Refugees Welcome

Credit: United Nations Photo
Credit: UN Photo

I’m going to a London hack-weekend on the 2nd October with a proposition. I’d like to create an easier way for people to offer to host refugees in their homes for a period of time.

This recent newspaper article gave advice for people looking to offer a room, but the process is far from straightforward. Citizens UK and 38 Degrees have demonstrated that there are a lot of people in the UK who are willing to help, but right now there is no accessible online service in the UK. But it wouldn’t take long to make…

To get ready for the weekend, I’m talking with the expert organisations who have been organising such support for years, including Boaz Trust, Assist, Housing Justice, and Refugees Welcome in Germany about how we might quickly create a light-weight digital service wrapper that could save them work in gathering potential hosts, and lower the barrier for people wanting to volunteer.

We are going to need help from people with a whole bunch of different skills, including designers, developers, user researchers, asylum experts, local authority housing experts, service managers, data analysts, and delivery managers. I’d love your help with this. If you’re interested, you can either come along to the hack-weekend or get in touch through Twitter.