#refunite

I recently travelled to Kampala to improve the user experience on the family reconnection platform, www.refunite.org. Another goal was to test our SMS notification system. My overall question was: how can we improve the user experience on the REFUNITE platform?

We currently serve nearly 400,000 forcibly displaced people who speak different languages and come from different cultures and regions. Creating a digital family reconnection platform that is accessible in remote areas and from low-end mobile phones is at the heart of our activities.

Meeting the Mobile Outreach Team

The Kampala mobile outreach team consists of four members; Rodrigue Bashizi, Paul Kithima, Abana Sharifu and Claire Kipenda who are refugees themselves.

The team facilitates the registration of urban refugees living in Uganda who are searching for their missing relatives. According to Urban Refugees, there are nearly 200,000 refugees in Kampala. That number has undoubtedly increased due to the recent fighting in neighbouring South Sudan.

I was inspired by the diversity of languages spoken by our mobile outreach team, such as Kinyarwanda, Lingala, Kirundi, French, English Swahili and Luganda. Their languages skills empower us to serve refugee families, regardless of their nationality.

The team’s high morale was also very encouraging.The mobile outreach volunteers walk long distances in extreme weather (heat and rain!) to reach refugee families. They also have to deal with impatient registrants but remain patient and helpful. Their resilience and positive attitude was inspiring.

Zooming In On the User Experience

Improving our platform is an important aspect of our day-to-day activities as we want to make it easier for separated families to search, connect and communicate.

Our overall mission is to reconnect families torn apart by conflict, war and natural disasters. We believe everyone has the right to know where their family is. Anyone searching for their missing loved one can use one of our four search options:

1.     SMS - Our mobile application allows separated families to search through SMS

2.     Call Us – Our toll-free line provides access to our multilingual call center

3.     USSD – This mobile service empowers separated families to search for missing loved ones using a low-tech phone without access to the Internet

4.     REFUNITE.ORG – Enables families to search through the REFUNITE website through web or a smart phone.

Lessons and Feedback from the Field

Based on some of my conversations with urban refugees, REFUNITE’s mobile outreach volunteers and our Ugandan platform users, I arrived at the following:

REFUNITE ought to make the ‘Invite a Friend’ feature more visible

Our mobile outreach team was experiencing challenges with the messaging system, which sends SMS notification and alerts to registered users who are searching for their missing loved ones. 

A glitch in the system caused the system to send SMS messages too late or not at all. This issue raised concerns among refugee families who trust us to rapidly reconnect them with their missing family members.

As part of the family reconnection platform, we always make sure to explain to families how the process works, and how we can help them with their search. They are eager to find their loved ones why the SMS notification system needs to work. All the time.

Unlike our other mobile outreach projects in Africa and the Middle East, the Kampala team primarily offers web registration; this limits entry to people without an Internet-enabled smart phone. Building on our partnership with MTN Uganda, we are currently exploring next steps and how we can offer mobile registrations from low-end phones.

The REFUNITE platform should create space for online feedback from users

More outreach and publicity is needed on REFUNITE services in Uganda

Some refugees identified the need for literacy support

Profile photos would ease the family reconnection process; this is especially useful in instances where many share similar names

The SMS notifications needs to be a bit more customised and user-specific

All SMS notifications to users should be identifiable as coming from REFUNITE

Next Steps

We are always looking to improve our family reconnection platform to make it easier for families to reconnect with their missing loved ones. We will be making some changes and fine-tuning the platform based on the feedback we received from our users in Kampala.  The experience in Kampala has motivated me to find more ways to leverage new technology to support our teams in different locations.

Somali refugee Zahra Ahmed was reconnected with her cousin through the REFUNITE (www.refunite.org) platform after 17 years apart.

Before the civil war broke out in Somalia in 1991, Zahra and Abdi were your typical lively children. They went to madrasa (Islamic school), played and spent a lot of time together. Their mothers were sisters who lived in the same neighbourhood in Baidoa, a town in the south-central Bay area of Somalia, 250km from the national capital Mogadishu.

The civil war in Somalia erupted following the downfall of President Siad Barre in 1991, leading to more than two decades of conflict. According to Refugees International 2013 data, there are more than 1.1 million internally displaced Somalis and nearly one million refugees living in neighbouring countries, such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen. Decades of fighting and the absence of a formal government rendered the country incapable of dealing with natural disasters; consequently, the 1992 and 2010 drought caused the deaths of more than half a million Somalis.

The fighting persisted and life amid the civil war became unbearable. In 1997, Zahra and her family escaped to a neighbouring village while her cousin Abdi and his family sought refuge in Kenya. The two families diverging choice of location for safety would lead to 17 years of separation. The cousins lost contact with each other and the ongoing civil war made it impossible to get updates on missing relatives. Neither one knew of the other’s fate. Did Abdi and his family make it to Kenya? Did Zahra and her family survive the war? They had no way of knowing. They could only hope for each other’s safety.

As the conditions in Somalia continued to deteriorate and the fighting worsened, Zahra and her family also had to flee the country. They made their way on foot and onboard transport trucks into neighbouring Kenya. They were received at the Kakuma refugee camp where Zahra learned of REFUNITE’s family reconnection service through a Mobile Outreach Volunteer named Faiza in late 2013.

REFUNITE’s mobile outreach programme in Kakuma Refugee Camp began in April 2013 in partnership with the Kenya Red Cross Society. The programme was established to help refugees living in Kakuma find their missing friends and relatives.

Kakuma refugee camp is located in Turkana County of the north-western region of Kenya. It was established in 1992 and is home to more than 180,000 refugees from Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Uganda, and Rwanda.

Using a low-tech mobile phone, Faiza helped Zahra register on the REFUNITE platform, setting her off on the journey to find her missing relatives. In earnest, Zahra began the search for her cousin’s family and her missing sister. Less than a year after Zahra registered on REFUNITE, she was able to establish and confirm reconnection with her cousin Abdi who is now living in America.

In total, 14 people were reconnected through Zahra and Abdi’s contact (Zahra, her husband and 5 children; and Abdi, his parents and 4 siblings). Zahra was overjoyed to learn of her cousin’s safety and to re-establish a relationship with them. They speak on the phone regularly and Zahra hopes to receive some assistance from them in future.

Zahra is still looking for her missing sister and is hopeful that one day she will find her through the REFUNITE platform.

By Kalson Abdi

ABOUT THE INTERVIEW

*For security reasons, all names have been changed to protect the interviewees.

The above interview was initiated by Angelina N. Ndung’u of REFUNITE and took place on December 16, 2014 in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. It was conducted in the Somali language with translation support from Faiza Mohamed, an Outreach Volunteer.

CONTACT

After more than 10 years of separation, Congolese refugee Cedric is now reconnected with his cousin Yolanda through the REFUNITE (www.refunite.org) platform.

Cedric and his younger brother were born to Burundian parents and raised in the North Kivu district in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

During their early years, Cedric's cousin Yolanda would occasionally visit them in DRC. Sadly, Cedric’s parents passed away when they were very young; he doesn’t even remember the year it happened.

Despite the 14-year age difference between the cousins, Cedric has many fond memories of Yolanda's visits. The loss of Cedric's parents was preceded by very desperate times for the younger brothers, during which their neighbor stepped in to help raise them.

While in their neighbor’s care, the boys recounted how they were mistreated and endured a lot of hardship. As they grew older, they would do sales jobs for the neighbor, in exchange for their upkeep. It is during this time that the boys lost touch with their cousin Yolanda, who was the only other direct family member they knew.

DRC has been struggling with ongoing conflict for the past two decades. The country’s eastern provinces of North Kivu, South Kivu, Katanga, and Orientale are most affected by the conflicts.

As of November 2014, an estimated 2.6 million Congolese were internally displaced, and nearly 500,000 had fled their homes into neighboring Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.

In January 2014, their neighbor and primary caregiver decided to relocate to Uganda and took the brothers along with him. They continued to work for him but life became harder and more unbearable.

Cedric, who was now 18 years old, made the decision to run away with his younger brother. They managed to make their way from Uganda to Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, where they arrived in July 2014. They were now thrust into a life of displacement and uncertainty.

Kakuma refugee camp is located in Turkana County of the northwestern region of Kenya. It was established in 1992 and is home to more than 180,000 refugees from South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Uganda, and Rwanda.

At the reception center in Kakuma, Cedric learned of the REFUNITE family reconnection platform from Bahera who works as a volunteer on the mobile outreach programme lead by REFUNITE and Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) in Kakuma Refugee Camp.

Bahera explained how the mobile search tool works and helped Cedric start his search for his missing cousin Yolanda. 

As luck would have it, his cousin Yolanda, who was now living in America, had also reported Cedric as a missing relative on REFUNITE’s platform. Based on her search criteria, Cedric received a message from Yolanda. She was able to confirm his identity, his name, tribe, country of origin, parents’ names, and more.

She responded with a message in Kirundi inquiring his whereabouts and that of his younger brother. After a few validation messages back and forth between Yolanda and Cedric, they were able to confirm their relation.

The long lost cousins had finally found each other with support from KRCS and REFUNITE. 

Now that Ceric has found his cousin Yolanda, he hopes that she may be able to connect them to other relatives. Cedric and his younger brother are are both dreaming of an education, as well as successful and peaceful lives in future. 

The cousins remain connected via telephone and hope they will someday meet in person.

KRCS provides a free phone service that allows refugees to connect with their loved ones. They get two minutes of free airtime per month.

Cedric recounts, “The best part about being reconnected with our cousin, is knowing that we are not alone, that we have other relatives around the world who care and want to find us.”

By Kalson Abdi

ABOUT THE INTERVIEW

For security reasons, all names have been changed to protect the interviewees. 

The above interview took place in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. It was conducted in French with translation by Bahera Musemi who works for REFUNITE and KRCS in the camp. Representatives from REFUNITE and KRCS participated in the interview. 

CONTACT

Prior to joining REFUNITE, Helle worked for Fredericia Municipality in Denmark and as an accountant for Deloitte in Copenhagen, Denmark. Helle has also worked for a school, at a restaurant and most recently for Berlitz Language Services, where she was in charge of payrolls and accounts for schools in Norway, Finland and Denmark.

As an accountant for REFUNITE (www.refunite.org), she will be working on various tasks, and collaborating with international teams.

“The more I read about REFUNITE, the more I knew that this was the job I wanted! Working for a humanitarian organization has been a dream of mine for years. I finally made it."

Helle, 33, has completed vocational training at Fredericia Municipality with focus on economy. 

During her spare time, she loves spending time with her two daughters, reading, listening to music, watching movies and cooking.

Purity joins the REFUNITE family after having worked as a Consultant for eBonyx Kenya Limited.

Her previous job entailed software implementation, testing, systems and support. She has also worked as an intern for Ericsson Kenya Limited, Liquid Telecomms and Afrisec Telecomms.

As an IT Support Coordinator for REFUNITE (www.refunite.org),  Purity will be a liaison between the Tech and Operations teams, supporting agents in the field and those at the call center.

Connect with Purity: [email protected]

She will also answer technical inquiries, investigate potential network or system issues and resolve them. "Using my IT skills to advance humanity is my delight. Using the same skills to reconnect families is my calling!"

Purity has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Technology from the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Kenya.

I recently embarked on a trip to Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to evaluate whether a rapid expansion of REFUNITE’s family reconnection work is warranted – and if so, how to proceed. At the back of my mind was a book I read a few years ago; "King Leopold’s Ghost" by Adam Hochschild. 

The book described King Leopold of Belgium’s 19th century conversion of the DRC from a beautiful, lush, and resource-rich country into a personal fiefdom characterized by ubiquitous violence and exploitation.

During the course of this trip it became abundantly clear that the Ghost of Leopold still lingers. It has coalesced into a fog that has condensed through the decades into ethnic and land-based conflict, rebel groups, violence, corruption, and a myriad other ills befalling the massive heart of Africa. As a result, there are now hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees.

Yet, “Heart of Darkness” - as the Polish author Joseph Conrad famously labelled the DRC in his book - it most definitely is not. Instead, there is a resilient population with a sense of service to their communities, and countless folks looking for family they have lost in the course of harrowing journeys.

Identifying the pathway to scale

My goal was to begin to understand the extent to which there is a need for REFUNITE’s family reconnection services in North Kivu. This also requires a better feel for the area’s geography, institutions, culture, languages, and economic landscape.

REFUNITE (www.refunite.org) has already worked in various theaters of operation in Africa – including, for example, the refugee camps Kakuma and Dadaab in Kenya, where we have large-scale mobile outreach programs in partnership with the Kenya Red Cross Society.

Nonetheless, any route to scale is context-specific. Experience has taught us that while it is necessary to take into account lessons learned from previous mobile outreach projects, each implementation should be taken as inherently unique. For example, if we were to launch an SMS campaign in Goma, we would need to evaluate it with its own merits or demerits and if REFUNITE is the proverbial hammer, not to see every problem as a nail. 

The strategic importance of Eastern DRC to REFUNITE

“Getting Goma right” is very important to REFUNITE, as our platform already has more than 22,000 Congolese users registered and looking for lost family members.

According to UNHCR, the United Nations's refugee agency, there are almost three million IDPs in the DRC and 450,000 refugees living in neighboring countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. Therein lies a huge potential for the REFUNITE platform to assist those who are searching for loved ones.

What we now need to do more comprehensively is target the areas where displaced persons are both coming from and moving to, maximizing the number of potential reconnections.

The assessment project in Goma will help REFUNITE come up with tailored mobile outreach programme, which aims to reconnect families living in the major IDP camps.

Onwards to DRC

With all this in mind, I began the trip with a stop-over in Kigali – the calm, green capital of Rwanda - where the 1994 genocide seems an eon apart. I took the opportunity to visit the Genocide Memorial Centre, which serves as a constant reminder of a scarring chapter in the country’s history.

The museum gave me a sense of the horror that took over Rwanda in 1994. One photograph showed a large group of children huddled around a bulletin board seemingly hopeful that they will find a picture of their family and reconnect with them. This was a resounding moment for me, as it reiterated the importance of REFUNITE’s work and the need to continue making the process of finding family easier, faster, and ubiquitous.

During the road trip from Kigali to the Gisenyi border-crossing prior to entering Goma, I learned that many IDP camps actually started out as refugee camps for Rwandans fleeing in 1994. A large percentage of today’s refugees in eastern DRC are still Rwandans, followed by Ugandans and a smaller number of Burundians.

Thinking about the sheer complexity of the struggles here is a taxing endeavor: refugee crises that became IDP crises and then back again, with tents that once alternatively housed Tutsis, Hutus, and many other groups as conflicts spawned, metamorphosed, and twisted into different beasts entirely. It was a sobering reflection and the backdrop for the days to come.

The generous facilitator

Any undertaking like this needs a facilitator and in this case we were fortunate to have Vodacom DRC, a mobile network operator. Since 2013, Vodacom DRC and Ericsson have provided REFUNITE with a free help line for families in DRC and SMS outreach to their customer base.

We have run numerous campaigns in the country to register folks looking for missing loved ones onto our platform, both via SMS and radio. Vodacom DRC also runs a project called “Red Alert”, which seeks to address the IDP crisis by spreading the word about REFUNITE, providing free calls to camp residents, as well as spearheading various initiatives in education and provision of materials for temporary shelter.

  I was lucky to have the guidance of Bonheur Kasali who leads the Red Alert campaign in Goma. He is a passionate, tactful, and well-connected advocate for Congolese IDPs - making him and his team the perfect people to help REFUNITE better understand the situation on the ground.

Setting the stage

During one evening in Goma, I sat with Bonheur and our wonderful translator Gloria, who is also a PhD student doing her thesis on IDP self-sufficiency and resilience. Over the course of a few hours, the two of them patiently addressed my questions, dispelling many assumptions I had about the region.

They further explained the history of the IDP crisis and its potential impact on the project; how camps are currently managed; the political aspects to take into account; and other essential contexts.

Having gained some insight into the situation, I was ready to visit the camps to interview families, community leaders, and relevant humanitarian officials.

The camps

Over the next few days, I visited four camps, including the three largest ones: Mugunga I, Mugunga III, and Bolengo. The camp leaders (elected from the IDPs) were forthright and described in detail what it would take for REFUNITE’s project to succeed in reconnecting their community members with lost family.

One particular area of concern was how families characterized by low technological understanding and a high degree of illiteracy can make effective use of a mobile technology-based initiative. Fortunately, this is something we have extensive experience in and can address.

I was also fortunate enough to meet with community organizations looking to increase self-sufficiency in the camps. One example was a woman’s group organized by ActionAid that makes soap and products from palm oil.

This group faces a stigma that women who have been raped come across when trying to sell goods; has difficulty locating buyers despite demand and high quality products; and has issues being paid on time so that there is ready capital to restock inventory when necessary.

While speaking with some of these groups was not directly related to my core purpose at the camps, they provided tremendously useful inputs for a prototyping project that REFUNITE is currently running. This project looks at what our information platform can do for displaced persons beyond family tracing.

Overall, I was convinced both of the need around family reconnection in the Goma area and of REFUNITE’s ability to scale in the region. We are now in the midst of converting the trip’s inputs into a viable and efficient approach to tracing operations with our partners in DRC.

To the future

I’d be remiss if I ended without mentioning North Kivu’s spectacular and verdant landscape - alive with beautiful lakes, rolling hills, old stone walls, an active volcano, and fascinating wildlife.

Of course, like everyone, my hope is that one day peace comes to Eastern DRC. The latent economic, cultural, and tourism potential of the region can then be manifest, benefiting families that sorely deserve it and opening up this stunningly beautiful region for all travellers to experience.

Until that happens, REFUNITE will play its part in helping the Eastern Congolese reconnect with those that give their journeys true meaning.

Connect with Nishant and share your ideas: [email protected]

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