São Paulo – The large flow of refugees that has been arriving in Brazil caught the attention of five students from the Rio Grande do Sul Federal Institute (IFRS, in the Portuguese acronym). Together, they created the app Helping Hand, which has a lot of information for foreigners that come to the country seeking refuge. Available in Arabic, Portuguese, English, French and Spanish, the app was downloaded more than 100 times in less than a month.
Aged 17 and 18 years old, Aline Weber, Ingrid Smalti, Laís Roman, Luana Bianchi and Monique Invernizzi are students of the technical course in Internet Computing at the Bento Gonçalves campus. They developed the app to participate in the contest Technovation, organized by a NGO in the United States, whose goal is the promotion of entrepreneurship among young women. The Helping Hand was ranked among the contest’s top 10 in Latin America.
The idea of working with refugees came from a research done by Smalti over contemporary immigrations. “Through the research, we noticed that they face a lot of difficulties to establish themselves here, such as getting official papers, finding a place to live and seeking job opportunities”, Weber told ANBA.
Among the information available in the app are the contacts of international agencies, legal aid, support centers, communities and societies, religious temples, government agencies, consulates and embassies, educational institutions and Portuguese classes, besides job opportunities and hospitals that are near the neighborhood of the immigrant. The students also created the website http://helpinghandapp.com.br to promote the app.
According to Weber, the group got in touch with refugees from Haiti in Bento Gonçalves to get to know their needs better. The NGO Adus, from São Paulo, also helped by offering information about the situation of Syrian refugees. “In Bento Gonçalves we don’t have a large Arab presence. We welcomed more Haitians”, she explained.
The Arabic language, however, was one of the first to be selected for the app. “The Arabic and French were the first ones we decided were needed [in the app], because of the Syrians that are coming here due to the civil war. We noticed they have a strong presence [in Brazil]”, said Weber.
The Arabic app version was written by a Palestinian, a friend of one of the girls. “We sent the texts in English and he translated them”, said Weber. In all, the app took three months to be created. All of the programming was done by the students, who also wrote the texts in the other four languages.
The Helping Hand is available to be downloaded for free in an Android version since May 1st. Now, the students are seeking financial support to put the app in Apple’s virtual store. “The cost is US$ 99 per year to put the app in the store”, said the student.
The donations will help fund the project’s maintenance and the rest of it will be passed forward to institutions of support to refugees. The students are also seeking partnerships to promote the app in events related to social causes.
Those interested in helping can deposit donations in the current account 24.144-x, Banco do Brasil, branch 2969-6. The group can be contacted via email at contatohelpinghand@gmail.com
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani