International Rescue Committee

Using mobile technology to reach refugees with critical information

Adapted from commissioned editorial work for a global technology company’s social-impact platform. Client name withheld.

In Greece, a refugee has no idea when the ferry carrying his wife and children will arrive. In Iraq, a family doesn't know where to turn after being forcibly evicted. In Ukraine, a young mother doesn't know where to find food in her crumbling village. All until they pick up their phone and see the waiting text message.

Increasingly, thanks to initiatives like one undertaken by the International Rescue Committee, people in desperate situations around the world are able to receive and send critical information via text and related technology. Ferry schedules, legal help, and food distributions are just a few of the pieces of information that refugees now frequently receive via their phones.

“It’s definitely transformative,” says Reynaldo Rodrigues, the emergency technology coordinator for the IRC, which helps millions of refugees around the world. Rodrigues began building a communication system using text messaging technology in 2012 and has seen opportunities for its application expand dramatically in the years since. “That kind of connectivity directly with the refugees is such power. It’s very, very helpful to our projects.”

Before creating the system, the IRC communicated with refugees primarily by going from person to person. While this is still a key part of its strategy, the process is time-consuming and often dangerous.

Rodrigues and his team looked for other ways to connect with refugees, focusing on the one thing that even the poorest families often had: mobile phones. The IRC’s text-based systems grew to send information to tens of thousands of refugees in Greece and more than a hundred thousand in Iraq.

One of the system’s key benefits is how quickly it can reach large numbers of people. Another is that communications can be customized for specific groups according to factors such as gender, location, and age.

“Being able to know your population and have this way of communicating with them, it’s something that we can do very easily and [text message] is a good medium for it,” says Rodrigues.

While the IRC’s communications have so far been largely based on text messaging, Rodrigues sees opportunities to expand into voice-based communications that could serve refugees who cannot read, as well as interactive features such as surveys. “To be able to have that personal connection with refugees and internationally displaced people, it is very, very powerful.”