Find emergency accommodation, a pharmacy on duty, find your family, enroll in university… These are the proposals for aid to refugees arriving in France offered by the Réfugiés.info platform. The site and application, available in several languages, seek to facilitate procedures for displaced persons and individual caregivers.
The platform Refugees.info was developed by the interministerial delegation for the reception and integration of people forced to leave their countries with the teams of Réfugiés.info. These developments were driven by the Mednum whose title is the contraction of digital mediation. This structure, which has been deployed in the form of a national cooperative in all the territories of France, has existed for several years.
It coordinates the initiatives of many local public and private actors who work in favor of the people most “remote” from digital technology, explains its general manager Guilhem Pradalié. ” The Mednum usually carries out actions with all the communities or public actors to help the fifteen million French people who are far from the advantages of digital technology, whether in the field of health, administration in line or even in that of employment. This numerical exclusion also concerns refugees. This is why we are currently working on the reception of foreign visitors with the interministerial delegation for the reception and integration of refugees in France with a public-private development model, in particular with a free digital system and collaborative. In the context of the Ukrainian crisis, it was decided with the Ministry of the Interior to deploy a specific digital tool to connect in a secure manner on a platform, French people who wanted to host Ukrainian refugees and associations already working in this sense in the territories. »
A mobile app too
With more than 480 practical sheets translated into seven languages, the application offers simple and understandable information for refugees and their caregivers, explains Nour Allazkani. This young Syrian computer engineer, upon his arrival in France in 2014, got involved in innovative digital projects by becoming the project manager of Réfugiés.info.
A multilingual platform
” Réfugiés.info is organized around twelve themes. For example, where to learn the French language, how to find a job, how to train for a trade or resume higher education, how to find accommodation or access public means of transport. Or how to obtain a vital card, all kinds of questions that people in exile can ask who will find concrete answers, step by step, translated into 7 languages. So you have English, Russian, Arabic, Pashto and Dari for Afghan people, Tigrinya for Eritreans and Ethiopians and we recently added Ukrainian for refugees from this war-torn country.” details Nour Allazkani.
This digital platform is aimed at two audiences, on the one hand refugees who will mainly use the mobile application for information and on the other hand, all social workers, public officials, volunteers and committed citizens who accompany refugees, generally using the website. ” Réfugiés.info allows them to coordinate their actions or offer their help, in particular to carry out collaborative translations of the information on the platform which is intended for people arriving in France. adds the Syrian project manager.
Many translators volunteered following the call launched on social networks by the teams of Refugees.info. And to fully understand the principle of this platform which is entirely contributory, it works like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. All Internet users of goodwill can thus contribute by writing or translating practical sheets which will then be used both by the refugees themselves and by the associations that support them.