Migport at Participio

Workspaces Software (Participio)
#1

I am Berat, a migrant also co-founder of Migport, refugees knowledge sharing platform. Refugees connect with volunteers who are willing to help them on their daily problems such as education, financial and bureaucratic barriers. We are aiming to turn refugee funds into advantage of refugees by understanding their real time anonymised problems topics from our application and provide evidence-based data policy with governmental organizations.

Thanks to Nadia’s introduction, I learn about Participio Development Lab. My my aim is to find ways how to better generate anonymised data about refugees real time problems? Participio lab may be a good collaborative source to turn my project into reality. Looking forward for your feedback.

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Participio Development Lab
#2

Welcome, @BeratKJ! Worth a shot, IMHO. Ping @hugi.

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#3

Yes, worth a shot indeed. What stage is the project on right now? Idea stage or have you started working on some prototype?

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#4

We are prototype stage. Developed two applications. First one was pivoted with over 3000 refugees and 500 mentor sessions. After pivoting with the previous application, we decided to update the application (you can see the mock below). We can understand refugees daily problems based on hashtags they use overall. Now we are thinking other ways to generate more data for evidence based policy.

New app (MOCK): http://www.qzenobia.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Migport-New-App.jpg

Previous edition: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.qzenobia.qzenobia
@hugi @alberto

#5

This is a really interesting and worthwhile mission. In 2019, Participio is focused on participatory culture, but this fits in with the future plans of working on anything that’s related to decentralisation. One aspect of Participio is that everything we work on is open source. Is that something you’d be interested in, making your source code open and available so that others could work on it?

#6

Thank you so much for your kind words. We are okay with our project to be open source in order to further help refugees. As our project connects refugees with volunteers, we see no restrictions other people to help us develop our software which is very related to our mission.

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#7

Great, let’s keep in touch and see if we can find some way to work together in 2019.
I immediately had an idea. I’ve recently been investigating a technology called Scuttlebutt. Basically, it’s a technology that makes it possible to have a social network (or any other data) which is fully encrypted and both accessible online and offline. It’s described pretty well in this post.

My thinking is this. Refugees who are on the move need information that is up to date and a way to connect with each other. However, they might not always have data coverage or wifi, although they have smartphones. It would be good if refugee A (who has no wifi for a week) could get all the data and info that refugee B has (who has had wifi recently but not now).

With a technology like Scuttlebutt, this is possible by letting person A connect with the device of person B and get all the updated information (including any personal messages to person A, which person B will then have on encryped on their device and are unable to access). It’s a bit hard to explain in short terms, but this is operational technology. In fact, I recently connected with @alberto on Scuttlebutt Patchwork.

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#8

Not a bad idea. Some qualitative research – and possibly prototyping – could tell us whether, and in what circumstances, people would use it. @matthias has been dreaming for some time of “high latency Internet” in the context of rural Nepal, made of USB sticks moving around in the pockets of people on foot or 4-wheel drives, Raspberry Pi-based village hubs and yes, smartphones…

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#9

I decided to fork these replies into a new thread so that we can continue this conversation more long term.

#10

@hugi @alberto
I think it is a good explanation, I got how the system works.
Refugees in Turkey usually live outside of camps - approx. 13% of registered 4 million Syrians live in the camps. It is also estimated Turkey to host more than 1 million refugees from Iraq, Iran, African and Euroasian countries who do not stay on the camps. Some refugees usually have data (provided by governmental organizations) but do not have wi-fi in their locations. Such an information platform can help them exchange and share knowledge with each other. We have been talking to refugees, they said that when you are abroad you have nothing but your smartphone that enables you to be in touch. Starting with my personal experience, we decided Migport can be a tool for refugees to share knowledge about how they solve problems and learn from each other.
Nice to meet you @matthias

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