Project description:

A Zoom-like app built specifically for asylum seekers to communicate with their lawyer via a translator. Sleek, easy to use and forever free.

We’re a small team building a Zoom-like app specifically for asylum seekers that allows them to communicate, through an interpreter, to their lawyer.

Most asylum seekers only ever communicate with their lawyers through an interpreter. Today, these meetings increasingly take place over video call but they can be frustrating and inefficient because Zoom isn’t designed to have an interpreter translating everything that’s said. Mute, unmute, people talking over each other – it can be a hard task for the interpreter and a poor experience for the asylum seeker. And if it’s not Zoom it’s Whatsapp, just because it’s easier. But there are huge safety issues because volunteers and interpreters have to give out their personal numbers to the people they’re helping. Really, asylum seekers and wonderful volunteers all suffer from one thing: they’re missing a purpose-built platform to connect them with the people who need their help.

We’d like to change that.

Solution

We’re building a video call platform to be accessed on laptop, web and mobile.

We’ve partnered with some major asylum/refugee NGOs and have designed a host of features alongside interpreters and translators to meet their needs.

We have a simple goal: make the lives of asylum seekers and the interpreters, lawyers and volunteers who support them a little bit easier by building a video-conferencing platform that makes communicating in different languages really easy. Think Zoom with a host of features designed specifically for asylum seekers and interpreters in one good-looking, easy-to-use and forever free program.

We’re eventually looking at building out the platform to support a network of interpreters, lawyers and volunteers around the world coming together to support asylum seekers remotely.