Project summary

How should local organizations respond effectively to disasters and other emergencies without proper tools? Local organizations often play an essential role in emergencies, usually acting as first responders and serving as a tool to assess immediate needs, provide initial assistance, and coordinate efforts until additional support arrives. Their work plays a vital part in the response, especially in more isolated areas where larger organizations and response teams may take longer to reach. Usually, however, these organizations have limited capacity and knowledge to act, relying on ad hoc information management structures which often result in uncoordinated responses and inefficient resource allocation. 

We want to fill this gap by providing a modular platform (Relif) designed to meet the needs of local organizations and, later, coordination bodies. Our platform currently includes features for managing beneficiaries, assistance, shelters, and volunteers, and a portion of coordination. These tools are already in place and will soon be helping local organizations respond more efficiently to emergencies. However, we also recognize that to truly enhance the effectiveness of these orgs, we need to implement additional features like case management and real-time information sharing, which will allow organizations to better coordinate efforts, share information and respond faster and accurately during emergencies.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

Our first goal is to always reduce the potential number of persons affected by emergencies. 

We want to improve how local organizations prepare, respond to and manage their resources in emergencies by changing their approach to information management. Currently, information management processes focus primarily on beneficiary and assistance tracking, with the data collected commonly used to feed into donor reporting. We understand that, for strategies to truly align with the needs of those affected by crises, information management tools must go beyond numbers and names and the data collected should be used to inform responses, give better transparency on the invested resources, build effective strategies and avoid duplication of financial and human resources. The recent floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, showcased the effects that an uncoordinated response can have such as a waste of resources, fueled by duplication of aid distribution activities, delay in the provision of services (such as shelter, food, health, etc) and much more, which increased the risk of death, disease, and long-term psychological harm. Because of that, our primary goal is to enhance the efficiency of emergency responses by expanding the use of information management tools to support better internal and multi-stakeholder coordination. 

Our plan to achieve these goals is to provide a modular platform that integrates, aside from the current capabilities (beneficiary, assistance, shelter and volunteer management), case management, and real-time information sharing features, allowing local organizations to adopt an evidence-based approach responding to actual needs more efficiently. It will also allow for better allocation of resources and, ultimately, save more lives.

In this phase, we are planning to initially implement Relif in Brazil, which currently lacks a more comprehensive tool for emergency management given the number of disasters per year in the country. We also design the tool to be adaptive to any context, given that we were mostly humanitarians that started our careers in forced migration. With this, we will be able to expand the tool (already translated to Spanish and English, in addition to Portuguese) to other regions.

How will this funding be used?

The funding will be used to enhance our current tool and develop several high-priority features that were identified based on interviews with organizations active in the field that currently manage shelters, refugee camps or respond to emergency situations. These features will be important to maximize the impact and overall effectiveness of our platform, focusing, at this step, on information sharing, mainly in case management. 

Why is case management important, you may wonder

Well, it is important because it ensures that the most vulnerable individuals, especially those with specific and complex needs, receive continuous and coordinated support across different services and organizations. For example, imagine an undocumented kid found alone after a natural disaster. Without proper identification (beneficiary management), the child might not receive appropriate shelter, medical attention, or reunification with family (case management). With effective case management, the kid's case is flagged, tracked, and forwarded to the necessary agencies—such as child protection services, legal aid, health care providers, and others. This approach is what also ensures that the child receives necessary medical care and support, and that efforts are made to locate and reunite them with their family or find a suitable long-term solution, preventing them from being lost in the system, receiving inadequate care or not receiving any.

Information sharing also plays an important part for several main reasons, but in this case, the transfer of important data among organizations ensures that each org can act quickly. For example, using the same example of the undocumented kid in a disaster, first responders may gather basic information about the child but lack the expertise to address all of the child’s needs and share this information with a more experienced organization specializing in child protection and legal aid, which will allow the child to be provided with the necessary services such as psychological care and legal support. With the sharing of information, the kid's case can be managed across different organizations, in one platform, preventing delays in care and improving the overall outcome.

To finish these functionalities, we divided the development of these two parts in a few sections. Below you can see a breakdown per section (I can provide more detail, but didn't want to make this too long): 

Data Security and Advanced Management - $5,800

Communication and Outreach - $6,125

Operations and Coordination - $6,875

Total - $18,800

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

Our team is mostly composed of experienced professionals in humanitarian aid and technology implementation in highly volatile regions. For the last three years,  have led technology-driven projects in Latin America, the U.S., Ukraine, and East Africa, implementing NeedsList technology in emergency situations, liaising with CBOs, RLOs, larger international organizations and Governments, reaching more than $35 million dollars in donations, and supporting 800,000 people. I have also worked at organizations like UNHCR and NRC. Tássia Sodré has extensive experience in humanitarian responses across Latin America with UNHCR, the Norwegian Refugee Council and the Danish Refugee Council. She specialized in protection with focus on protection case management, and protection information management. Lucas Matos has a background in managing humanitarian projects in the Venezuelan crisis, focusing on camp coordination mainly in Colombia and Brazil. Currently he is the Country Coordinator for Médicos Del Mundo, in El Salvador. 

The team at Relief has implemented many humanitarian projects in challenging situations and continue to find ways to better support those in need during challenging times. 

Additionally, we are also bringing in more volunteers such as designers and more devs (feel free to reach out if you think you would like to participate).

We are also glad to count with advisors focused on GCR's such as Juana Martinez and Leo Arruda.

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The primary risks include difficulties in securing sustained funding, resistance from local organizations to adopt (and adjust to) new technologies, and potential technical issues such as cybersecurity threats. If these challenges are not addressed correctly, the project may face a few problems such as delays, reduced reach, or limited impact on emergency response effectiveness, ultimately resulting in slower and less coordinated emergency management efforts.

To tackle these risks, we are constantly applying for grants and seeking partnerships, guaranteeing more funding, and have a very nimble structure planned, making our organization design very lean. At the same time, we are mapping local stakeholders, interviewing them to better understand their pains and validating our developments with them. 

What other funding are you or your project getting?

Currently, we are seeking additional funding sources, focusing mainly on grants (both in and out of the EA community), to supplement the project, which we have been running on our own funds to support the initial tech development. We are also trying to explore development partnerships with other organizations that can provide in-kind support or additional resources.