June 20, 2014 – Today marked the commemoration of World Refugee Day 2014 in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, where Refugees United (REFUNITE) runs a mobile outreach program to reconnect separated families with Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS).
In order to highlight the resilience, determination, and courage of men and women who are displaced by conflicts around the world, a wide range of organizations join forces in a celebration event organized by the United Nations Refugee Agency, UNHCR. Safaricom, REFUNITE and KRCS will participate in the event to showcase their innovate program pioneered in the camp between the three organizations, merging the traditional field of family tracing with mobile technology.
REFUNITE’s co-founder and co-CEO Christopher Mikkelsen will represent REFUNITE at the event, and together with volunteers and representatives from Safaricom and KRCS, the mobile application and family reconnection platform will be showcased. The mobile application has been made available free of charge by Safaricom in Kenya and enables refugees who have lost touch with family to access REFUNITE’s global database and search for missing loved ones. The project is a result of a partnership between REFUNITE, Safaricom, and global technology leader Ericsson.
“Everyone has the right to know where their family is,” says Mr. Mikkelsen. “Kakuma serves as our unofficial on-the-ground lab, where we test technological innovations in coordination with families living in the camp. Our mobile tools are meant to serve them, so it seems fitting to celebrate this day with the families who have helped us build and modify the platform through the years.”
REFUNITE, Safaricom and KRCS will also host a booth during the two-day celebration, where families can make inquires, learn about the platform, and register themselves or their missing family.
“Kenya is home to hundreds of thousands of refugees still desperate to reconnect with missing loved ones. Through this project thousands of families have received assistance,” says Safaricom Head of Corporate Responsibility Sanda Ojiambo
Since last year’s World Refugee Day, the joint partnership has resulted in SMS campaigns to inform more than 212,000 refugees about the free service as well as the launch of a toll free help line that has assisted more than 4,500 people in their search for missing family so far, with numbers growing every day.
Also, a mobile application to access REFUNITE’s global platform through simple mobile phones without access to the Internet has seen a great uptake, not least from refugees based in the Kakuma refugee camp. It is exactly these type of low-end mobile technologies that make the partnership’s outreach effective among refugee user groups that do not have the infrastructures to access Internet-based services.
Contact
Ida Jeng, Director, Global Communications and Strategy, Refugees United. Mobile: + 45 31 49 31 93 / Email: ij@refunite.org.
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