While Governments have dithered, countries have prevaricated and charities struggled because of the constant changes in the Syrian crisis, the European technology industry has been extraordinarily proactive in trying to find ways to help the Syrian crisis.
One such organisation set up in London, Techfugees, has attempted to crowdsource the cluster of problems and enjoyed great success in radiating across the continent and beyond to find solutions. The tech community at Techfugees continues to support this vast forced migration across Europe.
Now, another team of people have come together to offer medical help to refugees as well as building a 'supply chain' from the refugees themselves across the route these benighted people have had to travel.
Refugee First Response Center is a mobile health clinic in a shipping container that provides ad hoc video translation services to connect doctors and patients with more than 750 live interpreters that are fluent in more than 50 languages at the press of a button.
The RFRC pilot was co-created by Mirko Bass, a business development evangelist at US tech multinational Cisco and Harald Neidhardt, CEO of innovation agency MLOVE.
In just six weeks, the idea became reality with the first installation in Hamburg and the support of local partners Andreas Kusch, CEO of Avodaq, Dr. Peter Merschitz, CTO of SAVD and their teams.
In just five months, more than 5,000 medical exams with live interpreter sessions were successfully completed in the aforesaid container with the medical staff of the University Hospital Hamburg- Eppendorf (UKE).
The RFRC team's dream is to install 100+ medical first aid container clinics in the hotspots around the Syrian refugee crisis and along the migration routes. It is working with partners such as foundations for funding and attracting more technology partners to add services to support the local NGOs and medical teams.
Two international RFRC installations are being installed in Samos, Greece and the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, piloting local use cases including telemedicine, translation services, family reunification, asylum application and more.
These pilots will go live in a few weeks and are part of the RFRC mission to #scaleforgood and grow more than 100x RFRC clinics to be installed in hotspots and along the migration routes of the Syrian refugee crisis.
Together with the teams of Cisco Greece & Lebanon, the RFRC team is cooperating with local NGOs in Greece (StartupBoat) and Lebanon (Beyond Association) and other partners to establish successful pilot units. RFRC was also the recent recipient of an Aspirin Social Innovation Award for its innovational work.
“Working with passionate people adds meaning to technology innovation. Together, startups and corporate tech players can create meaningful impact addressing the global grand challenges.
“We treat the Aspirin Social Innovation Award as an inspiration to continue our dream to scale for good and bring 100x RFRC clinics to refugee hotspots where help is needed most,” said Harald Neidhardt, CEO, MLOVE and Co-Creator, RFRC.
Neidhardt is working with his team and partners to scale the health clinics but is also piloting connected 'containers-for-good' that embreaces shelter, food and education through a newly formed MLOVE foundation.
For the past eight years, Neidhardt has led MLOVE as an innovation agency and curator of its acclaimed events at the forefront of exponential technologies and with a passion for meaning in technology.
As winter continues to bite and the route of the Syrian refugees resembles a modern-day Exodus, as terrible as its Biblical precedent, the work of Techfugees and RFRC is to be not only admired, but needs to be supported financially by global organisations to ensure it continues its work.
In a world racked by change and uncertainty in 2016, the work of these organisations offers real hope in 2017 for those who really need it, even if it takes place in a container.
For many people, however, these are the best containers in the whole world.
