the Refugees United platform and started the search for her family. Recognizing details and nicknames of her lost ‘sister’ Patricia, she contacted her via the Refugees United platform and the girls exchanged phone numbers. They found out that we were living only 5 km away from each other.

Reunited after 16 years of separation, the ‘sisters’ continue to use the Refugees United platform to search for the rest of their missing family. Until now, they still do not know what has happened to them – but having found each other has brought them confidence and keeps their hope alive of someday finding their entire family.

* All names have been changed by Refugees United to protect the identity of the individuals.

Helping 100 Thousand Refugees Find Missing Family

Thu, 03 May 2012 12:58:00 +0200

100 thousand. One hundred thousand lives touched. One hundred thousand refugees separated from family members during their escape from conflict.

On April 23rd, Refugees United passed a significant milestone in its short history: The one hundredth thousand refugee in search of missing family registered onto our family tracing platform. Growing from a point of life where, just a few years ago, the size of the problem of refugees being separated from family was almost unknown to other refugee agencies, Refugees United and partners have shone not only an enlightening light, but brought forth a sweeping beam of technology to help solve this problem of family separation.

Where family tracing for refugees was carried out before via pen and paper, and through individual efforts, now, through the Refugees United platform and mobile technologies, built with Ericsson, we’re seeing an unprecedented level of collaboration between not only refugee agencies, but with refugees themselves.

Deployed across refugee camps and urban areas in Kenya, Uganda, Somalia and elsewhere in East Africa, the Refugees United mobile tracing system is now, in the hands of the Red Cross, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Refugee Consortium of Kenya and others, helping more than 500 refugees sign up to try to reconnect with missing family every day. Before the birth of this system, an individual refugee agency had the capacity to help approximately 700 to 800 refugees sign up to search for missing loved ones a year.

Utilizing simple mobile technologies, accessible to aid workers as well as refugees in the camps, the platform has seen tremendous growth, especially over the past 3 months. As we have refined and reshaped our technology and outreach, our partners have soared to new heights in their approach, helping more than 25,000 refugees in the past 2 months alone! The Refugees United system was built on the concept that only through collaboration can anything be achieved; this 100th thousand milestone and the current rise of efficiency bears testament to this ideology.

We have had, and continue to have, our fair share of failures and mistaken ventures. When you push technology and digital platforms to a refugee population of some 43 million, many of whom have never engaged with such technology before, you’re bound to chase down dead end streets. That being said, only in these forays off the charted map will you understand what not to do - a wildly underestimated exercise in the world of aid.

At the end of the day, the reason for our work is to help families find each other again through the chaos of being a refugee. When we succeed, as we do more and more often, every reconnection between two family members, often reconnecting 6, 7 or 8 people, pumps through the arteries of Refugees United and our partners the very life blood of why we do what we do. Every story is heartbreaking, every story a journey unto itself. Please, take a moment and read about this recent reconnection between to Congolese brothers, separated after more than 10 years of separation (read the story here) to truly understand the need for what we do.

We’d like to end this blog post by thanking our many partners, to whom much of this success can be attributed: Omidyar Network, IKEA Foundation, Ericsson, Kenya Red Cross, UNHCR, RCK, Intersos, SAP, Delta Partners, MTN, Maersk Foundation, Danfoss Foundation and many, many others. Here’s to you!

Reconnection story, April 2012

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:28:00 +0200

During the Second Congo War (also known as the Great War of Africa), which began in August 1998, there were violent clashes between the Mai Mai, a community-based militia group, and the Rawanda-allied and ethnically Tutsi, Banyamulenge-dominated rebels.

It was in the months immediately following the start of the war that the Mai Mai attacked Arcel*, aged 9 at the time and the fourth eldest, and his nine-member family in their village home in South Kivu. The entire family - four sons, three daughters, and two parents - were scattered in different directions.

Arcel found himself fleeing along into the forest on foot not knowing where the rest of his family had gone. He ran to Uvira, a village where he and his family had visited in the past, near the Rwandan border. Over the next two days he continued on foot, crossing the Rwanda border where he stayed for about three months as a refugee with the assistance of UNHCR. However, as the conflict near the Rawanda-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC, formerly called Zaire) border escalated, he felt unsafe and was assisted by a friend in his community to travel overland to Uganda by bus over two days. In Kampala, Arcel met a businessman who was traveling to Nairobi, Kenya and explained his situation and the businessman offered him a ride.

Upon arriving in Nairobi, Arcel asked around the bus station to find out where other Banyamulenge Congolese might be living and met someone from his community, living in Ngara District, Nairobi. His newfound friend offered him shelter. Arcel stayed with him for one year while he learned how to survive and barely earned a subsistence living cleaning houses.

In 2009, as living in Ngara became too difficult and costly, he decided to move to the nearby area of Kasarani, home to many other Banyamulenge refugees. When asked about his experience, Arcel recalls that he had no youth and life as a refugee is very difficult. Currently living in Kasarani, Arcel has been working as a daily wage laborer in the construction industry and earns an average of 175 Kenyan Shillings (2.1 USD) daily, when there is work available. He says that at least now he is able to pay rent to share room.

In 2011, Arcel attended a community forum hosted by Refugee Consortium of Kenya (RCK), in Kasarani. It was there he met with RCK monitor and community leader, Sony Maragizi, who had been hired to work on the Refugees United (RU) project led by RCK. He heard Sony talk about RU and though he said he didn’t completely understand the tool, he registered his profile with Sony’s assistance because he was curious about how it could help him find his family.

Over the next six months, Arcel slowly but steadily taught himself how to use the tool but his access was limited as he didn’t have an internet-enabled phone and limited funds to go to an internet (cyber) café. He often sought out Sony around the local community and at church and asked him to use his internet-enabled phone to conduct searches. He said Sony was always helpful and helped him learn how to use the RU tool.

Once he learned how to search, Arcel immediately began to search for all his family members. Over the course of the next six months, he found some profiles on the RU platform whom he thought might be his older brother, nicknamed Ruhumuriza. Arcel used the RU messaging feature to reach out to various people and asked questions and used private words that would only be known by his brother. From that process, Arcel and his brother, Ruhumuriza, reconnected. “I felt so happy to know where my family was,” he recalls.

His older brother lives as a refugee in Uganda and is three years older than Arcel. Once they were certain of each others’ identity, Arcel and his brother exchanged mobile phone numbers. Due to airtime costs, he and his brother don’t speak as often as they would like but try to connect over the phone at least twice a month. “We talk about survival and how to get assistance to live,” Arcel says about his conversations with his brother.

Arcel and Ruhumuriza do not currently have plans to reunite in person as it is not economically feasible for them. However, they have hope that once day it will be possible. Arcel continues to use the RU tool to not only continue communicating with his brother but to also continue searching for other family members and friends. He has told others in his community about RU and referred them to Sony for registration.

* All names have been changed by RU to protect the identity of the individuals.

Interview/Story told to Camille Ramani of RU and translated by Sony Maragizi, RCK Monitor