International Rescue Committee: Refugee Crisis

Region of impact

Europe, Africa and Middle East

Total funding

$2+ million

Funding began in

2015

Focus

Crisis Response

Overview

Building a mobile platform to provide refugees with credible information

What they do

Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East continue to be impacted by the ongoing migrant and refugee crisis. When people are forcibly displaced, rebuilding their lives is not only finding a new place to call home. The International Rescue Committee has seen first-hand the complexity of humanitarian disasters and understands the need to develop better aid solutions—techniques that are rooted in evidence-based reasoning and bring positive, lasting change to clients.

In the past year alone, the International Rescue Committee has impacted the lives of over 26 million people. The IRC implements high-impact, cost-effective solutions that help people affected by crisis. The IRC focuses on economic well-being, education, health, safety, and empowerment. Across all of these areas the IRC works to break down the barriers that women and girls face on a daily basis.

How we're helping

As a result of Syria’s emergency evacuation in September 2015, Google volunteers worked with the International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps to launch a “Crisis Info Hub” for refugees. The hub provided critical information about safe movement, legal rights, and trustworthy services in Greece and the Balkans. The info hub, called Signpost, has since evolved into three separate platforms, Refugee.info in Europe, CuéntaNos in El Salvador and Khabrona in Jordan. Each platform has a customized portfolio of products, and aggregates and publishes location-based information about rights and services available to refugees and asylum seekers. To date, Signpost has reached over 1 million users across Greece, Italy, Jordan and El Salvador.